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Subject: Obit: Buck Owens From: gnu Date: 25 Mar 06 - 02:10 PM Dearest Bucky. Gary Boy sniff |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: bobad Date: 25 Mar 06 - 02:19 PM He left his mark and will be missed. Thanks for posting this gnu. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: Goose Gander Date: 25 Mar 06 - 02:20 PM He'll be missed, "Waiting in Your Welfare Line" is one of my favorite songs to sing. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: John MacKenzie Date: 25 Mar 06 - 02:21 PM Wow a legend in his own lifetime indeed! Remember when you walk up to them pearly gates, just Act Naturally! Hee Haw!! Giok |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: fat B****rd Date: 25 Mar 06 - 03:00 PM I only know him from "Crying Time" but it's an all time favourite of mine. RIP Mr. Owens. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: SINSULL Date: 25 Mar 06 - 04:16 PM I've got the HUNGRIES for your love And I'm waitin' in your welfare line... RIP |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: GUEST,Stephen L. Rich Date: 25 Mar 06 - 06:56 PM That is sad news indeed. We will not soon see his like again. If ever. Stephen Lee |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: freightdawg Date: 25 Mar 06 - 07:12 PM Its kind of funny, but I always viewed Buck Owens as Roy Clark's sidekick. Clark was the far better musician, and I felt he had a better voice. However, what Owens did have was a sincerity about his music that is sadly missing today. In some ways he was like Johnny Cash in that respect, but once again, he did not attain to Cash's stature. We need more Buck Owens' today who will sing with their heart and stand up to the Nashville cookie-cutter approach to producing music. What Buck Owens was able to accomplish along with Roy Clark and the cast of Hee Haw will probably be never seen again. As Owens said in the article that Gnu made the blue clicky for, Hee Haw was just a fun show, with good music, and some really, really good entertainers. Sad to see Buck Owens gone. However, the circle is getting bigger in heaven - Grandpa Jones, Gordie, LuLu, Minnie Pearl, Junior Sample - and I know I'm forgetting some others. What a show. Freightdawg |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: Francy Date: 25 Mar 06 - 07:29 PM Please listen to the early Captiol recordings of Buck Owens & the Buckaroos; before HeeHaw.....I find those recordings are far superior than the things he did on the TV show....As far as musicianship Buck was up there with the others. He was aleader....songwriter.......singer.....and guitar player ...great writer...."Where Does The Good Times Go?"......"Open Up You Heart", and many others....Frank of Toledo |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: katlaughing Date: 25 Mar 06 - 07:37 PM freightdawg and Francy, thanks for putting it so well. I grew up watching him on tv and am really sorry to hear of his passing. I am sure Rick knew, but when I read the paragraph about Buck dropping out of school at 13 and playing in taverns by 16, I thought of Rick and how much he would appreciate that. Hope they meet *up yonder*. kat |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: Rapparee Date: 25 Mar 06 - 08:43 PM Dang. I saw this earlier but it didn't register. Another one of the good 'uns gone. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: GUEST Date: 25 Mar 06 - 09:40 PM FreightDawg...you are WAY OFF...Buck Owens, unbeknownst to many, was a FINE musician...long before Roy Clark became FAMOUS... listen to some of the wynn stewart and tommy collins and other west coast artists of the 50s......BUCK PLAYED LEAD on many of them. and as a sidenote. BUCK requested that ROY CLARK be his co-host on HEE HAW... BUCK thought highly of ROY... |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: Francy Date: 25 Mar 06 - 09:45 PM Buck's friend and harmony singer on the early Buckaroos days was Don Rich......He died quite early in their musical relationship...and yes, Buck was every bit the musician that Roy Clark was......Another great ole Buck tuen was "Love's Gonna Live Here".......and on and on "Crying Time" Frank of Toledo |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: freightdawg Date: 25 Mar 06 - 10:08 PM Sorry to offend, me little guestie. I felt I was very gracious in my remarks about Buck. But I never saw Buck play the fiddle, or the banjo, (Clark excelled at both) and if Roy Clark was beneath the level of Chet Atkins in playing the guitar it was not by much. Buck Owens had a fine voice, and he might have played lead guitar some, but I never saw him do anything other than strum his red, white and blue guitar. And that includes tv shows other than Hee Haw. Buck might have asked Roy to be his co-host, but I always felt in terms of personna and skill that Roy was the better entertainer. I repeat...Buck Owens was a fine performer and entertainer. He accomplished far more than I had originally thought...his list of number 1 albums in that news story was impressive. And I appreciate his courage in standing up to the music producers of his day and coming out on top. That takes courage, but it also takes talent because if no one bought what he was selling he would have just faded away. We have lost a true talent and the ranks of pure singers just got a lot smaller. I'll admit I'm off, little guestie, but not in ways that you think. Freightdawg |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: Sandy Mc Lean Date: 25 Mar 06 - 10:15 PM Im sorry to hear this news. Buck was one of the all time greats. I agree that his musical ability should not be judged by HeeHaw performances, although I loved that show. At that point in his life he had already proven what he could do and he was just having fun being the clown along with Cousin Clem (Gordie Tapp) and Archie Campbell. "Pfffffst you was gone" with the hayforks and all. He played the part well, but some of us remember an earlier day when he owned the country airwaves and he was every bit as big a star as Johnny Cash. The sad thing I find is that many of the country greats have passed on in recent years, but there is none to replace them. Most of the Nashville clones of today just do not compare. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: Sandy Mc Lean Date: 25 Mar 06 - 10:31 PM Roy Clarke is a very talented performer on many insturments and I take nothing away from him, but before HeeHaw he was a studio and backup musician. Buck was already an established star with a long string of #1 hits. HeeHaw also had other great musicians such as Jethro Burns , Floyd Cramer, and Chet Atkins (the Million Dollar Band). However, except for the gospel segment humour was more important than perfection, and that is perhaps why it was such a great show. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: Joe Richman Date: 25 Mar 06 - 11:06 PM Hee Haw was just possibly the most critically panned TV show in TV history. I think they were way too hard on the show, which was not trying to be anything but fun. I was an occasional watcher, more for the musical segments than the comedy. But I really liked Buck's records that came out earlier. I always turned up the volume for his songs on the radio when I was a kid. I had a transistor radio from the time I was eight, and in those days, the "top 40" stations in LA played some country artists, like Buck and Patsy Cline. And his style of guitar playing up the neck has been copied by a lot of musicians out here in California. I remember one guy calling them "Buck Owens runs". |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: gnu Date: 25 Mar 06 - 11:29 PM Well. Golly, gosh, darn. Excuse my Irish. I thought I started a thread to pay tribute to a fine musician.... not to start a debate about "how fine" a musician he was. No matter. I shall raise a jar to Bucky in any case... he was, and always will be, a fine man. gnu Owens |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: freightdawg Date: 26 Mar 06 - 12:09 AM Gnu, I apologise for my distracting comments...I didn't intend to raise a ruckus. You did start this thread to pay tribute to Buck, and he was a fine singer, musician, and entertainer. Growing up Hee Haw was a Saturday night staple at our house. It introduced me to many wonderful musicians that a kid way out in the sticks of the great southwest would otherwise never even have heard of. Buck Owens was a larger-than-life character. His songs from the heart were, and still are to me, what country music was all about. Sandy said above, "The sad thing I find is that many of the country greats have passed on in recent years, but there is none to replace them. Most of the Nashville clones of today just do not compare." Amen, Sandy. And that is the finest eulogy we could give to Buck (and the many others mentioned). True talent can be imitated, but never duplicated. Hopefully as the pendulum of culture swings back people will discover, or rediscover, the talents that Sandy laments. Until then at least we have our memories. Freightdawg |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens From: Once Famous Date: 26 Mar 06 - 01:17 AM I have virtually all of those Capitol records of Buck Owens that I bought in the '60s. The guy was a majore influence. Many equate him with Hee Haw, but he was so well known long before. Buck was never the same musically after Don Rich died in a 1972 motorcycle accident. Some one above mentioned that Rich died early in Buck's career, but really that is not ture. Owens was so well established as I said, before Hee Haw. Don Rich was Buck Owens music soul brother. His harmonies and phrasing with Owens were the type usually only brothers can pull off. Many also do not realize that the biggest selling country instruemental of all time was Buckaroo, a song that still sounds so fresh even 40 years later. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens (25 March 2006) From: GUEST,Tunesmith Date: 26 Mar 06 - 02:52 AM A few years back, didn't Ringo record "Act Naturally" with Buck? BTW, Buck is one of the greats! No doubt about that! |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens (25 March 2006) From: GUEST,van lingle Date: 26 Mar 06 - 09:07 AM Right, Tunesmith and Ringo did it with the Beatles too as you may recall. Man,I remember watching Buck and the Buckaroos on their old syndicated TV show and it seemed liked the sound just exploded out of them unlike a lot of the other country acts of the time. Buck and Don Rich singing together was just a slice of heaven. Roy Clark was (is) a great one but nobody could sing like Buck.vl |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens (25 March 2006) From: Abby Sale Date: 26 Mar 06 - 10:43 AM Is there a reason to think Roy Clark is dead? He released an album last year... |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens (25 March 2006) From: GUEST,vl Date: 26 Mar 06 - 11:00 AM I should have put a ? behind that is, Abby. I don't know what he's up to. vl |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens (25 March 2006) From: GUEST,Dale Date: 26 Mar 06 - 08:35 PM From yesterday's Bakersfield Californian Robert Price column: Doing it his way until the end By The Bakersfield Californian | Saturday, Mar 25 2006 10:25 PM Last Updated: Saturday, Mar 25 2006 10:47 PM It was a few minutes till showtime Friday night and Buck Owens was starting to have second thoughts. He was tired. A touch of a cold, perhaps, or maybe just feeling the weight of his 76 years a bit more than usual. Nope, he wouldn't go on. The Crystal Palace, his Bakersfield dinner club, had packed them in again, but some things just couldn't be helped. Then he bumped into some people from Bend, Ore. -- fans who said they'd driven all the way down just to see him play. "Aw, man," Buck said. And the black-hatted hall-of-famer summoned up the will to go on. Those people had paid good money, invested a lot of time. They deserved a show. Some things just couldn't be helped. It wasn't his best performance. His voice was thin, his stage presence a little weak, but he stayed up there for 90 minutes. Then he went home for the last time. Buck Owens, who died of heart failure early Saturday morning at his ranch north of Bakersfield, was both performer and businessman, and he took those roles seriously until the very end. He didn't need to perform anymore -- those days had long since passed. But he pressed on because he loved the stage, because he figured his adopted hometown needed it, because deep down in his craw he believed Bakersfield still harbored sparks of the old magic that the world needed to appreciate. He was a one-man propaganda machine for the city he loved. He built the Crystal Palace dinner club, which became far and away the city's most sought-out tourist attraction. He commissioned a re-creation near the Palace of the "Bakersfield" gateway arch that had spanned Union Avenue for decades. One of the most telling indications of Buck's affection for Bakersfield was the Legends in Bronze collection of statues he unveiled last year -- 9-foot-tall renderings of 10 country music giants, including his Oildale-bred compatriot, Merle Haggard. Buck commissioned those statues, he told me once, because he knew he wouldn't be around forever to command that stage. He wanted people to keep coming west in all those RVs with Oklahoma and Missouri plates. He wanted the mecca of rebel country to always be Bakersfield, whether he was here to personally see to it or not. Because, though Buck was the consummate businessman, the consummate performer, he still fancied himself a rebel. He liked to talk about his behavior at stoplights in the old days. He'd pull up to the red light in his Ford convertible, country twang blaring from his tinny AM radio. Then, sensing the disapproving glares of respectable folk in the car next to his, he'd reach over to the radio ... and turn it up full blast. That rebelliousness, that willingness to take convention and turn it on its ear, is what made him who he was. Why couldn't he use his own band in the studio? Why couldn't he turn up the treble? Why couldn't he record the songs of Chuck Berry if he wanted to? Why couldn't he use a fuzz-tone guitar like the rock bands were doing? Why couldn't he start his own music publishing company and keep more of the proceeds for himself? He could, and he did. Most of the innovators have moved out of Bakersfield now, or otherwise moved on. Somehow we hadn't really expected it of Buck, though. He'd always been here, solid and unchanging as Kern Canyon. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens (25 March 2006) From: Seamus Kennedy Date: 26 Mar 06 - 08:48 PM Buckaroo and Buck's Polka were de rigeur for any lead flatpicker in Irish country bands in the '60's. And Buck was every bit Roy's equal, he just chose not do do it much on Hee-Haw, concentrating on the entertainment part of the show. Although there were a couple of bits where he sat and picked some hot lead guitar. Boyoboy, he was a good'un, and he'll be missed. Seamus |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens (25 March 2006) From: Joe Offer Date: 27 Mar 06 - 02:30 AM Gee, that's something. He performed Friday night, and died Saturday morning. He was quite a phenomenon in Bakersfield, one of the few good things Bakersfield was known for. For years, he had a theater and recording studio in an old movie house he restored in Oildale, a depressed area north of Bakersfield, just across the Kern River. Not much else in Oildale - run-down houses, oilfield service companies hard-hit by poor oil production, and Buck Owens. I haven't been to Bakersfield much in the last 25 years, but I used to spend a week a month there. Pretty depressing place - but Buck Owens did what he could to help his home town. -Joe Offer- Here's the obituary from the Bakersfield Californian: Buck Owens, 1929-2006By ROBERT PRICE© 2006, The Bakersfield Californian e-mail: rprice@bakersfield.com Buck Owens, a Texas-born fruit picker who made the name of his adopted hometown synonymous with a distinctive brand of country music, died early Saturday morning at his ranch just north of Bakersfield. The cause of death was heart failure. He was 76. Owens, born in near-poverty just south of the Texas-Oklahoma border and raised from the age of 8 in the Phoenix area, moved to Bakersfield at age 21, hoping to make it as a club musician. He died the multimillionaire king of a regional radio and media empire, renowned as one of country music’s most influential artists and undoubtedly Bakersfield’s most famous citizen. “I bet it’s twangy in heaven tonight,” said country-music star Brad Paisley, who telephoned Saturday night from a tour stop in Iowa. Owens had endured a string of medical setbacks in his last dozen years. He underwent throat cancer surgery in 1993, was hospitalized with pneumonia in 1997, suffered a minor stroke in 2004 and checked himself into a Los Angeles-area hospital in February with an unspecified illness. He had previously been treated for heart arrhythmia and lung problems. Family spokesman and longtime Buckaroo band mate Jim Shaw said Owens was rushed to Bakersfield Memorial Hospital sometime after 4:30 a.m. Saturday but could not be revived. Funeral plans had not been determined as of Saturday. The father of the Bakersfield Sound had performed just the night before at his Buck Owens Boulevard dinner club, the Crystal Palace, closing his 90-minute portion of the show with his 1969 hit “Big in Vegas.” But during an unprecedented run of success in the 1960s and early ’70s, Owens was big everywhere, from Japan to the White House, and from New York’s Carnegie Hall to San Francisco’s Fillmore West. Those who didn’t know him from his string of No. 1 hits learned his name from “Hee Haw,” the long-running comedy-variety show he co-hosted with Roy Clark. Lost on many of those television viewers was the fact that Owens was an innovator who gave commercial country music a creative edge that served it well through two decades of change and growth. “Buck was one of the greatest entertainers of the century,” fellow Country Music Hall of Fame performer Merle Haggard said by telephone from Mississippi, where he is on tour. “He influenced everybody from me to the Beatles. He was recognized in rock, in country, in rockabilly and in bluegrass. “It’s a sad day in country music,” said Haggard, a native of Oildale himself. “Buck was a powerful figure in the industry and just a great, great contributor to the music. In a lot of ways, he showed us the way.” In the course of things he boosted the careers of numerous singer-songwriters, among them Red Simpson, Tommy Collins, Dallas Frazier and Homer Joy, who wrote “Streets of Bakersfield,” Owens’ last big hit. “I had a career ’cause he gave me one,” Joy said Saturday by telephone from Dallas. “I got my break ’cause he took a chance.” Among Owens’ enduring contributions to Bakersfield is the Crystal Palace, a museum and dinner club that probably represents the city’s best-known tourist attraction. It’s on Buck Owens Boulevard, near the headquarters of Buck Owens Productions and next to the bright yellow, 30-foot-high “Bakersfield” gateway arch that Owens commissioned as a re-creation of the city’s old Union Avenue footbridge. Owens, who fronted the Buckaroos, recorded 25 No. 1 songs, including a string of 19 in a row between 1963 and 1967. Twenty-six of his other songs made the top 10 between 1963 and 1974, and he capped his career with one last chart-topper, a remake of “Streets of Bakersfield,” recorded as a duet with Dwight Yoakam in 1988. His career slowed dramatically in 1974 when Don Rich, Owens’ lead guitar player and high-harmony vocalist, was killed in a motorcycle accident. Owens stopped recording for years, turning his attention to his numerous business interests, including KUZZ radio. Owens admitted that he never really got over the death of his chief musical collaborator. Paisley said he and his band mates had worked up an impromptu tribute to Owens that they planned to unveil Saturday night in Cedar Falls. At one point, Paisley said, they would flash a photo of Owens and Rich on the big screen alongside the title of the Owens hit, “Together Again.” “He’s up there with Don Rich now,” Doyle Holly, who played bass on the Buckaroos’ biggest hits, said by phone from Nashville. “He lost his harmony singer too soon, but he doesn’t have to replace him now. Rest in peace, chief.” The honky-tonk sound Owens was one of the primary authors of the Bakersfield Sound, a twangy, rock-influenced interpretation of hard-core honky-tonk that emerged in the early 1960s. The electrified, treble-heavy sound, produced in the studios of Hollywood’s Capitol Records with the Fender Telecaster solid-body guitar as its instrumental backbone, was the antithesis of the Nashville Sound. At the time, Nashville recordings featured lush orchestrations and a roster of stars backed by the same studio musicians; the Bakersfield Sound was almost tinny by comparison. Owens was proud of his independence and his music’s harder edge, and he seemed to revel in the rivalry of Nashville and his “Nashville West.” Owens’ distinctive “shuffle” style of music fell out of fashion in the mid-1970s. But a decade later the Bakersfield Sound enjoyed something of a renaissance, with performers like Yoakam, the Mavericks and the Derailers borrowing heavily from Owens’ signature style. Owens, who admired the work of Hank Williams, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, got into trouble with the Nashville establishment because of his broad interpretation of what constituted “country music” — his rendition of Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” especially inflamed the critics. But Owens didn’t care much; in fact, like his contemporary Merle Haggard, Owens seemed to cultivate a career-long love-hate relationship with Music City. “My problem with Nashville was simple,” Owens told The Californian in 1997. “I don’t like the way they do talent, and I don’t like the way they cut records.” In the end, they forgave each other. Owens was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996. Hard work and big dreams Alvis Edgar “Buck” Owens, who at age 4 nicknamed himself after the family mule, was born Aug. 12, 1929, in Sherman, Texas, a town about 65 miles north of Dallas. He was the second-oldest of four children and the oldest of two boys born to Alvis and Maicie Owens. Life was difficult, but Maicie Owens enlivened the household with her piano; gospel music echoed through the house regularly. Owens’ father, a sharecropper, intended to move the family west from the Red River region in 1937, but the Owenses’ trailer hitch broke in Phoenix, and there they remained for more than a decade. Buck and his siblings worked in the fields as soon as they were old enough, and the hardscrabble life left a lasting impression on them all, Buck in particular. “That was where my dream began to take hold, of not havin’ to pick cotton and potatoes, and not havin’ to be uncomfortable, too hot or too cold,” Owens told biographer Rich Kienzle. “That in itself had driven me to try to find some better way of life. I remember as a kid being cold a lot, and hungry sometimes. We’d go to bed with just corn bread and milk, and I remember wearing shoes with holes in the bottom. I remember having twine for shoestrings: You take old black Shinola polish and try to make ’em look black, and that only makes ’em look worse. I remember the hand-me-down clothes. “But most distinctly, I remember always saying to myself that when I get big, I’m not going to go to bed hungry, I’m not going to wear hand-me-down clothes. I’m not going to have homemade haircuts done by my mother; she cut our hair until we were about 12 or 13 years old. Just the fright of having to live a life through that … although even then, I was cognizant that half the people I went to school with were just exactly like me.” Buck and Bonnie In 1945, he met 15-year-old Bonnie Campbell at the Mazona Roller Rink in Mesa, Ariz. “He was a pretty good roller skater,” she told The Californian in a 1997 interview. “But I liked him because he played guitar.” The two dated, but Owens, who was six weeks older, was surprised nonetheless when he showed up for his daily 15-minute radio show, “Buck and Britt,” co-starring Theryl Ray Britten, and there was Bonnie. “What’re you doin’ here?” he asked, assuming she’d come to watch him. “Singin’,” she answered. He didn’t even know she could carry a tune. By January 1948 they were married and within two years they had two baby boys. Buck picked oranges; Bonnie stayed home with the kids. But by 1951 it became evident that the marriage wasn’t working. Bonnie and the two boys left for Bakersfield, moving in with Buck’s favorite aunt and uncle, Vernon and Lucille Ellington. Buck arrived soon afterward, closely followed by his parents. Dim lights, thick smoke Buck set out to look for work in the local saloons, and it didn’t take long for him to hook up with steel guitarist Dusty Rhodes and, four months later, Bill Woods and the Orange Blossom Playboys. He earned $12.50 a night, enough money to make a dent in his bills for the first time in his life. Bonnie took a job car hopping at a hamburger joint at Union and Truxtun avenues. They remained legally married, though they were separated, because neither could afford a divorce. At first, Owens played a hollow-body Gibson guitar. But, short on cash one day, he hocked it for $10. When he came back to get it, it had been sold. Fellow musician Lewis Talley offered him a used Fender Telecaster — a new, innovative but not-yet-fully appreciated solid-body electric guitar — for $30. Owens bought it, and American music was never quite the same. That type of electric guitar, created just three years earlier by Leo Fender, gave Owens’ music a distinctively raw edge that set apart both the guitarist and, more significantly, the musical flavor of his adopted city. But fame and success were still several years away. For years, Owens labored at the Blackboard, a rowdy honky-tonk on Bakersfield’s Chester Avenue that featured many of country music’s West Coast pioneers. Wednesdays and Thursdays were guest-star nights. George Jones played one night, Glen Campbell another. The Blackboard, in fact, was the must-stop spot in Bakersfield for Bob Wills, Roger Miller, Patsy Cline, Little Jimmie Dickens, Connie Smith, Tex Ritter, Dallas Frazier, Ferlin Husky, Lefty Frizzell, Tommy Duncan, and, until he went to prison for stomping his wife to death, Spade Cooley. It was at the Blackboard in 1956 that singer Wynn Stewart introduced Owens to Harlan Howard, the man with whom Owens would co-write such songs as “Excuse Me (I Think I’ve Got a Heartache)” and “Foolin’ Around.” Howard, quoted in Nicholas Dawidoff’s “In the Country of Country,” remembers watching Woods smoke his pipe and flirt with girls, while Owens was “working his ass off getting a menial wage.” His big break On Aug. 30, 1957, Capitol Records producer Ken Nelson signed Owens to a recording contract. He’d known Owens for some time before that from Owens’ guitar-playing sessions in Hollywood behind Tommy Collins, the Farmer Boys and others. Owens had tried long and hard to get himself a contract, but when rival Columbia Records came calling, Nelson changed his tune. Owens recorded two singles; both fizzled. In January 1958, Owens moved to Tacoma, Wash., and took over one-third interest in 250-watt radio station KAYE, 1450 on the dial. “If you had a really good radio,” he said later, “you could pick it up in the station parking lot.” More importantly, he learned the radio business. A few months later, he was back in Bakersfield, and on Oct. 9, 1958, he cut four original songs, including the ballad “Second Fiddle,” in the “shuffle” style popularized by Ray Price in songs like “Crazy Arms.” By the following spring, it had reached No. 24 on the Billboard charts. But Owens remained in Washington, where in 1959 he was hosting his own live TV show on KTNT. Among the local talent was a housewife-turned-singer named Loretta Lynn. Then there was a teen fiddler from Tumwater, Donald Eugene Ulrich. Later known as Don Rich, he would become Owens’ musical alter-ego and a major contributor to his best recordings. The success of “Second Fiddle” led to another session, this one for “Under Your Spell Again.” It was his first Top 10 record, in the fall of 1959. In June 1960, riding that record’s success, Owens sold his share of the radio station and moved back to Bakersfield for good. It was a great year. Harlan Howard gave Owens his share of Blue Book Music, a music publishing company that would later fetch huge returns. Don Rich, bored with college, joined Owens in December 1960. And Billboard magazine named Owens its “Most Promising Country and Western Singer of the Year,” based on a poll of country disc jockeys. The Bakersfield Sound It seems unlikely that Owens realized it at the time, but the Buckaroos were creating an appealingly raw, stripped-down sound — the Bakersfield Sound. It was a hard-driving style, full of Telecaster twang, prominent steel-guitar leads and bold, dominant drums. “The Nashville Sound was always more formulaic,” said Paul Wells, director of the Center for Popular Music, an independent music archive and research center based at Middle Tennessee State University. “There was always more of a self-consciousness about trying to reach a broader audience, about trying to make new (commercial) inroads. With Buck and Merle (Haggard), they were just doing what they did. Of course they wanted to reach a broad audience, but they did it on their own terms.” Starting with “You’re for Me,” in 1961, Owens and Don Rich — by now the band’s lead guitar player — put to vinyl a clean, clear sound that hit listeners, as Owens liked to say, “hard as a freight train.” “Their vocals were always up front, shoved along in two-by-four rhythm by regular doses of steel, nervy electric guitar runs, and more drums than anyone else in country music was using,” Dawidoff wrote in “In the Country of Country.” “There was no thought put into it,” Owens told Dawidoff. “The sound just came about. I had a big old Fender Telecaster guitar, the walls of the buildings were hard, the dance floor was cement, the roof was sheet metal. There was considerable echo in there. ... It was just the sound that people wanted.” Buck the TV star By 1963, Owens was big enough to land guest appearances on national TV appearances — first on ABC’s “Jimmy Dean Show” and then NBC’s “Kraft Music Hall.” In 1966, Owens forged a deal with two wealthy country music patrons, Oklahoma City furniture-store owners Don and Bud Mathes, to create a new, syndicated show. Dubbed “Buck Owens’ Ranch,” the half-hour program was taped before a Spanish hacienda backdrop at Oklahoma City’s WKY-TV. Owens developed a system: Starting in 1969, he and the band would record the instrumental tracks at Buck Owens Studios in Oildale, then do the singing in Oklahoma City, with the boys “air” strumming in the background. At its peak, the “Ranch” show was in 100 markets around the country, 52 weeks a year. It ran until 1973 — some 295 original shows plus dozens of additional programs repackaged with new and previously broadcast performances, totaling 380 shows in all. In Bakersfield on a late-’60s Saturday afternoon, a country-music couch potato could watch Owens’ “Ranch,” the Louvin Brothers’ show and then Porter Waggoner (featuring Dolly Parton), culminating that evening with “Hee Haw.” “Hee Haw” eventually proved to be the undoing of the “Ranch” show. When Owens renegotiated a new deal with Young Street Productions, which then owned “Hee Haw,” the producers made him quit. They’d noticed what everybody in the band knew all too well: Owens was playing the same thing in both shows — literally. “It had become painfully obvious,” said Jim Shaw, Owens’ keyboardist. “Very often we’d do the same song on the ‘Ranch’ show and then ‘Hee Haw.’ We’d use the exact same instrumental tracks (usually recorded at Buck Owens Studios on North Chester Avenue in Oildale) and Buck would just sing them fresh at the taping. They got aggravated. They said, ‘Hey, you’re competing against yourself.’” And of course they were right. The legacy of ‘Hee Haw’ “Hee Haw,” first telecast on June 15, 1969, was more than enough for Owens anyway. Until he left the show in 1986 (it went on without him until 1993) the show in one way or another occupied a substantial portion of his life. Owens signed with Warner Bros. Records in 1975. He had little success, however, and “Hee Haw” hadn’t helped; although it had been tremendously profitable (he earned $400,000 per year for just 20 days of work), Owens seemed to be increasingly viewed as a overalls-wearing caricature. “I kinda just prostituted myself for their money,” he told Kienzle, the biographer. “My music, which I loved, had suffered badly and I knew what it was from: too much ‘Phifft! You Were Gone.’” The rest of his life, of course, was business. He bought KUZZ radio (named after Cousin Herb Henson, the singing TV show host who had served as general manager of the station, then at 800 AM) in 1966. A year later he purchased 107.9 FM, which he turned into KBBY, a rock station. The FM station went country in 1969, reverted back to rock in 1977 and finally became KUZZ’s primary dial location in 1988. Over the years Owens owned several radio stations playing various formats, and some of them earned him millions. In 1999, Owens’ family-owned company sold its two Phoenix stations to Jacor Communications for $142 million. Owens dabbled in television in the early 1990s, too, with Bakersfield’s KDOB-TV, Channel 45, named for his late sister Dorothy Owens, the station’s original general manager. (It later became KUZZ-TV and now, no longer connected to the company, it is KUVI-TV). Today, his broadcast empire is just KUZZ AM, KUZZ FM and KCWR FM. Another run at the big time In 1986, a newcomer named Dwight Yoakam had his first hit with a driving revival of Johnny Horton’s 1956 hit “Honky-Tonk Man.” A revival of interest in Owens’ music was starting to rumble. “People would be sending me interviews from newspapers where they interviewed Dwight,” Owens told Kienzle. “I kept seein’ these things and he would say, ‘All you guys forgot about Buck Owens. Do you know who Buck Owens is?’ Then all of a sudden he releases a song called ‘Little Ways,’ sounded exactly like me. It started takin’ off here.” The two singers met and they performed at the Kern County County Fair in 1987. Then they sang Owens’ 1972 recording of “Streets Of Bakersfield” together on a 1988 CBS-TV special. They toured together that summer and for the first time in years, audiences saw Buck Owens as the honky-tonk singer he once was. The two re-recorded Owens’ “Streets Of Bakersfield” and it hit No. 1, Owens’ first time there since 1972. Owens’ dinner club-museum, the $6.7 million Crystal Palace, opened in October 1996. The concert hall, with its huge collection of photos and country-music artifacts, helped put Bakersfield back on the country music map. In 2001, Owens appeared on two recordings that were nominated for the Country Music Association awards as “vocal event of the year”: “Alright, I’m Wrong,” Owens’ tejano romp with Yoakam; and “Too Country,” Paisley’s tribute to tradition, featuring George Jones, Bill Anderson and Owens. Paisley’s song won. Owens was married three times, to Bonnie Campbell (1948); Phyllis Buford (1956); and Jennifer Smith (1979), and had a brief, annulled marriage to fiddler Jana Jae. He was divorced at the time of his death. Owens had two sons with his first wife: Alan Edgar “Buddy” Owens, a country singer himself who used the stage name Buddy Alan, and Michael Lynn Owens; and one son with his second wife: Johnny Dale Owens. He also raised a stepson and stepdaughter with his second wife. Owens gave generously to charity, especially local charities. He established a nonprofit that gave scholarships to music students at Bakersfield College’s music program. For years he sponsored a Toys 4 Tots event at Bakersfield Convention Center. He hosted the annual Buck Owens Rodeo and a celebrity golf tournament that attracted people like John Wayne, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Efrem Zimbalist Jr., all for charity. “The golf tournament was tremendously time-consuming,” said Shaw, Owens’ longtime keyboard player and company lieutenant. “The thing people may not realize is, when these people agreed to come in, Buck then owed them. He’d have to go out on the road to appear at their events. He had staff working out all the arrangements six months out of the year. “One time I said to him, ‘Gee, Buck, wouldn’t it just be easier if you just wrote a couple big checks and forgot all this hassle? What’s the difference?’ “He said, ‘The difference is, the whole community is involved this way. Hundreds of people are getting involved and feeling like they’re part of it.’ He thought that was far better than just writing a check.” As significant as the community contributions were, though, it’s the musical legacy that will last. “That’s the beauty of this,” Paisley said. “We are left with so much. That’s the great thing about a music career. It’s eternal. It’s up to us to make it eternal, anyway. Buck’s done his part.” For more stories, photos and video about Buck Owens and The Bakersfield Sound, visit www.bakersfield.com |
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Subject: Obit-Buck Owens From: Flash Company Date: 31 Mar 06 - 03:38 AM See this sad news in today's DT, Buck Owens has died at the age of 76. I was surprised, thought he would have been older. (Jesus, he was only eight years older than me!) Hope he doesn't find himself with a tiger by the tail wherever he is now. FC |
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Subject: RE: Obit-Buck Owens From: Nigel Parsons Date: 31 Mar 06 - 05:13 AM Obit Act Naturally They're gonna put me in the movies They're gonna make a big star out of me We'll make a film about a man that's sad and lonely And all I gotta do is act naturally Well, I'll bet you I'm gonna be a big star Might win an Oscar you can never tell The movies gonna make me a big star 'Cause I can play the part so well Well I hope you come and see me in the movies Then I know that you will plainly see The biggest fool that ever hit the big time And all I gotta do is act naturally We'll make the scene about a man that's sad and lonely And beggin down upon his bended knee I'll play the part but I won't need rehearsin' All I gotta do is act naturally Well, I'll bet you I'm gonna be a big star Might win an Oscar you can never tell The movies gonna make me a big star 'Cause I can play the part so well Well I hope you come and see me in the movies Then I know that you will plainly see The biggest fool that ever hit the big time And all I gotta do is act naturally |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens (25 March 2006) From: GUEST,Chris Rowell Date: 09 Jan 07 - 05:08 PM I'm surprised that, though people remember Buck's sidekick, Don Rich, who was a superb musician, in those early days, out of Bakersfield, there is no mention of the late, Dick Curless, who worked with them, in the early '60s. Dick was a hard drinker and a womaniser, whose demeaner might become increasingly unpleasant, as the night progressed. A great musician and unfogettable voice, but . . . Don was a pleasant guy to know. Buck, and I hate to say this here, had all the personality of a lawn chair. Not the brightest bulb, in the chandelier, but not offensive, either. He used his talent well, though, and had a great career. As one who used to drink and, occasionally, "cruise" with them, in the Lompoc area, I have some intimate memories of them. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens (25 March 2006) From: Cluin Date: 09 Jan 07 - 05:29 PM Merle Haggard got a leg up with Buck in the beginning and ended up married to Buck's ex-wife for a time, and sang with her longer. Merle had a few uncomplimentary things to say about Buck in his autobiography; I gather they had a business disagreement. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens (25 March 2006) From: GUEST Date: 09 Jan 07 - 08:27 PM 'Act Naturally' was written by Johnny Russell. Though Buck truly made the song his own. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: Buck Owens (25 March 2006) From: SINSULL Date: 09 Jan 07 - 10:07 PM Chris, WELCOME! Glad you found your way in. Enjoy! SINS, who has taken to recruiting folkies on the job much to my co-workers distress. |
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