Buck Owens - Biography
Although country star Buck Owens may be best remembered for his years co-hosting television corn-fest. Hee Haw, at the peak of his mid-1960's success, he was a gold lamé-clad firebrand. Owens shouted a brash style of propulsive modern honky-tonk above a storm of screaming high-volume Telecaster riffs that audiences worldwide could not get enough of. Owens' staggering run of twenty-five number one singles in less than ten years--19 of them consecutively between 1963 and 1967--placed him squarely at the forefront of country music. Owens almost single handedly eclipsed that era's softer, string-and-chorus-laden Nashville Sound, led many to re-name his adopted Southern California hometown "Buckersfield," and established a musical giant whose influence still echoes through American popular music. As Merle Haggard said, "Buck was one the greatest entertainers of the century, and he influenced everybody from me to the Beatles." With his high-voltage Buckaroos band, anchored by musical genius Don Rich on lead guitar and fiddle, Owens music was so instantly recognizable and inescapably appealing that it made for a remarkably swift ascent and his subsequent roster of dazzling achievements--on stages from Carnegie Hall to Tokyo to the Sydney Opera House--enabled the singer to carve out a lucrative business empire, built first upon song publishing and, later, four radio stations, two newspapers and TV station, that made him one of the wealthiest forces in country music history. It was a mighty long way from his ignominious start as pre-teen field worker, a rough life when he had constantly dreamed “of not havin’ to pick cotton and potatoes, and not havin’ to be uncomfortable, too hot or too cold.”
Born Alvis Edgar Owens on August 12, 1929 in Sherman, Texas, hard times were the norm for his sharecropping family. By 1937, they resolved to move to California but only made it as far as Arizona, when their vehicle broke down outside of Phoenix. The family remained there, settling in Mesa, and it was there that Owens begin his lifelong romance with country music, hanging around KTYL, which advertised itself as "the world's first drive-in radio station" (touring in-studio performers could be watched through a large window). It was also in Mesa that he met and wooed Bonnie Campbell. The pair wed in late 1947, by which time Owens, with pal Ray Britten, had his own 15-minute KTYL show. The marriage fell apart by 1951, and after when Bonnie moved to Bakersfield with the couples two sons, Owens followed.
Within months, Owens had a regular job playing guitar with Bill Woods & the Orange Blossom Playboys, an alliance that proved crucial to Owens' future in music. Bill Woods was the country music boss of Bakersfield, the band leader for whom almost everyone in town worked for at one time or another. For the next several years, Owens was a fixture on the fabled Blackboard Cafe bandstand and as his skill grew, so did his ambition. After rockabilly took hold, Owens made his first recordings for tiny Los Angeles indie label, Pep. He cut the rocked up, "Hot Dog," as Corky Jones, in a Bakersfield garage in 1956, but the disc got lost in the shuffle created by dozens of other Elvis-inspired aspirants.
Back at the Blackboard, Owens made two significant changes: he began playing a Fender Telecaster (purchased from Woods for $30) and after an introduction through seminal Los Angeles country artist Wynn Stewart, began writing songs with the great Harlan Howard, later revered as the Dean of Country Music. Another brilliant Bakersfield singer-songwriter, Tommy Collins, began using Owens as lead guitarist on his sessions for Capitol Records in Hollywood, and his crackling style impressed Capitol A&R head Ken Nelson enough that Nelson too began booking Owens as a session player on dates by the likes of Faron Young, Wanda Jackson and Gene Vincent. In the summer of '57, Nelson signed Owens to the label, but the resulting singles flopped. Owens then re-located to Tacoma, Washington where he had his own TV show (another Washington state resident, the singing housewife Loretta Lynn, was a frequent guest) and Owens also met another local hopeful, the superb guitarist Don Rich, beginning what turned out to be a lifelong alliance. Owens spent the next several years on a running loop of the West Coast, working club dates from Washington to Bakersfield and frequently returning to Capitol for recording.
His fourth release, "Second Fiddle" finally made some noise, followed by Owens-Harlan Howard classics "Under Your Spell Again," "Above and Beyond," and "Excuse Me (I Think I've Got a Heartache)," all of which made the Top Ten. But he finally nailed the number one spot with 1960's "Foolin Around." Owens returned to Bakersfield and began an ascent that for the next decade seemed as if it would never stop, driven relentlessly by his signature sound: big guitars, bigger drums and tight, bright harmony vocals. Even the Beatles covered his 1964 hit, "Act Naturally," and George Harrison copped more than few licks from the mighty Don Rich. Hit after hit established Owens as the biggest force on the West Coast, one who often employed innovative, wildly creative elements: hear the hyper-distorted fuzz tone of Rich's guitar on "Who's Gonna Mow Your Grass," the shimmering pop-style arrangement of "Big in Vegas," or the almost surreal "I Wouldn't Live in New York City (If They Gave Me the Whole Damn Town)," recorded live on a Fifth Avenue sidewalk, replete with roaring traffic, honking horns and police sirens. Owens first displayed his strange audacity in 1967, when he booked full page ads in the trade papers that solemnly pledged "he would record no song that is not a country song," followed almost immediately by his next single, a super-charged, roaring version of that old time hillbilly standard, Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode."
An international superstar (Capitol issued live sets recorded in Japan and Australia), Owens kept pumping out the chart toppers and, already a small screen veteran with his own syndicated Buck Owens' Ranch show, he helped launch Hee Haw in 1968. But in July 1974, following a grueling recording session, Don Rich took off for a motorcycle ride, lost control and died from his injuries. Owens was shattered, and the loss of his constant collaborator and closest friend was almost more than he could accept. Owens records never regained the impact and sense of immediacy that Rich had brought, and the singer's visits to the country chart became more and more infrequent. In 1977, Owens was attending the annual Country Deejay convention in Nashville and recognized one of Capitol Record's top executives. "Hey, when's my next single comin' out?" Owens asked, only to be informed that he was no longer on the label. Capitol had unceremoniously dumped him, and within a few years, Owens announced his retirement from recording and touring. After Hee Haw went off the air in 1985, Owens, who owned all of his own recordings and refused to allow any be re-issued, virtually disappeared.
By that time, Owens, who had the only studio in town, and with a standard contract that assumed control of copyrights, masters and song publishing, was also despised by every musician in Bakersfield. Locals felt he'd sold them out, and tales of his predatory business practices were legendary (a young, struggling Merle Haggard once came to Owens pleading for a royalty advance, and Owens agreed--if Haggard would split writing credits on "Sing me Back Home"--but didn't mention that he had a royalty check for the same song for tens of thousands in his desk drawer that very moment). Just as it seemed Owens really had quit for good, the young Neo-Traditionalist honky tonk singer Dwight Yoakam coaxed him out of retirement, and Owens returned to the stage as a guest on Yoakam's 1987 Kern County Fair show to tremendous acclaim. The pair remade a 1972 Owens song, "Streets of Bakersfield," as a duet and Owens again found himself with a number one country hit--his first in over fifteen years. Re-signed to Capitol, he recorded two albums, beginning with the fine Hot Dog! (1988 Capitol) and hit the road again with a new line-up of the Buckaroos. In 1996, when he opened his opulent, $6.7 million Crystal Palace Saloon in Bakersfield, and announced he would perform there every weekend for a three dollar cover charge, all was forgiven by the disgruntled citizenry.
Better still, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame that same year, the final honor in a long series of honors and awards (he was given numerous Academy of Country Music and Music City News awards; Nashville's Country Music Association only handed out a two CMA awards--to the Buckaroos as Best Instrumental Band in 1967-68--in a rather pointed snub). While the CMA had finally caved with the Hall of Fame nod, Nashville and Owens were never too comfortable with each other: "My problem with Nashville was simple,” Owens told a Bakersfield reporter in 1997. “I don’t like the way they do talent, and I don’t like the way they cut records.” Late in life, the rock & roll loving Owens still found time to scoot away from the Crystal Palace occasionally, usually for typically offbeat late-1990s pairings at a string of Southern California appearances with fuzz guitar pioneer Link Wray or psychedelic rockabilly stylists the Cramps. But it was on the stage at the Crystal Palace that Owens really thrived, until his death on the early morning of March 25, 2006--merely hours after completing a characteristically walloping ninety-minute performance.