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Alvis Edgar "Buck" Owens, Jr., (August 12, 1929 – March 25, 2006) was an American singer and guitarist, with twenty number-one hits on the Billboard magazine country music charts. Both as a solo artist and with his band, the Buckaroos (so named by Merle Haggard, a former bandmate), Buck Owens pioneered what has come to be called the Bakersfield sound—a reference to Bakersfield, California, the city Owens called home and from which he drew inspiration for what he preferred to call "American Music".[1] A consummate bandleader, Buck Owens pioneered a unique and fresh sound: clean and crisp, characterized by sharp staccato guitar riffs, and pedal steel guitar solos, with straightforward lyrics. It was far more streamlined than the honky tonk music of the late 40's and early 1950s with its fiddles and back up singer arrangements. While Owens originally used fiddle and retained pedal steel into the 1970s, his sound on records and onstage was always more stripped-down and elemental, incorporating elements of rock and roll. The sound Owens developed with the Buckaroos depended on his comrarderie and talents of his best friend, Don Rich, whom he met while in Tacoma. Rich can be heard harmonizing on all of Owens hits until his untimely death in 1974, when Rich lost control of his motorcycle and struck a guard rail on Highway 99 north of Bakersfield as he made his way to join his family for a vacation on the coast at Morro Bay. The loss of his best friend devastated Owens for years and abruptly halted his singing successes and career until Owens performed with Dwight Yoakam in the late-1980s.
BiographyOwens was born in Sherman, Texas to Maicie Azel Ellington and Alvis Edgar Owens, Sr.[2] (U.S. Highway 82 through Sherman was named "Buck Owens Freeway" in his honor). "'Buck' was a mule on the Owens farm," Rich Kienzle wrote in About Buck, the biography at Owens' official website adapted from Kienzle's notes for Rhino Records' 1992 "The Buck Owens Collection" box set. "When Alvis, Jr., was three or four years old, he walked into the house and announced that his name was also Buck. That was fine with the family; the boy was Buck from then on."[3] In 1937, his family migrated to Mesa, Arizona, during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. In 1945, Owens co-hosted a radio show called "Buck and Britt". In the late 1940s, Owens became a truck driver and discovered the San Joaquin Valley of California. He was impressed by Bakersfield, where he and his wife settled in 1950. Image:Buckowensjapan.jpg The Buck Owens in Japan album.
During the Rock and Roll craze of the 1950s, Owens recorded a rockabilly record called "Hot Dog" for the Pep label, using the pseudonym Corky Jones. He used the pseudonym because he did not want the fact he recorded a rock n' roll tune to hurt his country music career. Buck loved rock n' roll virtually from the start and it influenced his style of country from then on. Buck's career took off in 1959, when his song "Second Fiddle" hit number 24 on the Billboard country chart. A few months later, "Under Your Spell Again" hit number 4, and then "Above and Beyond" hit #3. In the early 1960s, the "countrypolitan" sound was popular, with smooth, string-laden, pop-influenced styles used by Eddy Arnold, Jim Reeves, and Patsy Cline, among others. Owens went against the trend, utilizing pure and raw honky-tonk hillbilly feel, mixed idiosyncratically with the Mexican polkas he had heard on border radio stations while growing up. Owens was named the most promising country and western singer of 1960 by Billboard and his Top-10-charting duets with Rose Maddox in 1961 earned them awards as vocal team of the year. In the 1970s, he enjoyed a string of hit duets with a protege, Susan Raye, who subsequentally became a popular solo artist, with recordings produced by Owens. 1963's "Act Naturally" became Buck's first #1 hit. The Beatles later did a straight cover of it in 1965. In 1967, Owens and the Buckaroos toured Japan, a then-rare occurrence for a country musician. The subsequent live album, appropriately named Buck Owens in Japan, is possibly the first country music album recorded outside the United States.[4] At the White House the following year, Owens performed for President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Creedence Clearwater Revival, one of the biggest American rock bands of the period, often demonstrated a country flavor and even mentioned Owens in the hit, "Lookin' Out My Back Door":
Hee Haw hit the television airwaves in 1969, keeping Owens busy throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In 1972 he had another #1 hit, "Made in Japan". Image:KUZZ logo.gif KUZZ Radio logo featuring a depiction of Owens' trademark guitar Before the 1960s were done, Owens—with the help of manager Jack McFadden—began to concentrate on his financial future. He bought several radio stations, including KNIX AM and FM in Phoenix and KUZZ in Bakersfield. In 1999, Owens sold the KNIX duo stations to Clear Channel Communications, but he maintained ownership of KUZZ until his death. Owens established Buck Owens Enterprises and produced records by several artists. On July 17, 1974, his guitarist and best friend Don Rich was killed in a motorcycle accident. Owens was devastated and never really recovered from the loss. "He was like a brother, a son and a best friend," he said in the late 1990s. "Something I never said before, maybe I couldn't, but I think my music life ended when he did. Oh yeah, I carried on and I existed, but the real joy and love, the real lightning and thunder is gone forever." [1] Owens recorded for Warner Bros. Records, but Owens and his longtime fans were less than happy with the results; the recordings, made in Nashville, reflected the very type of bland country music he had always assailed. His spirit broken by the depression of Rich's death, he simply allowed himself to be led. He was no longer recording by the 1980s, devoting his time to overseeing his business empire from Bakersfield. Slowly, during that time, he recovered his equilibrium. Time allowed him to realize that, despite the excellent pay and friendships he'd developed on Hee-Haw, the show effectively ruined his musical career by redefining him as a comedian, to the point that many who tuned in knew nothing of his phenomenal country music career or his classic hit recordings. He left the show in 1986. Dwight Yoakam was largely influenced by Owens' style of music and eventually teamed up with him for a duet of "Streets of Bakersfield" in 1988. Their duet was Owens' first #1 single in 16 years. Owens was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996. He was ranked #12 in CMT's 40 Greatest Men of Country Music in 2003. DeathBuck Owens died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack on March 25, 2006, only hours after performing at his Crystal Palace restaurant, club and museum in Bakersfield. He had successfully recovered from oral cancer in the early 1990s, but had additional health problems near the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century, including pneumonia and a minor stroke suffered in 2004. These health problems had forced him to curtail his regular weekly performances with the Buckaroos at his Crystal Palace. The Los Angeles Times interviewed longtime Owens spokesman (and Buckaroos keyboard player) Jim Shaw, who said Owens "had come to the club early and had a chicken-fried steak dinner and bragged that it's his favorite meal." Afterwards, Owens told band members that he wasn't feeling well and was going to skip that night's performance. Shaw said a group of fans introduced themselves while Owens was preparing to drive home; when they told him that they had traveled from Oregon to hear him perform, Owens changed his mind and took the stage anyway. Shaw recalled Owens telling the audience, "'If somebody's come all that way, I'm gonna do the show and give it my best shot. I might groan and squeak, but I'll see what I can do.'" Shaw added, "So, he had his favorite meal, played a show and died in his sleep. We thought, that's not too bad."[5] Owens left behind three ex-wives and three sons: Buddy Alan (who charted several hits as a Capitol recording artist in the early 1970s), Michael and Johnny Owens. The front of the mausoleum where Owens is buried is inscribed "The Buck Owens Family" with the word's "Buck's Place" beneath. His first wife, country singer Bonnie Owens, died in April of the same year that Buck Owens' died. See also
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