Country star Buck Owens dies

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

His career was one of the most phenomenal in country music, with a string of more than 20 No. 1 records, most released from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.

They were recorded with a honky-tonk twang that came to be known throughout California as the "Bakersfield Sound," named for the town 100 miles north of Los Angeles that Owens called home.

"I think the reason he was so well known and respected by a younger generation of country musicians was because he was an innovator and rebel," said Shaw, who played keyboards in Owens' band, the Buckaroos. "He did it out of the Nashville establishment. He had a raw edge."

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It's weird: even though I've never really been into Buck Owens, he's been a part of my life, all my life. When I was a kid, I watched him on Hee Haw with my Dad. His weird, goofy facial expressions and natural comic timing always made me laugh. When I was a bit older, approaching my teenage years and shunning everything country, I was blown away to find out that the Beatles had covered his hit "Act Naturally." A couple of years after that, I was further blown away when I discovered that the 60s garage band Creedence Clearwater Revival had referenced him in their song "Looking Out My Back Door." It wasn't until I was in my twenties that I started to get over my silly hatred of country and western music, which was really only about not wanting to be identified with hicks and rednecks, rather than the music itself. That's when I started taking Owens more seriously. Taking his work at face value, I was blown away again. His sound epitomized, to me, the classic country that had been playing in the background of my childhood years. It's great stuff, simple and unadorned, honest and cool, proving that an artist doesn't have to delve into T.S. Eliot territory in order to verge on greatness.

Here's a one minute sample of his song "Tiger by the Tail," courtesy of his website--god, it's great.

It's a damned shame that my cultural elitism, that is, my juvenile hatred of rednecks, kept me from really getting into his work over the years. It's time to change that. I think I'm gonna go get me some Buck Owens records as soon as I can make it to the mall.

Farewell Buck.


Johnny Cash and Buck Owens from an episode of Hee Haw

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