Although Bakersfield had already played host to a number of country-music artists, it was Buck Owens (1929–2006) who not only put it on the map, but also spread its name around the world. So great was his impact, some even called it ‘Buckersfield’. The Road To Bakersfield Hailing from Sherman, Texas, and born Alvis Edgar Owens ...
Alternative-rock guitarist Peter Buck (b. 1956) was born in Berkeley, California. After dropping out of college, he moved to Athens, Georgia, where he met singer Michael Stipe while working in a record shop. The pair discovered that they had similar tastes in music: punk rock, Patti Smith and Television. Together with Mike Mills (bass) and ...
Alternative guitarist and singer Jeff Buckley (1966–97) was born in Anaheim, California. Jeff barely knew his father, singer-songwriter Tim Buckley, who died when he was eight. His mother, Mary Guibert, was a classically trained pianist and cellist, which meant that music was all around when Buckley was growing up. He started playing acoustic guitar at ...
(Vocals, 1932–2006) One of the Bakersfield Sound’s few females, Owens began her career singing with Buck Owens in Mesa, Arizona, and married him in 1948. Three years later they moved to Bakersfield, where she worked as a singer and waitress at the Clover Club, and made her recording debut with ‘A Dear John Letter’ (1953), ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1947–75) As one of a bohemian clique of singer-songwriters in mid-1960s New York, he developed a style of de rigueur melancholy introspection that was jazzier and more daring than most – though this was moderated on his first three albums. However, after 1970’s transitional Blue Afternoon, offerings like Lorca and Starsailor were virtually free-form ...
(Guitar, singer-songwriter, 1966–97) Son of singer-songwriter Tim, Jeff Buckley possessed an astonishing vocal range, emotional capacity and genuine songwriting talent. His mini album Live At Sin-e (1992) was the signpost to the classic debut Grace (1994). As well as stellar original material like ‘Last Goodbye’, Buckley delivered the definitive cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’. Sessions for an ...
Country music has been euphemistically called ‘white man’s blues’ or ‘the poetry of the common man’. While both descriptions have elements of truth, neither is quite accurate. It is, in fact, a broad, nebulous, over-reaching category with no exact boundaries or parameters. Over the decades country music has grown to encompass a greatly varied assortment of ...
(Musician, bandleader, 1924–2000) Merle Haggard called him the ‘Grandpappy of Bakersfield’ and, during his 14 years leading The Orange Blossom Playboys at the town’s hottest honky-tonk, the Blackboard, he employed both Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, who were to define the Bakersfield Sound. A Texan by birth, he perfected his musical skills by entertaining ...
Observers who saw him in his prime have likened the charisma of the ‘king of western swing’ Bob Wills to that of latter-day superstars such as Elvis and The Beatles. The Texas fiddler, with his trademark high-pitched folk hollers and jivey, medicine-show asides, was an irresistible force of nature. Although he was, in the earliest days of ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1952) Miller is short and stocky, just like Buck Owens, and applies a similar thick hillbilly twang to similar down-to-earth, hard-country songs. Julie Miller (vocals, b. 1956) is as tall and willowy as Joni Mitchell, and writes the same sort of poetic, folk-rock songs for the same sort of reedy ...
Of all the new-traditionalist acts, Dwight Yoakam was arguably the most flamboyant, with his tight-fitting designer jeans and cowboy hat. He was also the most distinctive of those to emerge on the country scene in the mid-1980s. Yoakam was born in Pikesville, Kentucky, on 23 October 1956. He was primarily raised in Columbus, Ohio, before ...
(Songwriter, vocals, guitar, 1929–2002) Harlan Howard, inspired by Ernest Tubb, first began reaping his songwriting rewards in the late 1950s. ‘Pick Me Up On Your Way Down’ (1958) was his first hit when recorded by Charlie Walker, followed by ‘Heartaches By The Number’ (1959), which covered country and pop by Ray Price and Guy Mitchell ...
It makes sense that Australia would be the one country outside North America to develop an important country-music scene of its own. Like the USA and Canada, Australia had a large, under-populated frontier that was settled by English, Irish and Scotch immigrants who brought their folk songs with them. Roughened and toughened by frontier life, those songs ...
(Record producer, b. 1911) A major force in country music’s development during the post-war years, Minnesota-born Kenneth F. Nelson began his days at Capitol Records on the behest of old friend Lee Gillette, handling transcriptions. When Gillette took over the label’s pop division in 1951, Nelson took over the A&R country responsibilities, having first become involved ...
In the Bakersfield family tree, the likes of Bill Woods and Wynn Stewart set the stage, Buck Owens put the town on the map, and Merle Haggard was the heir apparent. ‘The Hag’, as he is often known, also had the distinction of actually being born in Bakersfield, on 6 April 1937. His parents, James ...
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