Buck Owens

In the Buck Owens box set I have he talks about the show Hee Haw. He said that for quite a few years he wanted to quit the show to get back to doing music and live shows. They would offer him a huge raise to come back and he would. While reading the booklet with the cd's you get the impression that he really missed the road and playing with his band and he didn't want to be remembered as just a goof on Hee Haw.

He won't.

You read bios of guys like this and you realize how cool they were. And hey I know a guy that worked at one of his Bakersfield radio stations. And a white guy like Buck Owens, his daddy was a sharecropper? Wow that part of our history is not too far in the past is it?

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.

After his string of hits, Owens stayed away from the recording scene for a decade, returning in 1988 to record another No. 1 record, "Streets of Bakersfield," with Dwight Yoakam .

Yoakam said he saw Owens just days before his death.

"Even though he seemed in a somewhat fragile physical state, he was emotionally exuberant and still living life in a forward motion, discussing a variety of plans for his future," Yoakam said in a statement. "I will cherish, forever, the musical moments he graciously shared with me during his life. I will be eternally grateful for his fatherly chastisements, encouragement and, ultimately, his friendship and love."

Alvis Edgar Owens Jr. was born in 1929 outside Sherman, Texas, the son of a sharecropper. With opportunities scarce during the Depression, the family moved to Arizona when he was 8.

He had moved to Bakersfield in 1951, hoping to find work in the thriving juke joints of what in the years before suburban sprawl was a truck-stop town on Highway 99, between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area.

"We played rhumbas and tangos and sambas, and we played Bob Wills music, lots of Bob Wills music," he said, referring to the bandleader who was the king of Western swing.

"And lots of rock ‘n‘ roll," he added.

I hate put it this way but these guys are droppin' off fast. This year go see 2 acts that you know are "Legends" in whatever kind of music they play. Somebody you normally wouldn't see.

Lyrics to "Streets of Bakersfield"

Buck Owens & Dwight Yoakam

(Dwight)
I came here looking for something
I couldn't find anywhere else
Hey, I'm not trying to be nobody
Just want a chance to be myself

(Buck)
I've done a thousand miles of thumbin'
I've worn holes in both my heels
Trying to find me something better
Here on the streets of Bakersfield

Chorus: (Dwight & Buck)
You don't know me, but you don't like me
You say you care less how I feel
But how many of you that sit and judge me
Have ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?

--- Instrumental ---

(Dwight)
Spent sometime in San Francisco
I spent a night there in the can
They threw this drunk man in my jail cell
I Took fifteen dollars from that man
(Buck)
Left him my watch and my old house key
Don't want folks thinkin' that I'd steal
Then I thanked him as I was leaving, and
I headed out for Bakersfield

Chorus: (Dwight & Buck)
You don't know me, but you don't like me
You say you care less how I feel
But how many of you that sit and judge me
Have ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?

Hey You don't know me, but you don't like me
You say you care less how I feel
But how many of you that sit and judge me
Have walked the streets of Bakersfield?

(Dwight)
How many of you that sit and judge me
(Dwight & Buck)
Have ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?..