Buck Owens: The dominant figure of American country music in the 1960s was Buck Owens, who has died aged 76. But the name given to his strident, driving beat was associated not with him but with the town that became his home.
As a genre, the Bakersfield sound was second only to Nashville, but many fans began to regard the Tennessee tradition as over-sweet and sentimental, whereas Owens's electrified music was a modern reflection of tougher times. Bakersfield itself, then and now a dull town devoted to oil and agriculture 160 km (100 miles) north of Los Angeles, never embraced Owens. But he made a $100 million fortune there.
He arrived in the town in 1951 as a gig musician with the first of his three wives. In those days Bakersfield was the home of muchresented Okies, the dust-bowl refugees from Oklahoma who had fled there in the 1930s. But this working-class community with a strong musical tradition helped to refine Owens's style, which he developed at a honky-tonk where he played for seven years.
He sang and played lead guitar, worked marathon shifts and offered anything musical - R&B, rockabilly, rhumbas, polkas, even the samba and country - to get people to dance. Gradually, he found that his renderings of country music were attracting a following. He took advantage of the proximity of LA to record some songs.
In 1959 he had his first success with Second Fiddle. He went on to have 45 records in the country Top 10 and 20 No 1 hits overall, selling more than one million records a year. His first top hit, later covered by the Beatles and co-recorded with Ringo Starr, was Act Naturally (1963). After this he had at least one song - and sometimes three - at the top of the charts. Among his best known records were I've Got a Tiger by the Tail (1965), Think of Me (1966) and Sam's Place (1967).
One of Owens's most interesting successes was a song intimately linked to his adopted hometown and its history. It was called The Streets of Bakersfield and contained the line: "They don't know me but they don't like me," a reference to the anguish of the Okie residents. The song was a hit in 1988 as a duet with the country star Dwight Yoakam, who persuaded Owens to emerge from semi-retirement to record it.
By this time Owens was known as the Baron of Bakersfield for his successful business ventures there. He owned downtown properties, radio stations, a television production firm, a shopping publication and a music publishing company. In 1996 he opened a nightclub, the Crystal Palace, with a western-style facade and good steaks, and Owens himself played his guitar and sang almost every night. Only hours before he died in his sleep, he had returned to the stage after an evening's playing especially to sing for a visiting couple.
Owens came from a background that suited Bakersfield. He was born in a small town in Texas to a sharecropper father. The family of 10 escaped the dust bowl by heading west in a wobbly Ford, but their truck broke down in Mesa, Arizona, and there they stayed. Owens left school at 13 and worked in the fields while learning the mandolin, guitar, trumpet, saxophone, piano and drums - although his famous instrument was his Telecaster electric guitar.
By 16 he was appearing in music clubs and on local Arizona radio. He married at 17. His musical mix came from his experiences as an itinerant musician and his stints in Bakersfield honky-tonks. He acknowledged his loud beat, saying: "If I'd wanted to sleep I'd have taken a nap." In 1957 he signed a contract with Capitol Records and formed his own band, the Buckaroos, named by another famous country singer and Owens's lifelong friend, Merle Haggard (who later married one of his ex-wives). For a time Owens lived in Washington state, where he had a radio show, but eventually he returned to Bakersfield.
He wrote many of his hits, as well as playing with stars such as Tennessee Ernie Ford, Kay Starr, Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson. In 1966, Ray Charles made an Owens song into the hit, Cryin' Time. From 1969-86 he was co-host of Hee Haw, one of the longest running comedy and variety shows on US television. Contrary to his shrewd business triumphs, he portrayed himself as a bumpkin. He was divorced from his wives and is survived by three sons.
Alvis Edgar "Buck" Owens: born August 12th, 1929; died March 25th, 2006.