All the news websites have been reprinting variations of the headline "Hee Haw star Buck Owens dead at 76." Earlier today this was pissing me off. Owens is perhaps the prime example of someone who greaty assisted in the direction of an American art form, yet may be best remembered for his participation in a lower-denominator TV show calculated for the masses. He's not the only example, I'm sure, but the only other I can think of tonight is Ozzy.
But it's not pissing me off anymore for two reasons. (A) Hee Haw did, at the very least, feature two outstanding country musicians on a weekly basis: Owens and Roy Clark, possibly the most agile picker ever. It also starred Minnie Pearl. And (B) I was surprised to find out that Owens hosted Hee Haw up until 1986. Almost two full decades. He stuck with that (literally) horse-and-buggy show until nearly its demise, never once seeming bothered or ungrateful to be there.
Time and history, finally, paid Owens his proper respect during the last 15 years of his life, and we should take notice of when that happens. It's a feel-good story that actually makes one feel good.
Owens was born the son of Texas sharecroppers. He taught himself every instrument he knew how to play, including mandolin, guitar, harmonica and a few other things lying around his kitchen. He became enamored with Bakersfield, California -- trust me, that is not an easy thing to do -- in the '40s and '50s. The oil boomlet had a lot of workers who loved their honky-tonk, so Owens moved there to support his family playing guitar in all sorts of pickup bands. This of course was happening right as country music was donating organs to the burgeoning rock movement.
Owens got a major-label contract, but his singles didn't set the charts on fire, so he quit the performance game at age 30 and decided to move behind the scenes.
He bought an interest in a radio station in Puyallup, Washington, and became a DJ. In time he also started hosting a music TV show in Tacoma. His shows highlighted local Tacoma talent, two of whom are worth mentioning: Loretta Lynn, because -- well, because she's Loretta Lynn -- and Don Rich, a blazing teenage guitarist whose mad chops and friendship with Owens got Buck to start recording his own material again.
This time, Buck's songs became hits: "Under Your Spell Again," "I Got a Tiger By the Tail," "Excuse Me (I Think I've Got a Heartache)," "Under the Influence of Love," "Loose Talk," "Mental Cruelty" -- all of them Top 10 country hits within the space of 2 years. My personal favorite was "Just As Long As You Love Me." Owens' first #1 country hit was 1963's "Act Naturally," a song that was so good that an upstart band from Liverpool, England covered it before fading into oblivion. (Eventually.) (Though not quite yet.)
Owens' hits solidified "the Bakersfield sound" of country music, which by definition stuck with hard-driving rhythms and eschewed the orchestral arrangements that marked the concurrent countrypolitan sound. By the mid 60's another Bakesfieldian, Merle Haggard, took the reins and drove the sound into a crankier, more introspective vein, as Owens answered the call of CBS to co-host Hee Haw.
The hour-long variety show was about as distant from the oil fields of Bakersfield as one can get, placing the company in a hay-laden barnyard setting complete with mules. Owens, who had grown up in near Dust Bowl conditions and spent all his adult life within spitting distance of I-5, probably had little to do with the setting, but adapted himself into the cornpone atmosphere quite readily. Hee Haw was dropped from CBS after a brief run as the network tried to distance itself from its rural image, gained thanks to Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction. Hee Haw nevertheless continued to be produced for syndication, where it surprisingly became more popular than it had been on CBS.
Almost too popular, in fact. Owens and Clark were so closely identified with the show that their contributions to country history were almost forgotten, even moreso after Owens quit the show in '86. (Amazingly, the show maintained production until 1992. I did not know this.)
By the late 80's, Buck Owens had basically taken over Bakersfield as its primary real estate developer. I am sure Monkeyhole can tell you of the existence of Buck Owens Boulevard, which is home to Buck Owen's Crystal Palace showroom, in the town that came to be known as "The Nashville of the West." Owens and his Buckaroos played the Crystal Palace every weekend, and Owens was content to ride out the remainder of his career doing just that, in acceptance that Hee Haw would be his most-remembered feat.
But Owens's career had one more coda left, thanks to a Bakersfield kid named Dwight Yoakam. As Yoakam's career took off in the 80's, he made a point of citing Owens's massive influence, which surprised quite a few people (and journalists) who'd only known the Owens from Hee Haw. The two forged a friendship and teamed for a TexMex-flavored remake of Owens's "Streets of Bakersfield," which hit #1 on the country charts in 1989. Owens returned to the studio to cut more sides, and although none of them reached the heights of his career peak, it was country music's unspoken mission to make sure Owens's legacy was secure. Artists like Garth Brooks and BR-549 paid tribute to him, and he was inducted to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996.
Buck Owens's classic hits are guilt-free country music, with great lyrical cleverness and humorous intelligence, and indelible two-part harmonies. In fact, many of his not-classic songs are exactly the same way. You owe it to yourself to check all of them out. Go ahead. I'll wait.
