Buck Owens - BUCK ‘EM! Volume Two: The Music Of Buck Owens 1967-1975

Omnivore Records
OMCD-135


You could say that Buck Owens invented the Bakersfield Sound. It’s not strictly true, because without other seminal West Coast performers such as Tommy Collins, Wynn Stewart, Red Simpson and Merle Haggard, there probably would not have been a Bakersfield Sound. But it would be true to say that Buck and his band the Buckaroos were the most commercially successful purveyors of the Bakersfield Sound and this double disc compilation is adequate proof of just how successful and inventive he was. Throughout the 1960s they ruled the country charts without hardly ever setting foot in Nashville. Beginning with Act Naturally, in 1963, Owens scored 20 number one country hits, but most of those pre-date this set, which as the title suggests, is the second and later set of recordings, when to a certain extent, his grip on the charts had faltered somewhat. Nevertheless, the quality of the material is of an exceptionally high standard, with several previously unissued tracks included—though some of these were released in Europe a few years ago by Bear Family Records in a multi-CD box set.

Unlike many of the Nashville-based country acts, Buck kept his sound strictly country with a honky-tonk backbeat and a freight-train rhythmic approach. His material was almost all self-composed of catchy, hook-laden songs where Owens’ voice was framed by Don Rich’s vocal harmonies and biting Telecaster guitar leads, Tom Bromley’s crisp steel guitar and an upfront rhythm section. Though he could never be considered bluegrass, the high harmony sound definitely had echoes of the bluegrass sound and proved to be highly influential to Dwight Yoakam some twenty years later. Often he co-wrote with other country singers—Red Simpson, Nat Stuckey, Terry Stafford—or members of the Buckaroos, but in his early days only rarely did he record outside songs. Alongside his songwriting and vocal skills, Owens was also an acclaimed guitarist. In fact, before he was signed to a Capitol Records contract in 1959, he had been the label’s first choice lead guitarist on sessions for Tommy Collins, Dean Martin and many others. In 1968 he recorded an all-instrumental album, THE GUITAR PLAYER, which was mainly a collection of self-penned polkas. Though renowned for his Telecaster playing, this album had him playing acoustically, with much of the material having something of a Mediterranean or Latin flavour. The lengthy titled Things I Saw Happening At the Fountain On The Plaza When I Was Visiting Rome Or Amore, an intricate Flamenco-styled tune, is amongst the diverse tracks included on this set.

Buck also recorded a couple of gospel albums—DUST ON MOTHER’S BIBLE and YOUR MOTHER’S PRAYER. The latter was completed in the early 1970s, but some of the tracks were recorded earlier including the moving title song, which is on the first disc of this set. A dynamic live performer, Buck pioneered live concert recordings, releasing several albums recorded not only in American venues, but also around the world, including a classic concert at the London Palladium in 1969 which I attended, Norway and New Zealand. Some of the tracks here are taken from those concerts, a few of them previously unissued.

Though Buck had pledged publicly to sing nothing but country music, he never allowed himself to be restricted by the tight confines that the music often forced on lesser talents as this set of recordings show. His repertoire was wide-ranging as he reached out to embrace a newer younger audience whilst holding onto his long-time die-hard fans. Few country entertainers played San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore Auditorium, the premier rock concert hall in America in the late 1960s. Buck played there October 11 and 12, 1968. Many country singers, hostile to heavy rock music and the long haired youth of the time, would have refused such an engagement, but Buck embraced it whole-heartedly.

He began experimenting musically in 1968 pulling away from the patented driving Bakersfield sound. I’ve Got You On My Mind Again, a top five country hit with its pronounced r&b feel was unlike anything he’d previously recorded. His desire to experiment beyond the well-known Bakersfield sound grew with numbers like the waltz-tempo Who’s Gonna Mow Your Grass, which boasted rock-style fuzztone guitar, the dramatic ballad Sweet Rosie Jones, Tall Dark Stranger, and a wildly driving live version of Chuck Berry’s Johnny B Goode, all of which reached number one on the country charts.

He was well ahead of the game when he teamed up with soul singer Bettye Swann in 1969 to record a duet version of Merle Haggard’s Today I Started Loving You Again. The executives at Capitol Records decided in their wisdom not to release it so it remained ‘lost’ in the EMI vaults until finally surfacing here some 46 years later. A white country singer dueting with a black soul singer was deemed unthinkable in those blinkered times. If issued back then it could have changed how Buck Owens and country music was perceived forever …. now we’ll never know. But at least we can finally hear the recording … and it’s rather good.

In March 1969, Buck opened Buck Owens Studios in an old movie theatre in downtown Bakersfield. It featured 16-track recording equipment and a then-new Moog synthesiser. The media began referring to Bakersfield as ‘Buckersfield,’ a term Buck himself never used. Buck’s stature with Capitol permitted him extraordinary clout. A deal between Capitol and Buck Owens Productions allowed Buck to record himself, Tony Booth, Freddie Hart, Buddy Alan, The Buckaroos, Susan Raye, and others in his Bakersfield studios. Capitol merely packaged and released the recordings. No country singer at that time had a similar deal. Among the other aspiring singers Buck discovered were longhaired twin brothers Jim and John Hager, who were also signed to Capitol.

In 1971, Buck signed his final four-year contract with Capitol. Following lengthy negotiations, the label gave him something few artists ever received: Ownership of all his Capitol recordings at the end of the contract. He would give the label five years to sell off his albums before he would take ownership in 1980. He followed his 1971 hit recording of Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water with an album featuring two more Simon and Garfunkel songs and numbers by folk-rockers Donovan and Bob Dylan. He shifted musical directions again, adding five-string banjoist Ronnie Jackson to the Buckaroos and recording two hit bluegrass numbers: the Osborne Brothers’ Ruby (Are You Mad) and Rollin’ In My Sweet Baby’s Arms.

His music, along with that of Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard was admired by young people and rock musicians. Yet the image he portrayed was still the ‘aw shucks country boy made good. By 1973 his recording career was in decline, his hits being novelties like Big Game Hunter and On The Cover Of The Music City News. In the summer of 1974 Buck suffered a sudden, tragic blow from which it took him years to recover. His right-hand man, Don Rich died in a motorcycle accident. For a long time he suffered bouts of depression and he later admitted that his heart was not really into making music. It was a case of just going through the motions. In 1975 Andy Wickham of Warner Bros. Records, a long time Buck Owens fan, signed him to Warners. For the first time in his career he was recording in Nashville.
Buck Owens & the Buckaroos played a souped-up honky-tonk style that drew upon the sounds of Webb Pierce and Lefty Frizzell, while forging ahead to embrace the energy of 1960s rock. He sold hit records in their millions and they influenced a generation of country and rock singers and musicians from Brad Paisley to the Beatles, Dwight Yoakam to the Flying Burrito Brothers. Any country fan who has enjoyed the music of Dwight Yoakam, Alan Jackson, Clint Black or George Strait needs to go back to those performers’ roots and sample the real thing—the one and only Buck Owens. And this 50-track collection is a good place to start. Oh, and did I mention the extensive sleeve notes, which in the main are excerpts taken from Buck Em! The Autobiography of Buck Owens, with the late singer talking about the recordings included here and the changes that he’d made in his sound and the singers and musicians he’d been working with. Reading these notes whilst listening to the music gives even more credence to this whole collection.

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