Gloomy Tunes: Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, “Cryin’ Time”

Buck Owens died on this day in 2006, putting a period on the life of a giant of American music. Even if he never recorded a note, Owens would have earned his place in history for his songs. “Act Naturally” (memorably covered by the Beatles), “Love’s Gonna Live Here,” “Together Again,” “My Heart Skips A Beat,” “I’ve Got A Tiger By The Tail,” “Waiting In Your Welfare Line” took the American vernacular and raised it to poetry, and with his band, the incomparable Buckaroos, he created the hard-edged, no-nonsense, west coast style of country known as the Bakersfield Sound. His co-starring gig on “Hee Haw!,”  CBS’s corn-pone answer to “Laugh-In” might have made him a joke to non-country fans, but it made him a very rich man, allowing him to purchase radio stations and land in adopted home of Bakersfield, which became known as “Buckersfield.” The club he opened there, the Crystal Palace, was a must-see on any country fan’s tour of Southern California, especially when Buck was performing (which was often).

This proud son of Queens, NY, should have been one of those non-fans. When I started listening to music seriously, searching for the roots of the bands I liked,  I was surprised to find out how much the Bakersfield Sound sounded like home, familiar as the bands I did listen to growing up. It was a mystery until I remembered that during the mid-sixties, New York Mets games were broadcast on WJRZ (970 AM), a Hackensack,  New Jersey station that was the tristate area’s only country outlet. So if I tuned in early or waited out rain delays, I was exposed to that era’s classic country: Buck, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, and others. Without my realizing it, those sounds seeped into my young brain, just waiting to be recalled. So, thank you Buck, and thank you WJRZ, for expanding my musical horizons, even if I didn’t know it at the time…

Steven Mirkin

Steven Mirkin’s diverse career has taken him from politics to pop culture to high art, offering him a front row seat to some of the most fascinating events and personalities of our time: writing speeches, fundraising appeals and campaign materials for Ed Koch, John Heinz and independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson; chronicling the punk/new wave scenes in New York and London; interviewing musicians such as Elton John, John Lydon and Buck Owens; profiling modern masters Julian Schnabel, Paul Schrader and Jonathan Safran Foer; and writing for TV shows including 21, The Chamber, Let's Make A Deal, and Rock Star: INXS.