![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/CTA_BUCK_OWENS_AND_DON_RICH_CourestyofBuck-OwnesProductionsBakersfieldCA.jpg\")
Buck Owens photo courtesy of Buck Owens Productions.<\/p>\nBuck Owens photo courtesy of Buck Owens Productions.<\/p>\n
In 1988, after I heard that Dwight Yoakam got Buck Owens to sit in at a concert in Bakersfield, I called Buck Owens Enterprises to request an interview with the man who\u2019d stayed out of the spotlight since retiring from \u201cHee Haw\u201d in \u201986. That interview, which appeared in the February \u201989 issue of Guitar Player, is one of my favorites. Blocking off an entire morning, the country megastar was candid, expansive, at times humorous, other times melancholy.<\/p>\n
In the \u201960s, Owens scored an astonishing 15 consecutive #1 singles (of 21 total), most of which he penned or co-wrote: \u201cAct Naturally,\u201d \u201cLove\u2019s Gonna Live Here,\u201d \u201cMy Heart Skips a Beat,\u201d \u201cTogether Again,\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve Got a Tiger By the Tail,\u201d the instrumental \u201cBuckaroo,\u201d and even a cover of \u201cJohnny B. Goode.\u201d In 1988, he climbed to the top spot again, dueting with Yoakam on \u201cStreets Of Bakersfield.\u201d<\/p>\n
I simultaneously binged on the new three-disc boxed set of live material, Adios, Farewell, Goodbye, Good Luck, So Long: On Stage 1964-1974, and the 36-year-old magazine. Had he been hip to country-rock bands like the Flying Burrito Brothers and Poco?<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s face it, I\u2019ve always been a country-rock fan \u2013 ain\u2019t no doubt about that. I love country, but I love rock and roll, too. I especially like good old, get-down, get-on-with-it rock and roll. Obviously, I recorded enough Chuck Berry songs for people to know what a Chuck Berry fan I am. If \u2018Johnny B. Goode\u2019 ain\u2019t a country-rock song, what is? Listen to the lyrics.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the Beatles, who covered \u201cAct Naturally\u201d in \u201965, he said, \u201cWe played Rubber Soul and Revolver incessantly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Deciphering the Bakersfield sound he pioneered, Buck posited, \u201cI think what really made the difference was that people like Merle Haggard and I, just like Dwight Yoakam, would take our own bands into the studio. I always had musicians who were good enough to play on the records.\u201d<\/p>\n
The most pivotal of his sidemen was Don Rich, who entered Buck\u2019s orbit when the singer was working as a disc jockey in Tacoma, Washington.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon and I traveled around playing with house groups until about 1963, when we got the Buckaroos together,\u201d he said. \u201cWe used to play four hours a night without stopping. I had a 1960 Ford Skyliner hardtop convertible, and with the top down, the luggage carrier was just big enough where one amplifier would fit. So we\u2019d put my tweed Bassman with four 10\u201d speakers in there, the guitar along one side, and the fiddle along the other. Don mainly played fiddle up until \u201965. He loved the guitar, though. He took what I knew and improved on it, and went by me. Before long, Don was playing all the guitar, and I was just holding mine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buck confirmed that Rich would sometimes drop his low E down to D for effect.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpontaneity was Don\u2019s biggest thing,\u201d he marveled. \u201cTo get him to play it again, you\u2019d have to get him to understand what he did, because I don\u2019t think he ever knew what he was going to play. That\u2019s why it was so good \u2013 it sounded unrehearsed. To me, that\u2019s what makes a great instrumentalist. When I play things, I have patterns that I start with, but I never really know what I\u2019m going to play or how l\u2019m going to play it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1974, Rich died in a motorcycle accident, just 32 years old.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was really tough on me. If it\u2019s possible to be like a son, a brother, and a compadre, that\u2019s what he was. From \u201974 to \u201979, l think I just did things out of shock. What the hell do you do when half of yourself is gone?\u201d
Naming his own influences, Owens said, \u201cI liked a lot of Bob Wills\u2019 guitar players, and a great guitar player here on the West Coast, Jimmy Bryant \u2013 in fact, I did a lot of session work with him. Boy, what a technician. It wasn\u2019t so much his speed as his execution and phrasing. Bob Wills was my biggest musical influence because of the musicianship I found in his records. He had good fiddle players and great guitar players. I always wanted a driving beat. For people to dance, music had to have a beat to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carving his own niche, he played a lot of instrumental polkas, as on 1968\u2019s The Guitar Player and the live box. \u201cI don\u2019t know why I did that. They were fast, they were showy and flashy, and at the Blackboard Cafe, we used to play mambos, sambas, rhumbas, tangos, polkas \u2013 you name it. Somehow or another, the audience had the idea that if you play something very, very fast, it is very, very good. And very, very often it\u2019s very, very bad,\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n
Already cemented, Adios bolsters Rich\u2019s position as one of country guitar\u2019s greats. \u201cAll I ever wanted to do was be a honky-tonk singer, and do a rockabilly song if I wanted to,\u201d Buck told me. \u201cI like real music. If it\u2019s country, I want it honky-tonk. I\u2019m a honky-tonker.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2025 Dan Forte; all rights reserved by the author.<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared in VG\u2019s October 2025 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Buck Owens photo courtesy of Buck Owens Productions. In 1988, after I heard that Dwight Yoakam got Buck…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152],"class_list":["post-356466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}