Act Naturally

Two surprises came my way yesterday. First, I was surprised to hear that Buck Owens died at his Bakersfield home early in the morning. Then I was surprised that I felt such a loss. I’m not a Buck Owens fan, never have been. So the loss I felt was about something other than his music.

I grew up listening to country music, but not by choice. My dad liked it; it was always the music of choice on his car radio. When Buck became popular in the early 60s we were living in Phoenix. Because Buck spent more than 10 years growing up in Phoenix and the city loved to claim him as one of its own, there was never a large gap between Buck Owens songs on that damnable car radio. But, listening to Buck sing “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail” when I was a rock loving junior in high school in 1965 was like listening to a cat claw its way up a blackboard. There was way too much treble and twang; it was painful.

The loss felt here yesterday stems from one simple fact – Buck Owens put the streets of Bakersfield on the map. He moved here in 1951and stayed loyal to his hometown. Sometimes those of us in this city who aren’t died-in-the-wool country music fans have bristled at the idea that our city is immediately identified with Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, who also lived here for a while. It’s not that we were ever embarrassed by that notoriety, we just wanted Bakersfield to stand for some other things as well. Otherwise we weren’t sure if we’d ever get out of Johnny Carson’s and Jay Leno’s crosshairs. Bakersfield has been the butt of more late-night jokes than Peoria, Illinois, and countless movie references have focused on the hick town image that came with being crowned the country music capitol of the West.

But that’s also where the brand Buck Owens put on Bakersfield’s flank starts to become a source of pride. He was a rebel. He didn’t like Nashville, country music’s holy city. He didn’t like what they did to singers and he really didn’t like their cookie-cutter sound. So Buck set up his own recording studio in Bakersfield and created an alternative known as “the Bakersfield sound”. He like to call it “American music”. Whatever the name, it was treble and twang galore and it came accompanied by his trademark Fender Telecaster solid-body electric guitar. This was a country music star who loved rock music, including Chuck Berry, Little Richard and the Beatles. The only country music song ever covered by the Beatles is Buck’s 1963 hit, “Act Naturally”.

Buck Owens never gave in to the siren song from Tennessee. He stayed here; he made his music his way; and others gravitated to the country music capitol of the West. It may have produced its share of jokes and caricatures, but it was authentic and it endured. This man who grew up as a sharecropper’s kid, who never had a toothbrush until he was 11 and who used twine for shoe laces, had put an indelible mark on an industry and a city in the central valley of California.

In 1996 Buck opened the Crystal Palace, which became a showcase for his life and his music. He performed there every Friday and Saturday evening, doing a 90-minute set each night. Buck was a multi-millionaire who didn’t need any more money. He just loved making his music. My wife and I went there once, at the request of her parents who were visiting from Texas. They didn’t know much about Bakersfield, but they knew about the Crystal Palace, the city’s number one tourist attraction. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t being forced to listen in my dad’s car, but I enjoyed the man and his music that night.

Buck Owens performed on that stage just six hours before he died. He hadn’t been feeling well on Friday and had decided that he couldn’t perform. But, just before show time he met a couple from Bend, Oregon, who had come to the Crystal Palace for only one reason, to hear Buck Owens. That was all it took to put him on the stage for the last time. At that point in his life, he sang because he wanted to and because others wanted to listen.

Perhaps the enduring lesson from the life of Buck Owens was captured in the closing lyric in the song that finally put him on the top of the charts in 1963. He sang, “I'll play the part but I won't need rehearsing; all I have to do is act naturally.”

That’s the way he sang and played guitar; that’s the way he lived; and that’s why there’s a loss being felt on the streets of Bakersfield.