Saturday, Sep 6, 2008
In 1969, he agreed to co-host a hillbilly version of "Laugh-In" with Roy Clark on CBS. "Hee Haw" started as a special, then it was a summer replacement, and then finally it earned a spot on the schedule. It went to the top of the ratings. It was ridiculous: corn-pone humor delivered from a plastic cornfield, eliciting laughs from an animated donkey. Hee-haw. But the biggest stars in country music came on, and the show treated the music seriously. CBS canceled it in 1971 in a move away from rural shows, but it went on and on in syndication. A generation, and then another, grew up knowing Buck Owens as the doofus on the TV show that defined the word "hick."
His chart success faded. He still had four or five hits a year, but they weren't smashes anymore. Only one song went to No. 1 in the '70s, a wry number called "Made in Japan" in 1972. On July 17, 1974, Don Rich was killed in a motorcycle accident. Owens was devastated. He continued hosting "Hee Haw" but scaled back his music. The hits stopped. His Capitol contract ran out, and he signed with Warner Brothers. A duet with Emmylou Harris, "Play Together Again Again" (the title referred to his earlier hit "Together Again"), reached No. 11 in 1979, but when his Warners contract expired in 1980, he made no effort to find a new one. He remained shaken by Rich's death. "He was like a brother, a son and a best friend," he said recently, "and since he died I never quite got over it."
He continued hosting "Hee Haw" until 1986, but, now married for a third time, spent most of his time managing the business empire that earned him the sobriquet "The Baron of Bakersfield." For the second time, he figured that his musical career had run its course. And for the second time, he was wrong.
Country music had gone soft again. Nashville's supremacy had been challenged by the Bakersfield sound of the '60s and the Outlaw movement of the '70s, but by the early '80s, Music City reasserted its dominance. Slick, urbanized, interchangeable singers typified by TV star Barbara Mandrell shared the spotlight with countrified pop-rockers like Alabama, the decade's biggest sellers. But there was a rumbling of neo-traditionalism. Dwight Yoakam, a Bakersfield resident, had had a hit with an old Johnny Horton tune, "Honky Tonk Man." Yoakam, who like his hero was 30 by the time he found success, took to lecturing interviewers about Owens, who seemed forgotten by history: "Those Buck Owens records in the late '50s and early '60s were some of the hippest hillbilly stuff ever known to man," he told the Los Angeles Times in a typical comment.
On Sept. 23, 1987, Yoakam walked into Owens' office unannounced and talked him into joining him onstage that night at the Kern County Fair. They sang a medley of Owens hits and brought down the house. In January they provided the highlight of the Country Music Association's 30th anniversary TV show with a duet of a song Owens had recorded in the early '70s, "Streets of Bakersfield." Owens told Yoakam he should record the song. Yoakam agreed, provided Owens would sing it with him. Their duet was Owens' first No. 1 single in 16 years.
Owens re-upped with Capitol and began recording again, even occasionally touring. His records no longer had the sting of his peak years, but he clearly enjoyed settling into his role as a revered elder statesman of the music. "Hee Haw" seemed to fade into the distance as young musicians like BR-549 cited him as an influence, covered his songs and asked him to join them onstage. Garth Brooks has taken to placing a birthday call to Owens from the stage and having his audience serenade the old man. Throat cancer cost him a piece of his tongue in 1993, but he recovered and returned to the stage. In 1996, the year he was voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, he opened Buck Owens' Crystal Palace, a restaurant, nightclub and museum in Bakersfield. Big-name country acts play there, and on most Friday and Saturday nights, Buck Owens and his Buckaroos play two shows. If you're on Highway 99, it's worth getting off on Buck Owens Boulevard and stopping in. It's five bucks at the door, the food's decent -- and the boss can sure play that Telecaster.
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