There are just some styles of music that you fall in love with and you don’t care who knows. For me, it’s Doo Wop and unabashed tear in your beer Country. Buck Owens and the Buckaroos created a style of country music called “The Bakersfield Sound” (why? Wasn’t “The Oildale Sound” catchy enough?) which was essentially a harder driving and harder swinging take of the Nashville Skyline. It caught on, and never let go.
Here, you get two discs of Owens’ biggest hits, and you can see why he caught on, even before becoming a star on the TV show Hee Haw. First, he’s got a great sense of vocal harmony, and his two stepping beat is perfect for dancing with your partner at the local Moose Lodge. Pieces like “Foolin’ Around” or duets with Rose Maddox on “Loose Talk” put the hoot back in hootenanny. Even the Beatles got the Buckaroo bug, doing a cover (not as well) of “Act Naturally”, and the Byrds took on the lilting “Together Again”. Through the years, Owens started even sounding like the Fab for on his guitar work, displayed on the instrumental “Buckaroo”. As with all things country, you’ve got tons of humor, as on “I’ve Got A Tiger By The Tale” and romance either lost, found or asking, like on “Think Of Me” or “ Who’s Gonna Mow Your Grass”. If you aren’t either singing along or grabbing your partner halfway through, then you just don’t understand that thing called swing, as this music is essentially the gapped tooth cousin of the blues shuffling joys of jazz.