Posted 3/25/2006 05:32:00 PM by Douglas

To those that only know Buck Owens from Hee Haw, I pity you. Just about every legitimate "country" singer/guitar player today owes him a debt. Not to mention what he did to the rockabilly sound. You will be missed.

Owens died at his home in Bakersfield, said family spokesman Jim Shaw. The cause of death was not immediately known. Owens had undergone throat cancer surgery in 1993 and was hospitalized with pneumonia in 1997.

His career was one of the most phenomenal in country music, with a string of more than 20 No. 1 records, most released from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.

They were recorded with a honky-tonk twang that came to be known throughout California as the "Bakersfield Sound," named for the town 100 miles north of Los Angeles that Owens called home.

"I think the reason he was so well known and respected by a younger generation of country musicians was because he was an innovator and rebel," said Shaw, who played keyboards in Owens' band, the Buckaroos. "He did it out of the Nashville establishment. He had a raw edge."

[. . .]

"I'd like to be remembered as a guy that came along and did his music, did his best and showed up on time, clean and ready to do the job, wrote a few songs and had a hell of a time," he said in 1992.

I don't know you, but I don't like you; tryin' to find me something better. . . . on the streets of Bakersfield.

But one thing's for sure: Dwight Yoakum is drunk off his ass tonight. After all, it is Saturday.