Just a hotbed of Country Music, and it was raw, it was not influenced by what was on the radio, so a lot of unique stuff came out of this area. Americans had been migrating to california for decades and centuries, in fact. Then comes this catastrophic event in the plain states, in oklahoma and kansas and arkansas, the dust bowl, this natural devastation of agriculture. And a lot of people, okies we came to call them, had relatives back in california and they would write back, call, and say is there work out there for me. Theyd say come on out. So from about 1935 through 1950 people from the midwest, Southern Midwest came to california, and they brought their music with them. They brought their religious sensibilities, a more fundamentalist religious perspective, they brought conservative politics to a great extent, and they changed the way california is. I just blowed in and i got them dust bowl blues i just blowed in and i got them dust bowl blues i just blowed in and ill blow back out again the clash of these two cultures in california did produce a certain amount of friction. There was a more i dont know how to characterize the religious majority of california before the dust bowl, but it was kind of a presbyterian, upright in your pew, more formal type of religion, whereas the okies came out with this fundamentalist, stand up and shout type of religion, and that was one of the things, the religious differences that kind of set the okies apart in a negative way. They were viewed negatively to a great extenlt by the people who were already here, and that was part of it. When we think of the dust bowl migrant, we think of the people who came out and lived in the federal migrant camps, where the grapes of wrath took place and the movie was filmed. There was some poverty, and there were people that were living in call lsqualor outside camps as well. Okies would work in with farm laborers, throw hem on the truck, take them out to the field to work, theyd work long, harold days, come back, there was no tv, no radio, lit until the way of entertainment so they would sit outside their tents or on their stoops with a guitar and harmonica, and that was the evenings entertainment. Im a cowboy far away from home you had the dust bowlers come out from the mid30s up through the 50s. Its a greater migration than the dust bowl of world war ii workers. They would come to the shipyards of northern california, come to the aircraft factories of southern california. You had this great assemblage of people from all over the country. Now after world war ii, you have all these people saying, okay, what do i do now . Some went home, some stayed in california. Many of them settled in the bakersfield. My name is buck owens and those boys are called the buckaroos. This is the bucco ranch. Wed like to say thanks so much for tuning us in. Tell your friends about it. Tune us in next week or next month or the next time we come your way. Okay . Meantime, here is my favorite time of the show. Hymn time. Miss king is going to sing it. Don and i are going to help her. Buck owens, you know, grew up working alongside hispanics in the fields and his music has sort of a rockabilly sensitivity but also a hispanic latino sound to it. So you found your prince charming was just a dream i think buck owens was a very innovative singer that, with his sound burst on the scene in the mid60s when Country Music need to be shaken up a little bit. Buck grew up very poor. When he was growing up, his dad would always talk about the man. The man was the guy that ran the labor camp or the farmer, whatever. It was always us against the man, and it was a hard scrabble, tough life. Later on when buck became an entertainer, i think the Record Companies became the man. I think the best way to explain the bakersfield sound was at the time it came out, nashville was putting out music that was very syrup pi, lots of instruments, lots of strings, lots of background singers. I fall to pieces they were trying to go the cosmopolitan kind of smooth country route at that time, and when buck came on the scene with a strippeddown fourpiece group with lots of drums and energy, it was kind of like when the beatles hit the pop scene back in the mid60s. It was very raw and exciting. All i got to do is you have some natural audiences, some bluecollar audiences ready made who have an appreciation for this music. You have people who worked in the fields, you have oil field worker, and this culture developed around some of these sort of bars, these saloons. The black ward maybe being the most famous. Things got a little rough at the blackboard. It was famous for some fisticuffs breaking out. Might have been overstated. Legend can sort of take over. But it became a mecca for professional artists. They were playing these places like the blackboard, places with cement floors and tin roofs, and the ambience was just so different. I think the listening public in bakersfield did see some of themselves in what they were hearing. Artists like Merle Haggard, in particular, he would tell the story of the people. He told in working man blues, very blue collar. Well, i keep my nose on the grindstone work hard every day i might get a little tired on the weekend thats where im going to play but i go back to working come monday morning im right back with the groove i drink a little beer that evening just sing a little bit of these working man blues there was sort of a badguy appeal that was working for people. This is back in the time bonnie and clyde, the movie came out later in the 60s, Merle Haggard personified that outlaw. And a lot of artists of that time kind of had a rough edge to them that people just went for. Now, when the public started hearing these bakersfield artists and recognizing how different they were than the sameness of nashville, it just stood out. Buck owens, once he hit it big, he just nailed them one after the other because he was so different and so fresh from what the American Public had been used to. He. He had 21 numberone records in a row. He had the numberone record in the United States on the a side. The b side was number two. And they stayed like that for weeks, just flipflopping back and forth. Anybody going to san antone id have to say the heyday was 1965. Buck owens had been making hits, consistently since 1959 and 196061. He was knocking them dead one after another. By this time, Merle Haggard had established himself and formed a band with the strangers, and bonnie owens, bucks former wife, had come aboard with him as a backing vocalist, and the first acm awards were in l. A. In 1965, and it was a clean sweep for the bakersfield performers. Merle haggard was entertainer of the year , the strangers were the band of the year, and that was it, and that was the commercial payday for sure. Bakersfield was not able to replace Merle Haggard and buck owens with stars of the same caliber, stars that didnt shine as bright. There were stars that came along afterward, but nobody had that sort of impact that merle and buck did. I think it just sort of faded away a little bit. Walk the streets of bakersfield yeah throughout 2014, cspan cities tour is featured the history of communities throughout the country with the help of our local cable partners. Today we feature the music of several of these cities. I can only speak for myself as to why i think gospel music resonates to such a degree even