Two for Tuesday
Providing background information on music from popular genres like Country, Classic Rock, Southern Rock etc.
Two for Tuesday
When Country Plugged In: Exploring the Honky-Tonk Heart of Bakersfield
In this episode of The Two for Tuesday Podcast, Michael Pezent of 2nd Round Music takes you deep into the story of the Bakersfield Sound—the raw, electrified California-born answer to Nashville’s polished style of the 1960s.
From the honky-tonks of the San Joaquin Valley to the national stage, Bakersfield became the loud, twangy voice of working-class America. Michael spotlights two iconic songs that defined the movement: Buck Owens’ “Act Naturally” and Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried.” Hear the history, the recording details, and how these hits shaped the future of country music.
If you love the grit of Telecasters, the cry of pedal steel, and the stories of the people who lived them—this one’s for you.
Michael also performs these two songs over on the 2nd Round Music YouTube channel! Just click this link: https://youtu.be/7xXIaRDIjuU
Well, hello friends, and welcome to the Two for Tuesday podcast brought to you by Second Round Music. If you're a first time listener, a big thank you for being here, and if you're a returner or a regular listener, well, I appreciate you just as well. I'm your host, Michael, presenting today.
Speaker 1:We're're heading west way out west, to a place where country music put on a pair of blue jeans, plugged in an electric guitar and decided it didn't want to sound anything like polished Nashville anymore. That's right, we're diving into the Bakersfield Sound. This subgenre changed the face of country music in the late 50s and early 60s. It stripped things down, got loud, got raw and became the sound of working folks, honky-tonks and California migrant life. And we'll dig into two songs that define it. Buck Owens Act Naturally and Merle Haggard's Mama Try, so grab a seat, turn up the volume. And Merle Haggard's Mama Tried. So grab a seat, turn up the volume and let's roll into Bakersfield. But before we do that, let's take a listen to this sponsored message and I'll catch you on the other side.
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Speaker 1:To understand Bakersfield, you got to look at both geography and culture. Nashville in the 1950s had music, wrote RCA, studio B and producers like Chet Atkins and Owen Bradley shaping the country-politan sound. And Owen Bradley shaping the country-politan sound with lush strings, background choruses and a production style that leaned closer to pop than honky-tonk. It sold records, no doubt, but many country musicians and fans felt it smoothed the rough edges right off the jump. Meanwhile, bakersfield, california, was something entirely different. This wasn't a recording hub. It was a farming town in San Joaquin Valley, home to thousands of Dust Bowl migrants who fled from Oklahoma, texas and Arkansas during the 1930s. Now they brought their fiddles, gospel harmonies and honky-tonk ballroom songs, westward harmonies and honky-tonk barroom songs west with them.
Speaker 1:And by the 1950s, the second generation kids who grew up in labor camps and oil towns. Well, they were ready to make their own kind of music. And that music found its incubator in Bakersfield Club clubs like the Blackboard Cafe, which became the epicenter of rowdy weekend nights, places like Trouts, lucky Spot and Rainbow Gardens, where working-class crowds wanted dance music. They could hear over the clinking of bottles and the roar of conversation. Because of those loud rooms Bakersfield musicians plugged in. They favored Fender Telecaster, which by coincidence were manufactured just down the road in Fullerton, california. The Telecaster gave them a bright, biting twang that cut through the smoke-filled honky-tonks like a hot knife through butter. And you had that pedal steel, an upright or an electric bass and a drummer who could keep it sharp and you had a harder, electrified edge than Nashville just wasn't touching.
Speaker 1:Now, culturally, bakersfield was also a frontier. Nashville had institutions, contracts and gatekeepers. Bakersfield musicians often recorded in Hollywood studios like Capital, but it did it on their own terms, without bowing to Nashville producers. They dressed differently too Buck Owens and his buckaroos in their colorful nudie suits and matching guitar and Merle Haggard in plain shirts and workman boots. Now, when you think of Bakersfield Sound, most, and even myself, think of Buck Owens, but he wasn't responsible for creating the sound. There were others before him. One of the first groups to make it big on the West Coast was the Maddox Brothers and Rhodes, now musically active from the late 30s till the 1950s. The group consisted of four brothers, fred, cal Cliff and Don, along with their sister Rhodes Now get this. They were originally from Boaz, alabama, but they rode the rails and hitchhiked to California in 1933, when the band members were still children. They were following the failed efforts of their sharecropper parents during the early part of the.
Speaker 1:Depression.
Speaker 1:Now they got there a little in advance of the influx of Okies who were to flood the state in the later 1930s. Now the family struggled as fruit and vegetable pickers, where they would often work from dusk till dawn, and they would also find themselves sleeping out on the ground. The family eventually settled in Modesto, california, where they started developing their musical ability, and by the late 1930s they officially became California's best hillbilly band. Now they were the first to wear outlandish costumes also, and they made a true show out of their performance. But artists like Wynn Stewart were the first to bring electric instruments, and he had also added the backbeat of the drum as well as other stylistic elements barred from the early days of rock and roll. Now, wynn never had huge chart success, but he was the inspiration for Buck and Merle both, and so not only were different artists responsible for the new country sound.
Speaker 1:There was one song that played a huge role in its explosion. In 1954, mgm recording artist Bud Hobbs recorded a song called Louisiana Swing with, oddly enough, buck Owens on the lead guitar. This song was the first song recorded in the style that we know today as the Bakersfield Sound. So in the early 1960s Buck and Merle, among others, like Gene Shepard, who sung A Dear John Lutton, among others, like Gene Shepard who sung A Dear John with him, was the first major country hit single to use entirely Bakersfield musicians. They brought the Bakersfield sound to the mainstream audiences and soon it became one of the most popular sounds in country music, helping spawn country rock and influencing later country stars such as Dwight Yoakam, marty Stewart and the Mavericks. Now Bakersfield wasn't just a sound, it was an identity, and in the late 1960s this new identity would explode onto the charts.
Speaker 2:They're gonna put me in the movies. They're gonna make a big star out of me. They'll make a film about a man that's sad and lonely, and all I gotta do is act naturally. Now let's start with the film.
Speaker 1:If you think of Bakersfield you think of Buck Owens and the Buckaroos. Now they set the tempo. Act Naturally was released in 1963 and it's the perfect example of the Bakersfield sound. Now, the song was written by Johnny Russell and Vonnie Morrison. The song almost didn't make it to Buck. Russell pitched it around Nashville but nobody bit. And Buck's guitarist, don Rich, well, he heard it and he brought it back to Buck. So Buck recorded it at Capitol Records.
Speaker 1:Now, musically, act naturally has everything Bakersfield stood for that Telecaster twang to Don Rich's lead guitar, snappy shuffle rhythm, a honky-tonk dance groove and plain spoken vocals from Buck. No strings, no polish, just an honest delivery. And the lyrics? Oh yeah, they're tongue-in-cheek, a man's heartbroken, but he jokes that Hollywood should hire him to play the role of a sad, lonely guy because he'll just act naturally. It's funny, it's relatable and it's working class to the core. Overproduction, insisting. His songs sound like what the band could do live at the Blackboard Cafe, their Bakersfield home base.
Speaker 1:In chart history, black naturally hit number one on the Billboard Country Singles chart in July 1963, and it became Buck's first number one hit and it opened the floodgates for his career. Years later, the Beatles' lead occurred, the Ringo Starr singing lead, and it opened the floodgates for his career. Years later, the Beatles lead the cover, the Ringo Starr singing lead, and it tells you just how far Bakersfield's sound reached. Now, if Buck Owens was the pioneer, merle Haggard was the poet of Bakersfield. Haggard's life was Bakersfield through and through. Born in Old Dale, california, right next to Bakersfield, he was the son of Dust Bowl immigrants from Oklahoma and his childhood was tough. His father died young and Merle spent time in the foreign school and even served time in San Quentin Prison and we'll talk more about Merle's life and career later for sure. But that rough start shaped his writing, and his songs were honest, often autobiographical and always reflective of struggles of working-class America.
Speaker 2:And that's one of the things, right, but Mama Tried, mama Tried. Mama Tried raised me better, but her pleading eye denied. That leaves only me to blame. Cause, mama Tried.
Speaker 1:Now, mama Tried was released in July of 1968, and this is one of Merle's most iconic songs and one of the defining tracks of the Bakersfield Sound. Haggard wrote it himself, drawing directly from his own life story.
Speaker 1:The lyrics tell of a young man who turns to crime despite his mother's best efforts to guide him right. Mama Tried isn't just a song. It's a confession of regret and a tribute all wrapped together Now wise. The song is classic Bakersfield Now. Recording took place at Capitol Records in Hollywood. But Haggard made sure the production stayed raw, not slick. Now he wanted it to sound like the music he grew up hearing in Bakersfield bars. So in my research of this song I ran across an interview with Burl on a website by the name of Blue Railroad. So I'm going to read you an excerpt from this interview. And it says quote we recorded it in 1968 at Capitol in Hollywood. Ken Nelson and Fuzzy Owen produced. We did a good job. That record still sounds unique.
Speaker 1:It starts with James Burton on a dobro. Fingerpicking. I was trying to land somewhere in between Peter Paul and Mary and Johnny Cash. So we started with folky guitar and a lot of vocal harmony sung by Bonnie Owens and Glenn Campbell. Glenn played rhythm guitar and sang a tenor harmony. Everything else was done in one take, singing live in the studio with the band. Now I'm going to skip ahead.
Speaker 1:In the interview Merle goes on to say end quote. It's my arrangement. I told James and brackets Burton to try the finger picking to bring us into tempo and we'd get the best musicians there were. James Burton was the best guitars, so we went with Burton. Glenn Campbell was part of the group and Jimmy Gordon on the drums, jerry Ward on electric bass, norman Hamlet on steel guitar. So there you go. That's right from the creator's words.
Speaker 1:Now Mama Tried hit number one on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart in August of 1968, and it stayed there for four weeks. It went on to win the Grammy's Hall of Fame Award decades later and it had been covered by countless artists, from the Grateful Dead Blues man, albert Lee, jim Croce, conway Twitty, r&b legend Percy Slag and all the way to outlaw country singer Waylon Willey. Hey guys, thank you for listening today and I hope you're enjoying this podcast. If you are, please subscribe or follow the podcast, click the like button, share it with other music lovers and please consider giving a five-star rating so we can reach a bigger audience. Now back to the show.
Speaker 1:So what's the legacy of Bakersfield today? Well, in short, it proved that country music could thrive outside of Nashville and it gave the genre back some of its grit. Take Bucko, his stripped-down Telecaster sound directly inspired the outlaw movement in Texas. Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson both credited Bakersfield Rebels for showing them that you don't need to bow to the national system to reach an audience. Merle Haggard took it further by weaving working-class stories into his song Prison Ballad, oaky Identity and Blue Collar Pride. That lyrical honesty set the stage for outlaw poets like Chris Christopherson, billy Joe Schaefer and David Allen Coe.
Speaker 1:And then there's the ripple effect decades later, in the 1980s, the aforementioned Dwight Yoakam took the Bakersfield twang and mixed it with a rockabilly energy and made himself a superstar. Old Buck even came out of semi-retirement to record with him. And Brad Pazin has always cited the Telecaster-driven Bakersfield sound as a key info. And if you listen to the Red Dirt and Americana acts, bands like Turnpike, troubadour or now you guys help me on this one now, because I'm not familiar with this guy, I don't know if I'm saying his last name right. It's either Jason Isbell or Isbell. Y'all let me know in the comments. But you can still hear the echoes of that raw and boring, boring edge. Even rock and roll bands took notes.
Speaker 1:We mentioned earlier that the Beatles recorded Act Natural, the Grateful Dead performed Mama Tried hundreds of times in their concert the Creedence Clearwater Revival. Well, with their swampy guitar sound were spiritual cousins to the Bakersfield band. And in the big picture Bakersfield proved country music could be just as rebellious and authentic as rock and roll. Country music could be just as rebellious and authentic as rock and roll. It's a reminder that the genre has always been a conversation between polish and grit city and country, nashville and the rest of America. And today, when a Telecaster, kicks off a hard drive and shuffle, you can still feel Bakersfield in the room.
Speaker 1:Well, that's going to wrap it up for today's deep dive into the Bakersfield sound, highlighted by two legendary songs Buck Owens Act Naturally and Merle Haggard's On a Trail. Both tracks showcase why Bakersfield mattered. It was real, it was raw and it was spoken straight from the heart of working class people. So thanks for joining me here on the Two for Tuesday podcast brought to you by Second Round Music. And if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, share it with your fellow music loving friend and leave a review. And next week we'll keep the country music history rolling with another pair of classics. But until then, hey, remember we love you and we need you. Keep it twangy, keep it true. I'll catch you down the road. God bless you.