VARIOUS ARTISTS
Bakersfield Sound: Country Music Capital Of The West 1940-1974 BEAR FAMILY 9/10
Goodbye Dust Bowl, hello Golden State: 300 songs, 164 mini-bios, countless fuzzy tales finally unfolded
WHILE Ken Burns’ recent documentary series on country music, strong as it is, winds its way through the music’s finest influences and tragic moments, the Bear Family label, in its decades-long commitment to twang, steel and honky-tonk, routinely draws listeners deep into country & western’s crawlspace. Here, music is unearthed, famous and not-so-famous artists explored, and finely detailed history springs forth. Scores of Depression-damaged originators, rambling away from desolate Oklahoma and its tributaries to California in the 1930s and ’40s, sought new lives good or bad. Among them, young musicians latched onto western swing, rockabilly and hillbilly boogie, Okie-folk harmonies, boy-girl duets and brittle bluesy guitar bop. Deft live performances overrode recording acumen, and – loneliness be gone – life’s callings began a-rumbling: romance (its many rewards, its myriad faults), jive talking and womanising (and women’s reactions thereto), hardcore drinking and capitalism’s nickel-and-dime gambits.
Buck Owens & His Buckaroos and Merle Haggard & The Strangers – both represented here – eventually emerged as superstars, Bakersfield emissaries (sadly, some Haggard rarities were nixed just before release). With singsong hooks, unforgettable songwriting and glorious backing by the likes of steel master Norman Hamlet and harmoniser/ six-string virtuoso Don Rich, they stacked up hit singles.
But the gravitas of Bakersfield’s beginnings, influences and cultural epiphany is at the heart of this set. Young, hungry and feisty – hopefuls surged into view, full of talent, ambition and a strong work ethic; and many were left in the dust. Song after song by obscure artists, though, feels like wandering into a dive bar, sipping a Pabst Blue Ribbon, ears converging with fiddles and steel guitars that claw and burn on the upswing (Skeets Mcdonald’s “Keep Her Off Your Mind”), then cloud over to teardrops on sad-sack ballads like Lewis Talley’s “Letters Have No Arms”. With popularity eventually rising, Billy Mize virtually invented Bakersfield songwriting (“Who Will Buy The Wine”). Jaw-dropping songwriters Dallas Frazier and Harlan Howard followed, composing 3,300-plus songs. Ferlin Husky, Barbara Mandrell, Wynn Stewart, Jean Shepard and Freddie Hart landed the town’s unique sound on radio for years.
But formula was never Bakersfield’s forte. For example, Owens’ and Haggard’s songwriting heroes Tommy Collins (“You Better Not Do That”) and Red Simpson (“I’m A Truck”) were unconventional and hilarious, revelling in the outré. Pioneer Bill Woods may have invented C&W’S Dave Dudley-led trucking syndicate with “Truck Drivin’ Man”, but early on, in 1947, he and his Orange Blossom Playboys opened up Bakersfield, hillbilly-style. Fiddler Jelly Sanders, singer Kay Adams and the ever-eccentric Gary Paxton, to name three, symbolised the scene’s maverick ways. Mover-and-shaker Fuzzy Owen, key in landing Haggard in the studio and on the map, later summarised, sharply and succinctly, Bakersfield’s artistry and its reality: “Everybody thought they had a chance of getting somewhere.”