DAD'S COOL WITH IT

A couple of days ago in the post about LA LOM, the description of their music (lifted from their web site) was "with the twang of Peruvian Chicha and Bakersfield Country." Shit, for the past few days I keep thinking about the Bakersfield sound. If you're not familiar with what the Bakersfield sound was, it was a California rebut to the glossy over-produced country music coming out of Nashville. Sounds like a similar challenge as that of punk rock vs glossy over-produced rock 'n' roll music coming out of everywhere. That's my analogy for the night and I'm stickin' to it.

Buck Owens was part and parcel of the Bakersfield sound, due in no small part to the superb chicken pickin' from Buckaroos lead guitarist Don Rich. Check the video above, annotated with comments about the simple but effective mic placement.

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Listen:

Buck Owens - World Famous Paradise Inn mp3 at Internet Archive
Buck Owens - Loves Gonna Live Here mp3 at Rocky 52
Buck Owens - I Don't Care (Just As Long As You Love Me) mp3 at Rocky 52
Buck Owens - Our Old Mansion mp3 at Internet Archive
Buck Owens - Rollin' In My Sweet Baby's Arms mp3 at Rocky 52
Buck Owens - Johnny B. Good mp3 at Rocky 52
Buck Owens - Corn Liquor mp3 at Rocky 52

Visit:
Buck Owens Brunch: The Tragic Story of Don Rich at Bigfoot Diaries This is a great read.

AND HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN A TRUCK?

I wasn't even looking for it and if you would have asked I would have said I wasn't in the mood for trucker music. But after a few random clicks I ended up on Red Simpson's "(Hello) I'm a Truck". It hit the spot. The Bakersfield sound of it, his rap in the middle of it, and that it's a truck singing about it's owner. Good stuff too, the shame of being passed by a "Volkswagen bus full of hippies".

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Listen:
Red Simpson - (Hello) I'm a Truck mp3 at Tumblr

OH YES HE DID. JUST NOT IN MUSKOGEE.

Merle Haggard died today. Shit. No one lives forever, but he was one of those people that I can't remember not being cognizant of. Always around somewhere. That's the sort of thing that makes you stop and think. My earliest memories of him were from appearances on Hee Haw, a TV show that my Dad watched. From there it was cover versions of his songs in my own record collection, by John Fogerty, Gram Parsons and the Knitters (John Doe and Exene from X and Dave Alvin from the Blasters). By that time he had all the credibility a younger me needed. Not that it mattered. As I would find out, he was country cred incarnate.

As a kid he was in and out of juvenile detention centers, escaping twice, ran away, hitch hiked and rode the rails, and ended up in full grown prison before he even reached drinking age. It was after seeing Johnny Cash play while he was doing time in San Quentin that he decided to turn his life around. But before any sort of music career, in the midst of all that running around before and after his release, he worked as a short order cook, a ditch digger, he wired homes and he drove a potato truck. He was a regular guy. So, when he sang songs like "Working Man Blues", or songs about drinking or break ups, it wasn't patronizing fluff. In terms of American music, country or otherwise, he was the real deal. Shit.

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Listen:
Merle Haggard - Skid Row (streaming) at YouTube His first record
Merle Haggard - Today I Started Loving You Again mp3 at Internet Archive
Merle Haggard - You Got the Money mp3 at Internet Archive
Merle Haggard - Turn Me Loose mp3 at Internet Archive
Merle Haggard - Green Green Grass of Home mp3 at Internet Archive
Merle Haggard - Long Black Limousine mp3 at Internet Archive
Merle Haggard - Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down mp3 at Internet Archive
Merle Haggard - Silver Wings mp3 at Internet Archive
Merle Haggard - Please Mr. DJ mp3 at Internet Archive
Now, go attack the search engines.

GONE TO THE REST STOP

Red Simpson died on Thursday in Bakersfield, his hometown and the city so identified with a particular strain of country and western music that it was called the Bakersfield sound. He sang a lot about trucks and truck driving. Though not as well known outside of the trucker mob as Red Sovine, Dave Dudley and others, his "(Hello} I'm a Truck" is an all time trucker classic. Come to think of it, maybe his second tier status was because people thought he actually was a truck. Then again, he also sang about cops. Go figure.

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Listen:
Red Simpson - (Hello) I'm a Truck mp3 at ATumblr (?)
Red Simpson - Diesel Smoke, Dangerous Curves (streaming) at YouTube
Red Simpson - Johnny Law mp3 at Glorify the Turd
Red Simpson - The Highway Patrol mp3 at Glorify the Turd
Red Simpson and Junior Brown - Nitro Express mp3 at Big Rock Candy Mountain

DAD, WHY DO YOU WATCH HEE HAW?

I've been meaning to point you towards a few posts over at the Adios Lounge. They're the perfect introduction to the whole spectrum of Bakersfield sounding stuff, and the Bakersfield sound proper. He covers it all, from Buck Owens and Don Rich to the Byrds, Clarence White, Flying Burrito Brothers, and so on, all with the insights of someone who knows the genre well.

Here's a couple that I happened to like, but there's lots more, and videos, at the posts linked to below. Check the Byrds cut, an instrumental featuring Clarence White. It's exhausting. It's a somewhat muddy live recording, but his playing cuts right through it. Check the posts too. There's some overlapping (due to repeated tags) but there's a whole lot of music and know how.

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Listen:
The Byrds - Nashville West (live) mp3 at The Adios Lounge Featuring Clarence White
Buck Owens - Second Fiddle mp3 at The Adios Lounge Don Rich on fiddle
Bone up on Bakersfield:
Don Rich at The Adios Lounge
Buck Owens at The Adios Lounge
Merle Haggard at The Adios Lounge
The Flying Burrito Brothers at The Adios Lounge
Clarence White at The Adios Lounge
The Bakersfield Sound at The Adios Lounge