On March 25 in 2006, Buck Owens, who was born Alvis Edgar Owens Jr., passed away. When I was a kid, I thought Buck Owens was just a goofy guy who wore his overalls backwards and joked around on Hee Haw with Roy Clark (see comments below for further discussion about the backwards overalls). But as I grew up and learned more about classic country music, I discovered that Owens was a legend who made great music with his band, The Buckaroos.
Along with Merle Haggard, Owens was one of the first to stand up against the slick Nashville music to help create and popularize a rock-influenced honky tonk music called “the Bakersfield sound.” That music influenced and continues to influence many great country artists like Brad Paisley.
For example, in the clip below, Owens and his long-time legendary guitarist Don Rich performed “Love’s Gonna Live Here” in 1966 on the Jimmy Dean Show.
One of the artists touched by Owens is Dwight Yoakam. After Owens lost his friend and guitarist Don Rich in a motorcycle accident in 1974, Owens drifted out of the spotlight and eventually stopped recording music. In 1988, though, Dwight Yoakam helped bring Owens back to popularity when the two recorded a new version of Owens’s 1973 hit written by Homer Joy, “Streets of Bakersfield.”
The collaboration between Yoakam and Owens on “Streets of Bakersfield” gave Owens his first number one song in sixteen years. I love this song.
A Buck Owens biography portrayed Owens, who was married several times as sort of a jerk at times. But like he asks in “Streets of Bakersfield” about walking in another person’s shoes (or overalls), “[H]ow many of you that sit and judge me / Have ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?”
Country musicians were not the only ones who recognized the talent of Buck Owens and the great Bakersfield sound. In “Far Away Eyes” from Some Girls (1978), the Rolling Stones lyrics described driving through Bakersfield on the country sounding song. Creedence Clearwater Revival mentioned Owens in “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” (“Dinosaur Victrola, Listenin’ to Buck Owens”) on Cosmos Factory (1970).
Even more famously, in 1965 the Beatles covered one of Owens’s songs, “Act Naturally,” on Help! with Ringo Starr singing lead. Years later, Buck and Ringo joined their humor and musical skills to record a new version of “Act Naturally.”
When Owens passed away in 2006, he was sleeping in his bed. Hours earlier he was not feeling well and considered canceling a performance until he heard some fans had traveled from Oregon to California to hear him perform.
So he stood on stage at his Crystal Palace club and restaurant, singing one last time in Bakersfield.
You didn’t directly answer the question. Why are the overall backwards? Is it a costume reason like Minnie Pearl?
Thanks for the comment and your question. My understanding is that Owens never explicitly explained why he wore the overalls that way. One person has the theory that old time farmers would sometimes wear overalls backwards for certain events because the back would be cleaner and look nicer than the worn out front. That person surmised that Owens only did it for gospel songs, but that is not the case as there are videos of him with the backwards overalls doing non-gospel songs like “Old Joe Clark.” (https://youtu.be/Z_hvqCJno28?si=Ocghmo96EFJ0RNjN) It seemed to be a style choice for some performances on “Hee Haw,” but he did not always wear overalls on the show and even when he wore them, they were not always on backwards (as in this video of him performing “Battle of New Orleans” on the show: https://youtu.be/qiW3kodnKQY?si=Vim99yVZQeqtRBd0).
Without an official explanation from Buck Owens that I know of, why do I think he sometimes wore his overalls backwards on “Hee Haw”? My guess is that he was just doing it to be funny. Recall that “Hee Haw” featured a lot of silly humor, mixed in with some great music performances. Owens brought his talents to both the humor and the music, so it makes sense that he might make a stylistic choice to add to the silly humor.
Thanks again and take care.