Tag: Bakersfield Sound

Merle Haggard: “Kern River”

Kern River

On April 6, 2016, Merle Haggard passed away from complications from pneumonia on his 79th birthday in the state where he was born, California. Along with the likes of Johnny Cash and George Jones, Haggard was one of real legends of country music.

In my younger years, I learned of Haggard’s music through songs like 1969’s “Okie from Muskogee” and 1970’s “Fightin’ Side of Me,” which may have made me resistant at first due to the apparent political nature of those songs. But eventually as an adult, I fell in love with his music, his voice, and his Bakersfield influence. I found fondness for the above songs and fell in love with many others, like “Tulare Dust” and “They’re Tearing the Labor Camps Down.”

Heck, the man not only did a tribute album to Jimmy Rodgers, he learned the fiddle just so he could do a tribute album to Bob Wills, The Best Damn Fiddle Player in the World (1970). He was the real deal, both as a singer and as a songwriter.

One of my favorite Merle Haggard songs is “Kern River.” The lyrics written by Haggard tell a mysterious and haunting tale about loss and regret. In it, the singer is an old man in the mountains looking back on his life and a river from his youth, Kern River, which he will never swim again. He recalls that “It was there I first met her / It was there that I lost my best friend.” And it is only later in the song where you realize that the “her” was also his best friend who got swept away by the river.

The most beautiful line in the song, for me, is in the chorus. The singer now lives on a lake, and he laments, “And I may drown in still water / But I’ll never swim Kern River again.” Something about that line breaks my heart every time, just the way my heart is breaking today at the loss of the country great.

In this video, Merle Haggard performs “Kern River” on a country talk show in 1984 before the song was even released the following year. Check it out.

What is your favorite Merle Haggard song? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    I May Drown in Still Waters

    Merle Haggard Kern River

    One of my favorite songs by Merle Haggard is “Kern River.” The song has one of the greatest lines ever written, “I may drown in still waters but I’ll never swim Kern River again.” The line tells you everything you need to know about the song about longing, sadness, loss, and memory.

    Haggard wrote “Kern River” and released the song in 1985 as the title track of the album Kern River. The song was not a number one hit, but it went up to number 10 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. Haggard performs his classic below on Ralph Emery’s show as Porter Wagoner looks on, noting that Haggard “is a dangerous man with a song.” Check it out.

    Wagoner is not the only fan of the song. Rolling Stone lists “Kern River” among the essential Merle Haggard songs. Allmusic claims “Kern River” is “one of Merle’s best latter-day songs.”

    Other notable artists have praised “Kern River.” Bob Dylan loves the song, noting the song “is a beautiful lament, but let’s not forget it’s about his girlfriend dying.” Emmylou Harris has claimed that “Kern River” is her favorite Merle Haggard song, and she has recorded her own version of it. Check out her version with images of the real Kern River.

    The real Kern River flows around 165 miles through California, draining around the southern Sierra Nevada mountains northeast of Bakersfield, a town often associated with Haggard for “the Bakersfield sound.” Also, Haggard grew up near Kern River, later building a mansion on the river. The Lake Shasta mentioned in the song is a real place too. Haggard owned a cabin on the still waters of the lake.

    Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Son Volt Goes to Bakersfield on “Honky Tonk”

    Son Volt Honky Tonk

    On Tuesday, March 5, Son Volt releases its seventh album Honky Tonk (2013). The country Bakersfield Sound influences the album, and lead singer Jay Farrar described why the band chose the album’s title: “Honky tonk music is about heartache, heartbreak, the road.” For those like me who have been following Farrar and Son Volt since the band spun off from Uncle Tupelo, the new album captures what was great about the band from the very beginning, even though Farrar’s current version of Son Volt has different band members than when they started. Just listen to the fiddle on the opening track, “Hearts and Minds”:

    Here is Son Volt’s teaser video for the appropriately entitled “Bakersfield” from the album:

    American Songwriter magazine is streaming the album for a limited time, so hop to their website to hear the rest of the tracks. Farrar also has a new memoir Falling Cars and Junkyard Dogs coming out this month about his career, including the breakup of Uncle Tupelo that led Jeff Tweedy to create Wilco. After listening through the tracks, I am excited about the new release. With new and upcoming releases from Son Volt, The Mavericks, Steve Earle, and others, it is already looking like a good year for Americana music.

    What is your favorite Son Volt album? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Buck Owens: Don’t Judge a Man’s Music By His Overalls

    Buck Owens Hee Haw 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. 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 influenced and continues to influence many great country artists like Brad Paisley. 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 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. So he stood on stage at his Crystal Palace club and restaurant, singing one last time in Bakersfield.

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