Buck's in good form on this compilation, which sounds like tracks from his classic Capitol Records years. At least, the tracks I recognized sounded like the real deal--I downloaded seven tracks that were new to me. By the way, "Buckaroo" is one of the definitive country Telecaster songs of all time, and "A-11" is Buck's remake of a Johnny Paycheck tune.
Before he became the pickin' and grinnin' rube of Hee Haw, Alvis Edgar ''Buck'' Owens was the hippest country cat ever to sport a Nudie suit and a Fender Telecaster. Owens wasn't the architect of the Bakersfield sound — honky-tonk served with shrill guitars, pedal steels, scrappy fiddles, and stratospherically high harmony voices — but he helped to define and refine it in the '60s.
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five… more »
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five… more »
