Country sounds celebrated in Bakersfield Sound Collection
By Dan Ferguson Nov 3, 2019
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Ear Bliss
Various Artists
The Bakersfield Sound 1940-1974
Bear Family Records
Where do you begin with a review of a box set documenting the Bakersfield Sound in country music? Here’s thinking the best place is the stats. From the great chroniclers of the music of yesteryear and particularly country music, that being Bear Family Records of Germany, the newly released collection The Bakersfield Sound 1940-1974 is a wonderfully exhaustive motherlode of sounds from that important locale in the history of country music. As for those stats, try this on for size: 300-plus tracks spread over 10 CDs plus a 224-page coffee table-ready hardcover book with an array of photos, many of which are rare, and track-by-track commentary and analysis by Grammy-nominated Bakersfield sound historian Scott B. Bomar.
The roots of country and western and hillbilly music in California in large part can be traced to the Okie migration westward beginning during the Great Depression. If you watched the recent, and may I say excellent, Ken Burns documentary “Country Music” on PBS, you saw several segments where the focus was the human exodus westward from the depressed South and the Midwest dustbowl states in the hopes of better opportunities and how these people brought their roots and culture with them, including music. One such family was the Maddox family who left their home in Boaz, Alabama riding the rails and hitchhiking their way West in hopes of a better life.
The family eventually landed in the Modesto area of the Central Valley of California and in less than five years, the Maddox children had formed a hillbilly band billing themselves as The Maddox Brothers & Rose and performing on local radio. While not a Bakersfield entity per say, it was this high energy outfit that lit a musical fire of sorts in the Central Valley (which includes Bakersfield) and contributed in large part to helping ignite a scene that would lead to the area becoming such a hotbed of edgy C&W music. The collection The Bakersfield Sound takes a deep dive from those early post-Depression days beginning in the 1940s and continuing up through 1974 when the scene had begun to shift. On the surface, it was hard not to compare the country music originating from Bakersfield and other West Coast outposts with what was being made in Nashville.
Beginning with the early works of various Central Valley string bands straight through to the driving sounds of Buck Owens & His Buckaroos and the hard-edged twang of Merle Haggard, it wasn’t hard to hear the difference. There was a jump to it, a vibrancy and rawness to the sound of the Bakersfield brand of twang in comparison to its more constrained Music City counterpart. It was also more electrified, especially with the arrival of the Telecaster from California-based guitar maker Fender in the early 1950s. The likes of a Haggard, Owens and Wynn Stewart are no-brainers when you’re talking about a collection such as this one. They were the kingpins for sure and as one might expect prime material from all three is included. Yet, it is the “deep cuts” from the less familiar regional and obscure artists, many of whom have still yet to get their just-due in the reissue market, that are the prime attraction here.
From early architects like Fuzzy Owen, Lewis Talley, Bill Woods, Tommy Collins and The Farmer Boys to charting artists like Billy Mize, Red Simpson and Bobby Austin to relative obscurities like Barbara Cheatwood and instrumental group The Marksmen, consider this collection the ultimate big gulp of the Bakersfield Sound for which if you are fan, it is well worth your hard-earned dollar. Visit www.bear-family.com.
Looking to hear some for yourself? Music from The Bakersfield Sound box set will be featured on The Boudin Barndance radio program broadcast over 90.3 WRIU-FM on Thursday, November 7, from 6 – 9 pm. Not in the 90.3 WRIU-FM listening area? Check out the webcast at www.wriu.org/listen.
