Country singer Buck Owens (”Hee Haw”), 76
Posted: Saturday, March 25th, 2006 1:30 pm
Singer Buck Owens, the flashy rhinestone cowboy who shaped the sound of country music with hits like “Act Naturally” and brought the genre to TV on the long-running “Hee Haw,” died Saturday. He was 76.
Owens died at his home in Bakersfield, said family spokesman Jim Shaw. The cause of death was not immediately known. Owens had undergone throat cancer surgery in 1993 and was hospitalized with pneumonia in 1997.
His career was one of the most phenomenal in country music, with a string of more than 20 No. 1 records, most released from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.
They were recorded with a honky-tonk twang that came to be known throughout California as the “Bakersfield Sound,” named for the town 100 miles north of Los Angeles that Owens called home. …
“I’d like to be remembered as a guy that came along and did his music, did his best and showed up on time, clean and ready to do the job, wrote a few songs and had a hell of a time,” he said in 1992. …
In addition to music, Owens had a highly visible TV career as co-host of “Hee Haw” from 1969 to 1986. With guitarist Roy Clark, he led viewers through a potpourri of country music and hayseed humor. … Read full obituary
