Bakersfield Sound

Bakersfield sound
Stylistic origins	Country music, pop music
Cultural origins	1950s California
Typical instruments	Guitar, fiddle, bass, drums, banjo, pedal steel guitar, piano, vocals
Fusion genres
Country rock
Other topics
Country musicians - List of years in country music

The Bakersfield sound is a genre of country music developed in the mid- to late 1950s in and around Bakersfield, California. Bakersfield country was a reaction against the slickly produced, string orchestra-laden Nashville sound, which was becoming popular in the late 1950s. Buck Owens and The Buckaroos and Merle Haggard and the Strangers are the most successful artists of the original Bakersfield sound era. Other major Bakersfield country artists include Wynn Stewart, Jean Shepard, Tommy Collins, Susan Raye, Joe Maphis, Dennis Payne and Freddie Hart.

The Bakersfield sound was developed at honky-tonk bars such as The Blackboard, and on local television stations in Bakersfield and throughout California in the 1950s and 1960s. The town, known mainly for agriculture and oil production, was the destination for many Dust Bowl migrants and others from Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and other parts of the South. The mass migration of "Okies" to California also meant that their music would follow and thrive, finding an audience in California's Central Valley. One of the first groups to make it big on the west coast was the Maddox Brothers and Rose, who were the first to wear outlandish costumes and make a "show" out of their performances.

Bakersfield country was a reaction to the slickly-produced, string orchestra-laden Nashville Sound, which was becoming popular in the late 1950s. Artists like Wynn Stewart used electric instruments and added a backbeat, as well as other stylistic elements borrowed from rock and roll. Important influences were Depression-era country music superstar Jimmie Rodgers and 1940s Western swing musician Bob Wills. In 1954 MGM recording artist Bud Hobbs recorded "Louisiana Swing" with Buck Owens on lead guitar, Bill Woods on piano, and the dual fiddles of Oscar Whittington and Jelly Sanders. "Louisiana Swing" was the first song recorded in the style known today as the legendary "Bakersfield Sound". In the early 1960s, Merle Haggard and Buck Owens and The Buckaroos, among others, brought the Bakersfield sound to mainstream audiences, and it soon became one of the most popular kinds of country music, also influencing later country stars such as Dwight Yoakam, Marty Stuart, The Mavericks, and The Derailers.

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