Today I’m feeling a little bit country and a little bit rock’n’roll, just like Donny and Marie once did. So here’s a bit of Buck Owens. This song never fails to put a big fat smile on my face. It just swings, and rocks, and twangs in all the right places.

Buck Owens was the pioneer of the tough and twangy Bakersfield Sound, which came out of that sweltering city 100 miles or so north of Los Angeles in the 1950s and injected some rough-and-ready roots into country music.

I’ve previously posted his tune I’ve Got A Tiger By The Tail, and I may yet put up his signature song Streets Of Bakersfield.

Buck was born in Texas but his family migrated west to Arizona during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. He moved to Bakersfield with his wife and two young children in 1951 while working as a truck driver.

So it’s no surprise that this song appealed to him – though he didn’t write it himself. It was written by the leader of Buck’s first band, Terry Fell & The Fellers, and originally recorded by them in 1954, with Buck singing backing vocals.

This is the better-known version from a decade later by Buck Owen & His Buckaroos, who had been given their name by their first bass guitarist – fellow Bakersfield legend Merle Haggard.