What is Bakersfield Sound?
The Bakersfield Sound is a subgenre of country music developed in the mid-to-late 1950s in and around Bakersfield, California, defined by its influences of rock and roll and honky-tonk style country, and its heavy use of electric instrumentation and backbeats. It was a reaction against the slickly produced, orchestra-laden Nashville Sound, which was becoming popular in the late 1950s. The sonic signature centers on twin Fender Telecasters with a picking style, a big drum beat, and fiddle, with an occasional pedal steel guitar.
This is not a spiritual practice, meditative tradition, or consciousness movement. The Bakersfield Sound is secular entertainment music—born in smoky honky-tonks where oil workers and migrant laborers danced, drank, and sought release from difficult working conditions.
Origins & Lineage
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 parts of the Midwest. The mass migration of “Okies” to California also meant their music would follow and thrive.
Important influences were the Depression-era country music superstar Jimmie Rodgers, the early 1950s honky tonk singer Lefty Frizzell, and the 1940s Western swing musician Bob Wills. In 1954, the 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—the first song recorded in the style known today as the “Bakersfield sound.”
Wynn Stewart pioneered the Bakersfield sound, while performing artists Buck Owens and Merle Haggard became two of the most successful artists of the original Bakersfield era while performing with the Buckaroos and the Strangers respectively. In the early 1960s, Merle Haggard and Buck Owens and the Buckaroos brought the Bakersfield sound to mainstream audiences, and it soon became one of the most popular sounds in country music.
How It’s Practiced
The Bakersfield Sound is performed, not practiced in a spiritual sense. Musicians play electric instruments—primarily the Fender Telecaster guitar—in stripped-down band configurations. Buck Owens described wanting to “sound like a locomotive comin’ right through the front room,” in contrast to Nashville’s approach of pouring “a gallon of maple syrup” over recordings.
In Bakersfield, the music was made for people “to dance to,” while the music in Nashville was intended for “sitting and listening.” Honky-tonks like The Blackboard, Bob’s Lucky Spot, and the Rainbow Gardens provided the primary venues. The lyrical content typically addresses working-class struggles, heartbreak, drinking, labor conditions, and the Dust Bowl migrant experience—not spiritual awakening or consciousness expansion.
Bakersfield Sound Today
The Bakersfield sound helped spawn country rock and influenced later country stars such as Dwight Yoakam, Marty Stuart, the Mavericks, and the Derailers. In 1996, Owens opened Buck Owens Crystal Palace in Bakersfield, which served as both a nightclub for country music performers and as a museum of the history and sound of country music.
Contemporary seekers encounter this music through recordings, live performances at venues like Trout’s Nightclub in Bakersfield, museum exhibits at the Kern County Museum, and the Country Music Hall of Fame’s 2012–2014 exhibition “The Bakersfield Sound: Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and California Country.” Dwight Yoakam’s satellite radio channel “Dwight Yoakam and the Bakersfield Beat” continues to showcase the genre.
Common Misconceptions
The Bakersfield Sound is not a spiritual practice. It has no connection to meditation, consciousness work, yoga, energy healing, or contemplative traditions. It is a genre of American popular music—entertainment created for and by working-class people in bars.
It is not interchangeable with “California country.” Dwight Yoakam notes that “Bakersfield” encompasses the larger California country sound of the 1940s–1970s, including artists like Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, and the Eagles, but the core sound remains specific to the raw, electric style pioneered in Bakersfield honky-tonks.
It is not synonymous with all outlaw country. While the Bakersfield Sound influenced the outlaw country movement of the 1970s (Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings), those artists developed distinct sounds and were based primarily in Texas and Nashville.
How to Begin
To understand the Bakersfield Sound, listen to the source material:
- Buck Owens: “Act Naturally” (1963), “Tiger by the Tail” (1965), “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail”
- Merle Haggard: “Mama Tried” (1968), “Okie from Muskogee” (1969), “Workin’ Man Blues” (1969)
- Wynn Stewart: “Wishful Thinking” (1962), “It’s Such a Pretty World Today” (1967)
For historical context, read Gerald Haslam’s Workin’ Man Blues or the exhibit guide The Bakersfield Sound: Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and California Country (Country Music Hall of Fame, 2012). Visit Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace or the Kern County Museum’s permanent Bakersfield Sound exhibit if traveling to Bakersfield, California.