‘Hee Haw’ TV star Buck Owens dies at 76

updated 6:04 p.m. ET March 25, 2006

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 think the reason he was so well known and respected by a younger generation of country musicians was because he was an innovator and rebel,” said Shaw, who played keyboards in Owens’ band, the Buckaroos. “He did it out of the Nashville establishment. He had a raw edge.”

Modest words, flashy persona
Owens, elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996, was modest when describing his aspirations.

“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.

Hulton Archive via Getty Images American country musician Buck Owens plays guitar in a promotion portrait for his 'All American Show,' in the mid-1960s.

An indefatigable performer, Owens played a red, white and blue guitar with fireball fervor. He and the Buckaroos wore flashy rhinestone suits in an era when flash was as important to country music as fiddles.

Among his biggest hits were “Together Again” (also recorded by Emmylou Harris), “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail,” “Love’s Gonna Live Here,” “My Heart Skips a Beat” and “Waitin’ in Your Welfare Line.”

And he was the answer to this music trivia question: What country star had a hit record that was later done by the Beatles?

“Those guys were phenomenal,” Owens once said.

Ringo Starr recorded “Act Naturally” twice, singing lead on the Beatles’ 1965 version and recording it as a duet with Owens in 1989. The song, by Johnny Russell and Voni Morrison, tells of a poor soul who foresees a movie career playing “a man who’s sad and lonely, and all I gotta do is act naturally. ... Might win an Oscar, you can never tell.”

Highly visible TV career
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.

“It’s an honest show,” Owens told The Associated Press in 1995. “There’s no social message — no crusade. It’s fun and simple.”

Owens himself could be rebellious, choosing among other things to label what he did “American music” rather than country.

“I took a little heat,” he once said. “People asked me, ‘Isn’t country music good enough for you?’ “

He also criticized the syrupy arrangements of some country singers, saying “assembly-line, robot music turns me off.”

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