By the mid-1950s he had worked his way into the Capitol Records studios in Los Angeles as a session player, backing such artists as Tennessee Ernie Ford, Sonny James, Wanda Jackson and Faron Young. During his days of session work, Buck often tried to convince the A & R men on Capitol’s staff that he had what it took to sell records. He was rejected time and time again. This pattern was broken only when one of the producers told him, “Owens, we’ve got plenty of singers, what we need are songs.”
While Buck continued to work sessions and play clubs, he now also began to write songs too. By 1956 his compositions had caught the eye of Capitol Records’ head man Ken Nelson, who reviewed all of Owens’ newly-written material. His opinion of it was favorable, and the following year Nelson signed Buck to a recording contract. Two years later, in October 1959, Buck Owens entered the Billboard Top Five for the first time with “Under Your Spell Again.”
One of the main attributes that had sold Ken Nelson on Buck was that he had a style all his own. Raised on Texas swing and cowboy music, Owens had also taken to rockabilly when that craze controlled the country charts. To these three diverse musical styles, the singer added a western honky-tonk vocal sound that was more melodic than Webb Pierce and more refined than Lefty Frizzell. While all of these areas of influence could be heard in his work, none seemed to dominate. It was an even mix that was unique to Buck. The style later became known as the “Bakersfield Sound,” and was the foundation for the music of Merle Haggard and Dwight Yoakam.
