Bakersfield produced two of the greatest country music artists of all time in Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. There were many other local artists though, overshadowed by those two titans. They include one woman who had an outsized influence in shaping the Bakersfield sound, in more ways than one. The story of Bonnie Owens today on KVPR's Central Valley Roots.
Bonnie Campbell was born in Oklahoma in 1929, and was known early on for her distinctive voice. She met another young country singer, Buck Owens in Arizona, and the two married in 1948. They moved to Bakersfield in 1951 and had two boys, before the couple divorced in 1953. That’s the same year that Bonnie made her first recording “A Dear John Letter,” a duet with another Bakersfield country artist Fuzzy Owen. She recorded more singles throughout the 50s, but they didn’t result in a hit.
Then in 1961, she met a young Merle Haggard. She joined Merle’s band The Strangers, singing backup vocals and duets, like the hit “Just Between the Two of Us.” Bonnie Owens and Merle Haggard married in 1965, the same year she recorded her debut album on Capitol Records. The Academy of Country Music named her best female vocalist in 1967.
She recorded seven more albums as a leader but never had another hit. Haggard admitted that Bonnie could have been a bigger star, but put her career on the backburner to support his. The two divorced in 1978 but remained close and they continued to tour together through the 1990s.Bonnie Owens died in Bakersfield in 2006.
