country music

Bob Wills revolutionized country music in the 1930s by mixing jazz and string band influences. Like many of his fans in Oklahoma and Texas, he moved to Central California in the 1940s.

A Fresno man wrote the song that was a hit for Buck Owens and the Beatles.

In the 1950s, a new style of country music, influenced by rock-n-roll, emerged from Bakersfield’s honky-tonk bars. Pioneered by music legends like Buck…

Buck and Bonnie Owens, Merle Haggard, Bill Woods - their names are forever associated with the Bakersfield Sound. But what about the lesser known artists…

On this week’s Valley Edition: The emmy award winning filmmaker Ken Burns is coming to Fresno and Bakersfield next week. He tells us about his newest…

For decades Trout's Nightclub has been a fixture in the Oildale neighborhood of Bakersfield. It was the musical home of people like the late Red Simpson…

It might be the most famous boxcar in Kern County, if not the entire state of California. The childhood home of the late country music star Merle Haggard…

Acclaimed author Gerald Haslam grew up in the blue-collar Kern County community of Oildale in the 1940's, a child of the Dust Bowl migration to…

Can you imagine Southern California without Hollywood? Or the Bay Area without Silicon Valley?No? History suggests that the identities of cities and…

This week on Valley Edition, we look at the the future of California’s state parks system. After years of budget cuts and closures, how should this…