How ‘Okie’ Music Changed California's — and America’s — Musical DNA

As part of the California Report Magazine’s look at how migration from Oklahoma changed California, host Sasha Khokha spoke with Robert Price, author of “The Bakersfield Sound: How a Generation of Displaced Okies Revolutionized American Music." He’s also a longtime columnist and the former executive editor at The Bakersfield Californian. Excerpts from the interview have been edited for brevity and clarity.

On whether the word “Okie” is a derogatory term:

At one point in time it was. But over time it became kind of a point of pride [a symbol of their attitude of survival] . Okies called themselves 'Okies' and they let everybody else call them Okies as well. Every once in a while you'll still hear an old-timers say, "Hey that's not the term we like to hear," but it's pretty well accepted now.

On what defines the Bakersfield sound:

It’s not so much a sound as it is a time and place. It was just a unique period of time between about 1949 and 1970 when Bakersfield was the hot spot, the center of the country music universe. The two main practitioners are Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, and their sounds are not really very much alike. Buck has a rockabilly thing going on, will a little bit of norteño thrown in there. Merle Haggard had more of a western swing and a jazz sensibility. The one thing they all had in common besides that locale was the instrument of choice, the Fender Telecaster. It cut through the bass line, cut through the drums and reverberated off the aluminum siding.

On Merle Haggard’s lyrics about working people:

He was a blue collar guy. His dad worked for the railroad, and he himself had a lot of manual labor jobs. His audiences were people that worked in the fields picking cotton and picking fruit. He grew up in a converted boxcar in Oildale, adjacent to the Kern River Oil Field, which is one of the biggest oil fields in the lower 48 states. Between oil and agriculture, these were working class people.

On the ways “Okies” changed California culture:

The Okies that came west in the mid '30s through the early '50s brought with them not just music, but they brought a distinct way of talking. They brought a religious sensibility that hadn't been on the West Coast before, more of a "praise the Lord out loud" kind of religion. They brought some conservative politics with them. It completely changed California, certainly Central California.

[Merle Haggard’s] “Okie from Muskogee” really encapsulates those differences. The references to the shaggy long hair in San Francisco, the marijuana smoking. The message was “we’re not like those people.”

On Buck Owens’ “Rags to Rhinestone” story – and how he rebelled against Nashville:

Buck Owens early on told himself "I am never going to be poor." And he lived his life trying to be as unlike his childhood as he possibly could be in terms of his financial circumstances.

Country music out of Nashville became a lot more orchestrated, with strings and beautiful backing harmonies. In Bakersfield, Buck Owens led a sort of rebellion. Rockabilly and rock 'n' roll became more of an influence. And as it turned out the American listening public really liked his sound. And that's kind of how Bakersfield stole that momentum away from Nashville and kind of became the center of the country music universe for a half a generation or so.

On women in the “Bakersfield Sound” scene:

Jean Shepherd recorded the first hit associated with the Bakersfield sound: a duet with Frank Husky called “Dear John.”

Jean Shepherd was from Visalia, but she kind of gravitated down to Bakersfield, and then went to Nashville. She lived out a very successful career in Nashville as a member of the Grand Ole Opry.

On how the Bakersfield Sound changed American music:

You know you hear so many artists today, country music artists, and rock 'n' roll artists, who point to people like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard and the music of the Bakersfield sound as being so influential in their careers. They were both great songwriters in very different sorts of ways, and I think that songwriting sensibility kind of seeped into the minds of a lot of songwriters who came later. It kind of got into the national DNA.

On what we can learn from the “Okie” experience in California:

The story of America is a story of migration. The migration of the Okies is a huge part of American history. People move and they bring their influences to the places they go, and they change those places. The Okies changed California tremendously. Migration is an ongoing thing. The movement of people changes our history.