Buck Owens: The Biography
by Eileen Sisk
Published by Chicago Review Press, June 2010
Buck Owens was the top-selling country act of the 1960s, with 21 number-one hits and 35 consecutive top-ten hits, a total surpassed only by the Beatles. Inventor of the Bakersfield sound, he was hugely popular not only with country fans, but rock fans too. The Beatles covered his songs, Gram Parsons idolized him, the Grateful Dead loved him. At least five marriages, several TV shows, and a publishing and media empire followed. And a number of current country stars, ranging from Dwight Yoakam to Marty Stuart, owe their sound to him.
Yet never before has there been a book about Buck Owens. And the man that emerges from its pages is the polar opposite of the aw-shucks image he cultivated on Hee-Haw. A tight-fisted control freak with an outsized appetite for sex, Owens could be ruthlessly cruel at one moment and as slippery as a snake the next.
Buck Owens chronicles his rise from poverty as son of a sharecropper to one of the nation’s best-loved entertainers, worth at least $100 million when he died. It is authoritative: it counts among its myriad sources five Buckaroos, the producer of Hee Haw, the former president of Capitol Nashville, numerous country singers, relatives, wives, lovers, and employees. This biography fully reveals, for the first time, not only one of country’s biggest stars, but perhaps its biggest son of a bitch.
About Eileen Sisk
Eileen Sisk is a former editor at the Tennessean in Nashville and the Washington Post and the author of Honky-Tonks: Guide to Country Dancin’ and Romancin’
Praise
“Eileen Sisk wrote—finally—what every citizen in Bakersfield had already known for years, or should have known, the truth about Buck Owens, the truth local journalists apparently feared to tread—even after Owens' passing. By now, after the inevitable feedback, I am sure she realizes she just scratched the surface on ol’ Bucko, the person. She has mined the past in a city where others in her trade feared to even shake the timbers.”
— Bryce Martin, pioneer country music columnist for the Bakersfield Californian
“I bought your book on Buck Owens on Friday at the Barnes and Noble in Los Angeles, and just love the detail and passion. … I marvel at your degree of detail; how you uncovered so many fascinating facts that most writers would simply pass by or not even try to get because it takes work.”
— Robert Hilburn, author of Corn Flakes with John Lennon and Other Tales from a Rock ’n’ Roll Life and former pop music critic and editor for the Los Angeles Times
“Eileen Sisk captures the real Buck. I knew him. I was on his payroll. I experienced the weird weaknesses. I witnessed the anger. Buck was a story like very few others in all areas of entertainment. Eileen Sisk is a tremendous writer. She has the guts, she has the ‘perfect subject,’ and she’s overstocked with talent. Her book is dynamite—a masterpiece, a sure-fire winner.”
— Bill Mack, “The Satellite Cowboy,” host of Country Crossroads radio and TV shows
“This biography should be required reading for any serious country music fan. BUCK OWENS: The Biography is meticulously researched, the revealing saga of one of the genre’s most flamboyant stars.”
— Patsi Bale Cox, author of The Garth Factor: The Career Behind Country's Big Boom and Nickel Dreams with Tanya Tucker