Alvis Edgar Owens Jr. (August 12, 1929 – March 25, 2006), known professiona… Read Full Bio ↴Alvis Edgar Owens Jr. (August 12, 1929 – March 25, 2006), known professionally as Buck Owens, was an American musician, singer, songwriter, and band leader. He was the lead singer for Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, which had 21 No. 1 hits on the Billboard country music chart. He pioneered what came to be called the Bakersfield sound, named in honor of Bakersfield, California, Owens's adopted home and the city from which he drew inspiration for what he preferred to call "American music".

While the Buckaroos originally featured a fiddle and retained pedal steel guitar into the 1970s, their sound on records and onstage was always more stripped-down and elemental. The band's signature style was based on simple story lines, infectious choruses, a twangy electric guitar, an insistent rhythm supplied by a prominent drum track, and high, two-part vocal harmonies featuring Owens and his guitarist Don Rich.

From 1969 to 1986, Owens co-hosted the popular CBS television variety show Hee Haw with Roy Clark (syndicated beginning in 1971). According to his son Buddy Alan (Owens), the accidental 1974 death of Rich, his best friend, devastated him for years and impacted his creative efforts until he performed with Dwight Yoakam in 1988.

Owens is a member of both the Country Music Hall of Fame and Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Owens was born on a farm in Sherman, Texas, United States, to Alvis Edgar Owens Sr. and Maicie Azel (née Ellington) Owens.

In the biography About Buck., Rich Kienzle writes: "'Buck' was a donkey on the Owens farm." "When Alvis Jr. was three or four years old, he walked into the house and announced that his name also was "Buck." That was fine with the family, and the boy's name became "Buck" from then on."He attended public school for grades 1–3 in Garland, Texas.

Owens' family moved to Mesa, Arizona, in 1937 during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. While attending school in Arizona, Owens found that while he disliked formal schoolwork, he could often satisfy class requirements by singing or performing in school plays. A self-taught musician and singer, Owens became proficient on guitar, mandolin, horns, and drums. When he obtained his first electric steel guitar, he taught himself to play it after his father adapted an old radio into an amplifier. Owens quit school in the ninth grade in order to help work on his father's farm and pursue a music career.

Owens had three sons: Buddy Alan (who charted several hits as a Capitol recording artist in the early 1970s and appeared with his father numerous times on Hee Haw), Johnny, and Michael Owens.

Owens successfully recovered from oral cancer in the early 1990s, but had additional health problems near the end of the 1990s and the early 2000s, including pneumonia and a minor stroke in 2004. These health problems had forced him to curtail his regular weekly performances with the Buckaroos at his Crystal Palace. Owens died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack at his ranch just north of Bakersfield on March 25, 2006, only hours after performing at his club. He was 76 years old.

Owens was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996. He was ranked No. 12 in CMT's 40 Greatest Men of Country Music in 2003. In addition, CMT also ranked the Buckaroos No. 2 in the network's 20 Greatest Bands in 2005. He was also inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.

The stretch of US Highway 82 in Sherman, Texas, is named the Buck Owens Freeway in his honor.

Come Back
Buck Owens Lyrics

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I've done everything I could to make you happy
Yes I've given everything that I could use
But the best I had to offer couldn't hold you
You just couldn't seem to live the way I do
For the glamor of the gay night life is calling
And it won't be long till you will set me free
But if your happy days should end and if lonely nights begin
Hurry come running back to me

Come running back to mine two open arms
Come running back to mine two wailing lips

If your happy days should end and if lonely nights begin
Hurry come running back to me hurry come running back to me

Overall Meaning

The song "Come Back" by Buck Owens is a heartbreaking ballad about a man who has done everything he can to make his lover happy but she cannot seem to stay committed to him. He sings of how he has given all that he can, but she is still drawn to the allure of the nightlife and cannot live the way he does. Owens' pained vocals and the mournful melody evoke the desperation and sadness of a man who is being left behind by the person he loves.

The lyrics describe how the singer has done everything he could to try and hold onto his lover, but it seems that she is set on leaving him. The chorus is a plea for her to come back to him if the life she's chosen doesn't work out. He tells her that if her happy days end and lonely nights begin, he'll be there waiting for her with open arms and "wailing lips." This powerful imagery conveys the depth of his love and desperation to keep her by his side.

Come BackBuck Owens Lyrics

Come Back
Buck Owens Lyrics