ON JULY 17, 1974, DON RICH LEFT BUCK OWENS’S BAKERSFIELD STUDIO ON A MOTORCYCLE TO JOIN HIS FAMILY FOR VACATION. HOURS LATER, HE WAS DEAD AT 32 — AND BUCK SAID THE JOY WENT OUT OF HIS MUSIC WITH HIM. Before the red, white, and blue guitars, before Hee Haw, and before Buck Owens became one of country music’s most recognizable men, there was a young fiddle player from Washington named Don Ulrich. Buck first heard him in Tacoma near the end of the 1950s. Don was considering college and a career teaching music, but Buck saw a musician who could anticipate every turn in a song and make two voices sound as if they had been raised together. Don shortened his name to Don Rich and followed Buck south. Together, they built a country sound far removed from the polished records coming out of Nashville: Fender Telecasters, hard drums, sharp fiddle breaks, and harmonies strong enough to cut through crowded dance halls. Buck sang the lead. Don answered from just over his shoulder. When “Act Naturally” reached No. 1 in 1963, Don was there. He remained beside Buck through “Love’s Gonna Live Here,” “Together Again,” “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail,” “Buckaroo,” and the run of records that turned Bakersfield into Nashville’s loudest rival. Don led the Buckaroos, played guitar and fiddle, arranged harmonies, and supplied the high tenor voice behind many of Buck’s biggest records. Even listeners who did not know his name knew the sound he made possible. Their partnership also extended beyond the stage. They hunted together, worked side by side in the studio, and became close to one another’s families. Buck later described Don as a brother, a son, and a best friend. But there was one part of Don’s life Buck feared. Motorcycles. Don loved riding them. Buck had reportedly spent years asking him to stop. On July 17, 1974, Don finished working at Buck’s Bakersfield studio and prepared to ride north toward the Central Coast, where his wife and children were waiting for him to join a fishing vacation. Buck reportedly urged him not to take the motorcycle. Don left anyway. That evening, while traveling north on Highway 1 near Morro Bay, his motorcycle struck the center divider at Yerba Buena Street. Investigators reportedly found no skid marks and no clear mechanical failure explaining the crash. Don was taken to Sierra Vista Hospital in San Luis Obispo and pronounced dead at 10:55 p.m. He was thirty-two. Buck continued recording, appearing on television, and performing with new versions of the Buckaroos. From the outside, the career kept moving. But the voice and guitar that had answered him through his greatest years were gone. For years, Buck spoke little publicly about Don’s death. When he finally opened up in the late 1990s, he admitted that although he had continued working, his musical life had largely ended the night Don died. The records made after July 1974 still carried Buck Owens’s name. What they could no longer carry was Don’s high harmony, the bright Telecaster beside Buck’s own, and the man who had helped turn a California oil town into one of the capitals of country music.

“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.”

DON RICH LEFT BUCK OWENS’S STUDIO ON A MOTORCYCLE. HOURS LATER, BUCK LOST THE VOICE THAT HAD MADE BAKERSFIELD SOUND LIKE BAKERSFIELD.

Before the red, white, and blue guitars, before Hee Haw, before Buck Owens became one of country music’s most recognizable men, there was a young fiddle player from Washington named Don Ulrich.

Buck first heard him in Tacoma near the end of the 1950s. Don was thinking about college and a career teaching music, but Buck heard something different. He heard a musician who could anticipate every turn in a song.

More than that, he heard a voice that could rise beside his own and make two men sound like they had been singing together since childhood.

Don shortened his name to Don Rich.

Then he followed Buck south.

Buck Did Not Just Find A Band Member

Don Rich was never only a sideman.

He became the sound just over Buck Owens’s shoulder. The high harmony. The sharp guitar. The fiddle break. The clean answer to Buck’s lead vocal.

Together, they built a country sound far removed from the polished records coming out of Nashville.

Fender Telecasters.

Hard drums.

Sharp fiddle lines.

Harmonies strong enough to cut through crowded dance halls and car radios without losing their edge.

Buck was the name out front.

But Don was the spark that made the sound burn brighter.

Bakersfield Started Fighting Nashville

When “Act Naturally” reached No. 1 in 1963, Don was there.

He stayed beside Buck through “Love’s Gonna Live Here,” “Together Again,” “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail,” “Buckaroo,” and the run of records that turned Bakersfield into Nashville’s loudest rival.

Don led the Buckaroos. He played guitar and fiddle. He arranged harmonies. He carried the high tenor that lifted many of Buck’s biggest records.

Even listeners who did not know his name knew what he made possible.

They heard it when Buck’s voice rose and Don’s came in above it.

They heard it when the Telecaster snapped.

They heard it when the band sounded too bright, too hard, and too alive to belong to the smoother Nashville machine.

The Bond Went Past The Records

Buck and Don were not only tied together by hit songs.

They worked side by side in the studio. They hunted together. Their families grew close. The years on the road and in the recording room turned the partnership into something deeper than star and bandleader.

Buck later described Don as a brother, a son, and a best friend.

That kind of connection is hard to explain from the outside.

But the records explain part of it.

Buck did not sound like a singer being backed by hired musicians. He sounded like a man being answered by someone who already knew where the song was headed before it got there.

There Was One Thing Buck Feared

Don loved motorcycles.

Buck hated that he loved them.

He had reportedly spent years asking Don to stop riding. Maybe it was worry. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe Buck simply understood that the whole Bakersfield machine depended on Don Rich making it safely from one place to the next.

On July 17, 1974, Don finished working at Buck’s Bakersfield studio.

His wife and children were waiting on the Central Coast for a fishing vacation.

Buck reportedly urged him not to take the motorcycle.

Don left anyway.

Highway 1 Took Him Before He Reached His Family

That evening, Don was riding north on Highway 1 near Morro Bay.

At Yerba Buena Street, his motorcycle struck the center divider.

Investigators reportedly found no skid marks and no clear mechanical failure explaining the crash.

Don was taken to Sierra Vista Hospital in San Luis Obispo.

He was pronounced dead at 10:55 p.m.

He was thirty-two years old.

A man who had spent the day inside Buck Owens’s studio was gone before he could reach the vacation his family was waiting for.

Buck Kept Moving Because The Business Kept Moving

From the outside, Buck Owens’s career did not stop.

He kept recording. He kept appearing on television. He kept performing with new versions of the Buckaroos. The name still carried weight, and the industry still knew how to keep a famous man working.

But the sound beside him was gone.

The high harmony was gone.

The bright Telecaster line was gone.

The man who had helped Buck turn Bakersfield into a country-music capital was no longer standing just behind his shoulder.

For years, Buck spoke little publicly about Don’s death.

When he finally opened up later, he admitted that although he had continued working, the joy had largely gone out of the music.

What Don Rich Really Took With Him

The deepest part of this story is not only that Don Rich died young.

It is that he died while the sound he helped build was still alive, still powerful, and still unfinished.

A Tacoma fiddle player.

A Bakersfield studio.

A motorcycle Buck feared.

A family waiting near the coast.

Then Highway 1.

Buck Owens kept going because the records, cameras, and crowds kept asking him to.

But after July 17, 1974, the music could no longer carry the same answer.

Don Rich had not just played in Buck Owens’s band.

He had been the voice beside Buck’s voice, the guitar beside Buck’s guitar, and the man who helped make Bakersfield sound like it had finally found its own country language.

When he died, Buck Owens did not only lose a musician.

He lost the joy that had been singing back to him.

Video

Country Music

Jackson Browne was twenty-seven and raising a two-year-old son alone when The Pretender arrived in 1976, only months after the death of his first wife, Phyllis Major. Browne and Major had married in 1975 after the birth of their son Ethan, but the marriage lasted barely a year. Phyllis died by suicide in March 1976, leaving Browne to move through the most successful period of his young career while suddenly becoming the only parent in the house. Years later, he was still described simply as a single father whose son had been two when his mother died. The timing gave the music surrounding that period a weight Browne never reduced to one autobiographical explanation. The Pretender was concerned with work, disillusionment, adulthood and the fear of surrendering feeling to routine; Browne himself later described its central character as someone struggling with what life was supposed to mean after youthful ideals had begun to wear away. What changed most concretely was outside the record. Browne continued touring and recording, but fatherhood became part of the structure of his life rather than something happening at its edges. Ethan grew up around music, later worked as an actor and founded a record label connected to his father’s company. Jackson Browne became one of the defining voices of the Southern California songwriter era by writing about adults discovering that life was more complicated than the dreams they had started with. In 1976, that idea was no longer only something he could observe in other people. He was carrying a toddler through it himself.

Country Music

By the early 1980s, Waylon Jennings was spending as much as $1,500 a day on cocaine, getting up in the middle of the night to use it and watching the voice that had carried outlaw country begin to weaken. What finally reached him, however, was not a doctor or a record executive; it was the look on Jessi Colter’s face. Jessi had been beside Waylon since the late 1960s, long before the beard, the black leather and the “outlaw” image became a national identity. She had her own career, including the No. 1 hit “I’m Not Lisa,” but much of their private life was increasingly organized around Waylon’s addiction, the disappearances it caused and the worry of what condition he would be in when he came home. Waylon later said he had quit drugs before and always gone back. This time he saw what the habit was doing to Jessi and to their young son, Shooter, who would reach for his father only to find that Waylon’s attention could not stay with him for long. He also knew his singing voice was deteriorating, but even that had not frightened him as much as realizing what his family had learned to live around. He finally broke the cocaine habit in 1984. The change did not restore every year he had lost, but friends and critics soon noticed that his voice had regained strength, while Waylon began speaking more openly about family, health and the cost of the life he had once treated as part of being an outlaw. Years later, when he sang “Amanda,” one line still hit him harder than the rest because it made him think of Jessi. The woman who had stood beside the outlaw through his most celebrated years had also been there when the mythology stopped being glamorous and became something their family had to survive.

Country Music

Five weeks after The Judds released Love Can Build a Bridge in 1990, Naomi Judd announced that a serious hepatitis C diagnosis would force her to stop touring and end the most successful chapter of her life with daughter Wynonna. The timing was brutal. Since breaking through in 1984, the mother-and-daughter duo had collected more than a dozen No. 1 country hits and become one of Nashville’s biggest touring attractions. Naomi was only in her mid-forties, and she later recalled that doctors could not assure her she would survive the illness. They chose not to disappear quietly. The Judds spent the following year on an extended farewell tour, performing night after night while audiences knew every show might be their final visit to that city. On December 4, 1991, the run ended with a nationally televised pay-per-view concert in Tennessee, closing the partnership that had carried both women from financial struggle into country stardom. For Wynonna, the ending created a different kind of crisis. She later admitted that after the last concert she did not know whether she had an identity outside The Judds, while Naomi kept telling her she was strong enough to continue alone. Wynonna signed a solo deal, and her 1992 debut arrived with advance orders already exceeding those of the duo’s final album. The illness stopped Naomi’s career at the exact moment the pair still seemed unstoppable, but it also forced the daughter who had always stood beside her mother to find out whether the voice at the center of The Judds could stand onstage by itself.

Related Post

You Missed