Queens country singer and pianist Tennessee Walt will bring the Bakersfield Sound, a mid-20th century country music genre, to the Bryant Library in Roslyn on Sunday, March 30. Along with performing songs like Buck Owens’ “Act Naturally” and Merle Haggard’s “Today I Started Loving You,” Walt will lecture on Bakersfield Sound’s history.
The Bakersfield Sound was a popular country music genre from the 1960s through the 1980s that differed from the more pop-sounding country music from Nashville, Tenn., and launched artists like Owens and Haggard into stardom.
Gayden Wren, the Queens resident who performs vocals and piano as Tennessee Walt, said the Bakersfield Sound is a form of the country based on growing from hardship and is purer than the more pop-sounding versions in Nashville.
“People think of country music as based in Nashville, and indeed the 1950s through the 1970s was the era of the so-called Nashville Sound, a pop-influenced School of Country,” Wren said. “But Bakersfield, Calif., is a long way from Nashville, and the artists who rose out of Bakersfield’s rich musical culture had a country style all their own, far grittier and more akin to traditional country than what was coming out of Nashville in those years.”
Wren also added that many artists from this movement migrated west from Texas, Arkansas or Oklahoma when they were children during the Great Depression.
“The experience of migrating west, usually with nothing they couldn’t carry in a single car, left them alienated from the glossy country of the Nashville Sound and hungry for music that related more to real people and the lives they lived,” Wren said.
While country radio, which at the time played a significant role in determining which artists could gain popularity, focused more on slickly produced songs from Nashville, alternative artists like Owens and Haggard were able to break through to the mainstream by performing songs with more rock influences.
Walt’s show “From Bakersfield with Love” will take place at the Bryant Library at 2 Paper Mill Road in Roslyn on Sunday, March 30, at 2 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, call (631) 586-3000 or visit www.bryantlibrary.org.
