By May 1951, Buck and Bonnie decided they’d gone as far as they could in Phoenix, and moved to Bakersfield, California, a city 100 miles north of Los Angeles. Its oil industry and farmlands, much like Texas and Oklahoma made it a haven for Dust Bowl refugees in the ‘30’s and ‘40’s. Buck’s parents moved there later in 1951. Bakersfield also boasted a robust country music scene. Bob Wills worked there extensively during his years in California, and both The Maddox Brothers & Rose and singer Ferlin Husky (known also as Terry Preston) called it home.

After Buck arrived, he joined a band led by steel guitarist Dusty Rhodes. Within four months or so he joined Bill Woods & The Orange Blossom Playboys, the house band at the Blackboard, Bakersfield’s top country music nightclub. From September 1951 to May 1958, the Blackboard was Buck’s home base. Like most western bands, the Playboys, billed as “Central California’s Top Dance Band,” played country, rhythm and blues, polkas, pop music, and even rhumbas. Buck assumed he was hired as lead guitarist and was surprised to discover that Woods also wanted him to sing. With no monitor speakers to hear his voice over the amplifiers, Buck quickly learned to project his voice. “You would get right up in that microphone and sing as loud as you could, hopin’ you would be able to hear enough comin’ back.”

Dorothy Owens recalls that Buck, who had separated from Bonnie and moved home with his parents, was still trying to diversify musically. He taught himself to play saxophone, and she remembers his remarkable musical ear. “Mother and I used to play a little game with Buck,” she says. “He would be in another room and mother or I would hit one note on the piano and he would tell us what it was. Now that’s an ear.”
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