Of the great country bands of the 1960's, none was more successful than Buck Owens and the Buckaroos.

Although the band's lineup shifted from time to time during the '60s (even employing Merle Haggard as the group's bassist during one brief period in early 1962), their classic '64-'67 lineup - Owens, lead guitarist Don Rich, drummer Willie Cantu, steel guitarist Tom Brumley and bassist Doyle Holly - is today revered as one of country music's all-time great bands, thanks to the driving rhythms of the group's singles, the tight vocal harmonies of Owens and Rich and Rich's virtuoso lead guitar work.

"I think what it boils down to was that combination," says Holly - who released his new solo album, "Together Again," in early May - in a telephone interview from his home in Hendersonville, Tenn. "Everybody was in the right place at the right time."

Holly, 66, was born in Oklahoma and spent his young adult years working in the oil fields of Oklahoma, Kansas and California.

Upon landing in Bakersfield, he discovered that the city had a music scene as rich as its oil wells and soon found himself performing with a wide assortment of country and rock 'n' roll musicians, including Joe and Rose Lee Maphis, Jimmy Wakely and Johnny Burnette and also touring the rodeo circuit with the pre-"Hawaii Five-O" Jack Lord.

Holly says that he was brought into the band by Don Rich in August 1963, adding that it was common practice for them to collect the phone numbers of musicians who impressed them as possible future Buckaroos should the need arise.

"I was playing in a band at the Lucky Spot, got to be friends with Don, and Don hired me when Kenny Pierce quit. I really don't know who hired Tom Brumley. It could have been Buck and Don. Me and Don hired Willie Cantu."

During Holly's tenure in the Buckaroos - 1963 to 1971 - the act batted over 30 singles into the country top 40, more than half of which went to number 1, usually staying there for several weeks.

During what was arguably the band's peak year - 1966 - Buck Owens singles occupied the number 1 position for 17 weeks or about one-third of the year.

Holly's time as a Buckaroo wasn't continuous: He left the band for a 9-month period between late 1966 and the summer of '67. During those months, Holly went to Washington and was replaced by Wayne Wilson, who appears on the 1967 live album "Buck Owens and His Buckaroos in Japan" and a few studio recordings.

"I recommended Wayne for the job when I left. Me and Buck had a love/hate relationship. He'd fire me a couple of times a month, and I'd quit a couple of times a month. And this was one of those times where neither one of us made up until nine months later. I always regretted leaving Buck. That was the Buckaroos' heyday."

"Buck made a film during the time that I missed out on," adds Holly. "There was a film crew that traveled on the bus with them. I've never seen it to tell you the truth. I don't think he's very proud of it."

After returning to the band, Holly remained with the group for another 4 years, leaving for the last time in November 1971 and forming his own band, the Vanishing Breed.

"I just wanted to try it on my own. I felt I went just as far as I could go (as a Buckaroo), although Buck was featuring me on a couple of songs on every album. He was always good like that. I can't think of anybody that had Buck's stature that would do that."

Although Holly had a small degree of solo success in the early '70s, scoring 2 top 40 country hits under his own name and releasing 2 solo albums on the Barnaby label, he eventually grew tired of life on the road and in 1982 opened a musical instrument shop in Hendersonville, where he concentrated his energies for the next couple of decades.

"I just quit all of a sudden; stopped touring and stopped recording. And Johnny Russell wanted to do this CD, so I said, 'Well, why not?' I didn't have anything else to do."

Though Russell enjoyed a string of solo hits during the '70s, during his life he was known primarily as a songwriter, his calling card being "Act Naturally," which was a hit for Owens in 1963, for The Beatles in 1965, and for Owens and ex-Beatles drummer Ringo Starr when they teamed up to re-record the song as a duet in 1989.

Russell proposed to record an album of bluegrass-influenced versions of Buck Owens hits with Holly on vocals. Unfortunately, Russell's health declined sharply when recording was about two-thirds completed, and the album was shelved until OMS label head Hugh Moore stepped in to revive the project following Russell's death in 2001.

"Hugh Moore (who also contributes banjo to the album) is a bluegrass producer," says Holly. "His forte is bluegrass, and I love bluegrass. It was supposed to have been a little more bluegrass than it was. I tried to get more of Del McCoury's band on there."

Released in early May by OMS Records, "Together Again" is a fine blend of bluegrass and Bakersfield featuring ' fel low ex-Buckaroos Brumley and Cantu as part of the core band, as well as Owens himself on two duets with Holly; "Foolin' Around" and "Love's Gonna Live Here." Also appearing as duet partners are Bobby Osborne and Jeannie Seely.

Perhaps surprisingly, Holly doesn't play bass on the new album, explaining, "It's because I haven't done it for a while, although I do still have one. And we had Mike Bub, Del McCoury's bass player. I was busy doing vocals, so I never did give it much thought."

The only member of the classic Buckaroos lineup absent from "Together Again" is guitarist Don Rich, who died during the summer of 1974 in a motorcycle accident at the age of 32. Rich's death was devastating to Owens; both personally and in terms of his career.

Holly still clearly misses Rich as well.

"Don was just a great big old teddy bear who'd set the world for you," says Holly. "I remember an incident where somebody called up Don about two or three o'clock in the morning and said, 'My battery's dead. You've got to give me a jump.' And (this person) figured Don knew who he was talking to. So he said, 'Yeah, I'll be there in a minute. Tell me where you're at.' He gave him the directions where he was at, and Don got up to get ready and said, 'By the way, who is this?'"

Although Holly's new album marks the only occasion on which the four surviving members of the classic Buckaroos lineup have recorded together since 1967, he says that RCA Records had approached him about recording a Buckaroos reunion album in the early '90s. Though the project never got past the planning stages, the idea had been to reunite the group's famed '64-'67 lineup, as well as bringing in other ex-members.

"They wanted me to get all the original Buckaroos, plus a few other musicians who'd worked with Buck. As a matter of fact, one of the ideas was to make 'Together Again' an instrumental with Tom Brumley, Ralph Mooney and Jay Dee Manness," the last two of whom had also played on Owens' '60s recordings.

"Probably it didn't happen fast enough for RCA," says Holly when asked why the project never saw the light of day. "Somebody was probably dragging their feet. I was probably one of the guiltiest. I know there was a problem with using the Buckaroos name. Buck had a patent on the Buckaroos name, and he had a project going where he couldn't release permission to use the name."

During the group's mid-'60s peak, it seemed like everyone was a Buckaroos fan; none more so than the Beatles, who covered Owens' 1963 hit "Act Naturally" (the Buckaroos returned the compliment with a spirited cover of "Twist and Shout" on 1966's "Carnegie Hall Concert" while wearing Beatles wigs) and who, it is said, had a standing order for all new Buck Owens records to be forwarded to them in England.

"We went to a brunch with Ringo and John in Liverpool. I didn't stay very long because I wanted to ride a steam locomotive. Don was a big Beatles fan. I was a fan, too, but not as big as Don. If I had to do it over, I would have stayed there and eaten with them."

Asked to name his favorite Buckaroos album today, Holly says, "Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the Carnegie Hall album. The album is still selling very well. The shows were oversold. The people came to Carnegie Hall in their tuxedos and evening gowns, and they had to sit in the aisles."

"Carnegie Hall Concert," in some respects, represented the high water mark for Buck Owens and the Buckaroos. Owens and his crew were only the second country band to record a live album there (following Flatt & Scruggs' lead in 1962, and the album captures a flawless performance from the group.

Although Holly says - perhaps surprisingly - that the album is a little more laid back than a typical Buckaroos show of that era, he says that the group pulled back a bit on the reins for the Carnegie Hall shows since they knew that the performances were being taped.

"We were nervous about being recorded," says Holly. "When you're doing a tape, you don't want to make any mistakes. We were probably more concerned with making the record than with entertaining the audience. I asked Buck if he wanted to do comedy and he said, 'No, just play everything straight.' Then it got back into the groove of a regular show, and we started doing the comedy and the impressions."

Today Holly appears to have a good life. He sold off the music store not too long ago and now regards himself as "semi-retired," playing a handful of live dates per year (in fact, he had just returned from opening two shows in Canada for Steve Earle the day before this interview was conducted).

And Holly takes some pride in the fact that the records he played on have had such a lasting influence on later performers including The Eagles, the Desert Rose Band and The Derailers.

"You bet. We weren't really country, although we thought we were. I would [say] that we were a bunch of bluegrass musicians with electric guitars. Don was so versatile. He dug the Beatles. He dug The Band...in fact we recorded three or four songs by The Band."

"If we heard a good song, we'd record it."