In the Sixties, Buck Owens was country's top artist by a substantial margin. In the Seventies, as his hits became increasingly silly and then stopped coming, Buck's image was dominated by his role on television's Hee Haw.

In the Eighties, with his classic records out-of-print, Owens was either a national joke or a forgotten man. Then, Dwight Yoakam came along to make Bakersfield music fashionable again and even brought Owens back briefly to the top of the charts in 1988.

In the Nineties, Owens has become an icon to people on both sides of the country music fence. A recent reissue of five albums from the Sixties hasn't hurt.

But this man who never had much to do with Nashville (or it with him) stays in Bakersfield. He runs a major corporation that includes radio stations and his new pride and joy, Buck Owens' Crystal Palace.

That's "an all-in-one restaurant, museum and theatre," preserving Bakersfield as the real-country alternative to Nashville by honoring both the past and the present.

Owens performs at the club himself every weekend and also brings in performers that include elder statesmen like Bobby Bare and Johnny Paycheck and new keepers of the flame such as The Derailers and Sara Evans plus mainstream acts like Michael Peterson.

Owens does not do a lot of interviews. He has a fear of being misquoted. He indicates that he has been burned in the past, but won't specify who or what upset him. In Owens' case, the fear is particularly well-founded. He speaks in a rapid-fire delivery, equivalent to the "freight train" sound of his classic records. He often jumps to a different topic without warning, and his anecdotes are too long to be quoted in entirety.

Questions like "What is the Bakersfield Sound?" or "How do you define a country song?" seem to annoy him greatly. Perhaps it's for the same reason that Owens, in his weekend shows at The Crystal Palace, avoids playing any of his own hits unless they're specifically requested.

Perhaps for the same reason he confounded people in the early Seventies by recording "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and an entire album of modern folk songs.

Owens not only has always done things differently, he's always wanted to keep doing different things.

"Bakersfield sound" has become almost a cliché today. But what is it really?

Owens does eventually give his own take on the Sound.

"To me, it's the raw energy. I just played my music, and people started calling it the 'Bakersfield Sound,'" says Owens. "I just wanted to make sure it had some excitement. The one thing you have to do - you've got to get on top of the beat. It came natural to me, because I was nervous. To make good dance music, and good records, everything has to be on the positive side. You need driving drum beats, driving bass and driving guitar riffs, either steel guitar or Telecaster. The lyrics can be driving as well."

Owens was no overnight sensation. Before he had his big breakthrough in 1959 with "Under Your Spell Again," he spent years working in Southern California (he settled in Bakersfield in 1951) and in Arizona before that. He was in Tommy Collins' band from 1953-1956 and did hundreds of sessions, mostly for Capitol in Los Angeles.

He played not only on records by country artists like Wanda Jackson and Faron Young, but on records of every style. He's on some of Stan Freberg's rock 'n' roll parodies including "Rock Island Line" and "Heartbreak Hotel" and also did sessions for "over a hundred different people I never heard of before or since."

In those more informal days, musicians called to a session didn't know what they would be doing. Owens usually played guitar, and sometimes did harmony vocals, but other times "I would go and not play or sing a note, just carry coffee." Once he was asked to play ukulele on a tune called "Hawaiian Sea Breeze." After fibbing by saying he could play the instrument, Owens was sent out to buy one. But "I didn't know you couldn't play it with a guitar pick. I had to use a match holder."

One session Owens did reminds him of modern times. He played on Tommy Sands' "Teenage Crush," which reached Number Two on the pop charts. Sands was marketed as a teen idol and budding movie star, but his shortage of talent soon made him a forgotten man.

"Like the Fifties," says Buck, "we now record people for how pretty they are rather than how they sing."

Earlier, Owens had told a long joke whose punchline was that "Can you sing?" is asked by labels nowadays after they've signed an artist, rather than before. He criticizes Nashville's assembly line system.

"The band don't change, the engineer don't change, the producer don't change," and he talks about "nice-looking young men" being told when and how to sing.

"Some of the groups in the last 10 years, they call themselves things about Texas. They're doing their best, but that ain't country to me. I like to hear some twang. Some guys try to sound like they're not twangy."

Yet, Owens as country radio station owner feeds off this system himself. He has owned Bakersfield's station for 31 years and also owns stations in Arizona. Owens' son runs them. "I don't want to spend my time and energy programming stations," says Buck, but he is clearly involved with them.

"We're not in the radio business, we're in the advertising business. If we can play some of the music we like, and still get advertisers, that's a plus for me. These (national ad) buyers want (young) demographics. The record companies know that."

On his last trip to Bakersfield, George Jones complained "'Buck, your stations aren't playing my music.' I said 'George, what record of yours do you think we've missed?'" Buck relented and added George's latest, "Johnny B Bad" to the station's playlist, but it then researched so poorly with the audience that it had to be dropped quickly.

Owens has not forsaken his peers. Buck Owens Productions is responsible for the Real Country format, which does play older country mixed in with the best of the new.

"We have a 170-station hookup. It's been quite a successful format." He adds, "the most encouraging thing I see today is people beginning to hear more good hit songs from the past."

In the highly politicized atmosphere of the late Sixties, while Merle Haggard cut "Okie From Muskogee" and Johnny Cash asked "What Is Truth?," Owens kept his records on the lighter side. He found another way to express his patriotic sentiments.

"I went to Oslo, Norway in 1966. I'd turn on the TV. There was one channel, and it went off at 11 p.m. The person at the hotel said 'The government thinks people have watched enough TV (by 11) and should go to bed.' The government was making the choice for you."

"Then I went to Amsterdam, to the Grand Gala. Representatives from 20 different countries performed, and we were the U.S. act. There were two TV stations. I was performing 19th out of 20, so I was watching it on TV. A lot of the performers were in foreign languages, so I went to watch something else. The Grand Gala was on both stations. Someone told me 'The Queen thinks this is a cultural matter, and everyone should watch.' Once again, the government is deciding for you."

"So I decided to make our guitars red, white and blue as a nice, quiet statement that we love America. We got some cat calls about it. Some people didn't want politics mixed with music. I agree with that, but I wanted to make my statement."

Owens does draw a line. "I was asked to campaign for (George) Bush in California. I like Bush, but I thought it was not the thing to do. I don't agree with entertainers campaigning for politicians."

And he says emphatically, "Social comment and social content do not belong in songs."

He also points out an ironic twist in his career. "Hee Haw came on as a replacement for The Smothers Brothers, who were doing too much social commentary."

Although Owens' artistic reputation was suffering, largely due to his stint on Hee Haw, he continued to have hits through 1974.

Nonsense like "Big Game Hunter" and "Monster's Holiday" still made the Top Ten. Then, in July 1974, Owens' was dealt a severe blow both personally and musically. Don Rich was killed in a motorcycle crash.

Rich had joined Owens' band in 1959, while still in high school. The frequent guitar and fiddle player (and sometimes singer and songwriter) was more than just an excellent musician and stage foil. He had a relationship with Owens that has been described as "almost telepathic." On stage or off, the two could finish each others thoughts, both musically and otherwise.

The importance of Don Rich in helping to create the sound so identified with Buck Owens is often overlooked.

Emotionally shattered by Rich's sudden death, as well as minus his musical right-hand man, Owens never had another solo Top Ten hit after 1974 and has said he essentially sleepwalked through the remainder of that decade before finally coming to grips with the loss.

Owens, now 68, has had his share of health problems. He survived a bout with cancer a few years ago that cost him a small piece of his tongue. More recently, he was hospitalized with pneumonia and has had respiratory problems since.

Yet, he continues to play weekends at the Crystal Palace. Owens spends most of his sets doing other people's songs because it's like returning to his bar band roots.

Although he has available the technological capabilities of making a record, either studio or live, there are no current plans to do so. However, he's recorded some duets when asked and will take on anything interesting that comes along. His spokesman Jim Shaw (who originally joined The Buckaroos in 1970), says, "He doesn't need money anymore. He just wants to do what's fun."

The relative lack of detailed interviews, as well as his legendary mercurial temperament, make Buck Owens more of an enigma than the other great stars of the Sixties.

For now, the best biographical source (as well as the quintessential source for his music) is the three-CD box set put out by Rhino. Owens owns all of his Capitol recordings, and that material is gradually being reissued.

The Sundazed label of New York put out five Owens albums from the Sixties in November, including "Sings Harlan Howard," "Sings Tommy Collins, "In Japan!", "Your Tender Loving Grace," and "It Takes People Like You to Make People Like Me."

Will he write the story of his life? "I am working on a book, but it's a slow procedure," Owens says.

If it ever comes out, it should be a dandy. "I'm not afraid of controversy. If you're telling the truth, you're never going to be boring."