sunday afternoon on reel america, we feature tried by fire, a 1965 episode of the u.s. army's the big picture narrated by paul newman. december marks the 70th anniversary of the battle of the bulge and the film chronicles the story of the 84th infantry division. that's sunday at 4:00 p.m. eastern time here on cspan 3's american history tv. throughout 2014, c-span's cities tour has featured the

history of communities throughout the country with the help of our local cable partners. today we feature the music of several of these cities. ♪ ♪ i got warm blisters on my heels trying to find me something better ♪ ♪ here on the streets of bakersfield ♪ >> i think that this area became a hotbed of this kind of music from the types of people that were in the valley during the depression and the dust bowl, people left arkansas and texas and oklahoma and came to california. they all brought their music with them and bakersfield became just a hotbed of country music, and it was raw, it was not influenced by what was on the radio, so a lot of unique stuff

came out of this area. >> americans had been migrating to california for decades and centuries, in fact. then comes this catastrophic event in the plain states, in oklahoma and kansas and arkansas, the dust bowl, this natural devastation of agriculture. and a lot of people, okies we came to call them, had relatives back in california and they would write back, call, and say is there work out there for me. they'd say come on out. so from about 1935 through 1950 people from the midwest, southern midwest came to california, and they brought their music with them. they brought their religious sensibilities, a more fundamentalist religious perspective, they brought conservative politics to a great extent, and they changed the way california is. ♪ i just blowed in and i got them dust bowl blues ♪ ♪ i just blowed in and i got them dust bowl blues ♪

♪ i just blowed in and i'll blow back out again ♪ >> the clash of these two cultures in california did produce a certain amount of friction. there was a more -- i don't know how to characterize the religious majority of california before the dust bowl, but it was kind of a presbyterian, upright in your pew, more formal type of religion, whereas the okies came out with this fundamentalist, stand up and shout type of religion, and that was one of the things, the religious differences that kind of set the okies apart in a negative way. they were viewed negatively to a great extent by the people who were already here, and that was part of it.

when we think of the dust bowl migrant, we think of the people who came out and lived in the federal migrant camps, where the "grapes of wrath" took place and the movie was filmed. there was some poverty, and there were people that were living in squalor outside the camps as well. okies would work in with farm laborers, throw hem on the truck, take them out to the field to work, they'd work long, harold days, come back, there was no tv, no radio, lit until the way of entertainment so they would sit outside their tents or on their stoops with a guitar and harmonica, and that was the evening's entertainment. ♪ i'm a cowboy far away from home ♪ >> you had the dust bowlers come

out from the mid'30s up through the '50s. it's a greater migration than the dust bowl of world war ii workers. they would come to the shipyards of northern california, come to the aircraft factories of southern california. you had this great assemblage of people from all over the country. now after world war ii, you have all these people saying, okay, what do i do now? some went home, some stayed in california. many of them settled in the bakersfield area. >> my name is buck owens and those boys are called the buckaroos. this is the bucco ranch. we'd like to say thanks so much for tuning us in. tell your friends about it. tune us in next week or next month or the next time we come your way. okay? meantime, here is my favorite time of the show. miss kay is is going to sing it. don and i are going to help her.

>> buck owens, you know, grew up working alongside hispanics in the fields and his music has sort of a rockabilly sensitivity but also a hispanic/latino sound to it. ♪ so you found your prince charming was just a dream ♪ >> i think buck owens was a very innovative singer that, with his sound burst on the scene in the mid'60s when country music need to be shaken up a little bit. buck grew up very poor. when he was growing up, his dad would always talk about "the man." the man was the guy that ran the labor camp or the farmer, whatever. it was always us against the man, and it was a hard scrabble, tough life. later on when buck became an entertainer, i think the record companies became the man. i think the best way to explain

the bakersfield sound was at the time it came out, nashville was putting out music that was very syrupy, lots of instruments, lots of strings, lots of background singers. ♪ i fall to pieces >> they were trying to go the cosmopolitan kind of smooth country route at that time, and when buck came on the scene with a stripped-down four-piece group with lots of drums and energy, it was kind of like when the beatles hit the pop scene back in the mid-60s. it was very raw and exciting. ♪ all i got to do is >> you have some natural audiences, some blue-collar audiences ready made who have an

appreciation for this music. you have people who worked in the fields, you have oil field worker, and this culture developed around some of these sort of bars, these saloons. the black ward maybe being the most famous. things got a little rough at the blackboard. it was famous for some fisticuffs breaking out. might have been overstated. legend can sort of take over. but it became a mecca for professional artists. ♪ >> they were playing these places like the blackboard, places with cement floors and tin roofs, and the ambience was just so different. i think the listening public in

bakersfield did see some of themselves in what they were hearing. artists like merle haggard, in particular, he would tell the story of the people. he told in working man blues, very blue collar. ♪ well, i keep my nose on the grindstone work hard every day ♪ ♪ i might get a little tired on the weekend that's where i'm going to play ♪ ♪ but i go back to working come monday morning i'm right ♪ ♪ back with the groove i drink a little beer that evening just sing a little ♪ >> there was sort of a bad-guy appeal that was working for people. this is back in the time bonnie and clyde, the movie came out later in the '60s, merle haggard personified that outlaw. and a lot of artists of that time kind of had a rough edge to them that people just went for. now, when the public started hearing these bakersfield artists and recognizing how different they were than the sameness of nashville, it just stood out.

buck owens, once he hit it big, he just nailed them one after the other because he was so different and so fresh from what the american public had been used to. he. >> he had 21 number-one records in a row. he had the number-one record in the united states on the a side. the b side was number two. and they stayed like that for weeks, just flip-flopping back and forth. ♪ anybody going to san antone >> i'd have to say the heyday was 1965. buck owens had been making hits, consistently since 1959 and 1960-61. he was knocking them dead one after another. by this time, merle haggard had established himself and formed a band with the strangers, and bonnie owens, buck's former wife, had come aboard with him

as a backing vocalist, and the first acm awards were in l.a. in 1965, and it was a clean sweep for the bakersfield performers. merle haggard was entertainer of the year , the strangers were the band of the year, and that was it, and that was the commercial payday for sure. bakersfield was not able to replace merle haggard and buck owens with stars of the same caliber, stars that didn't shine as bright. there were stars that came along afterward, but nobody had that sort of impact that merle and buck did. i think it just sort of faded away a little bit. ♪ throughout 2014, c-span cities tour is featured the