Owens, who though a little slurry over the evening (the aftereffects of throat surgery in 1993), never had problems with alcohol or drugs––his only vice being just too many women, he has said. He joked at one point, after a request for “For The Good Times,” given by some couple that was celebrating 25 years of marriage, that 25 years of being with the same person was just “cruel and unusual punishment.”

After the "Pink Cadillac" piece, Owens began fooling around with a fiddle as the band played “Soft Place to Fall.” With his back turned to the audience, he again seemed almost drunk and not able to tune the darn thing to play it. But seeing as he had masterfully managed the dobro in an earlier song, my doubts, I figured, were unfounded. And sure enough they were. Building from a rather sloppy beginning to a rendition of “Orange Blossom Special,” he finally got in the groove and tore the violin up, eventually bleeding into the old Bob Wills classic, “Faded Love.” At the end of that song, the lights went out, leaving Buck solo on the fiddle, ironing out a ghostly din. Years ago, this would have been Don Rich territory. And with no visuals, only the music, it seemed that Owens’ sound got better––as if he was in fact at that moment, audience unseen, having a sort of private phone call with his best buddy in heaven (and now perhaps they are jamming together in the great by and by).

There was no encore. When the band didn’t return to the stage, someone who saw me scribbling away asked if I was going to write something bad because they didn’t come back on. I turned and replied: “What? At 74? 20 songs and two hours? The guy was phenomenal. What more could you ask?”

Buck Owens & The Buckaroos played most Friday and Saturday Nights at Buck’s Crystal Palace in Bakersfield, CA, right up until his death this past Saturday. He was 76.

For more info go to www.buckowens.com