PATSY YOUR ENTHUSIASM (11)
By:
August 9, 2026
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… Country Music of the Fifties (1954–1963)! Series edited by Josh Glenn. Qobuz playlist here.
BUCK OWENS | CLOSE UP THE HONKY TONKS | 1962/64
When I say that I like country music, I mean Mount Rushmore figures like Merle Haggard and George Jones and also the stoner bluegrass of Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle, the pop hybridity of Kacey Musgraves and Midland, the late-stage old-school of Dale Watson and Charley Crockett, and a hundred other varieties. “Country” covers a lot of territory. But at the dead center of that territory, in the bullseye, are dozens of songs that Buck Owens recorded for Capitol Records in the late 1950s and 1960s. When I say that I like country music, I mean that I like those songs and also a lot of other songs, scattering outward in all directions from the bullseye, that are even a bit like them.
Take “Close Up the Honky Tonks,” an exemplary specimen of the jaunty heartache that was Owens’ stock in trade. The tempo’s brisk enough to inspire a spin on the dance floor, but the lyrics are sorrowful enough that you can just as plausibly enjoy it while broodingly downing one drink after another and watching your damp change dwindle on the bar in front of you. The freight-train rhythm section keeps you going while the pedal steel and harmonies break your heart, and the central conceit — calling for the honky tonks to close by singing the kind of song that people flock to them to hear — breaks the tie by suggesting that you’re capable of a measure of ironic distance from your own suffering. You will probably be okay, no matter how bad it hurts now.
“Foolin’ Around,” “Down, Down, Down,” “Act Naturally,” and any number of other Buck Owens songs from the era nailed this same exacta, and as the 1950s turned into the 1960s they became stylistically more and more perfect. Once Owens got Capitol to stop ruining his stuff with Jordanaires-style choral arrangements, and especially once Don Rich began doubling Owens’ voice with an uncanny intimacy that was even better than Owens harmonizing with himself, Owens’ canonical version of the Bakersfield sound began to coalesce.
Owens’ voice doesn’t have the grandeur of Haggard’s or Jones’, and he doesn’t hold or bend a note with ostentatious virtuosity, but there’s something definitive about the straightforward way he tells a story. He honed this delivery early in his career during breakless eleven-hour gigs, six nights a week, at a notorious honky tonk in Bakersfield called the Blackboard. I picture him in a place like that, singing “Close Up the Honky Tonks” to an ecstatically heartbroken crowd that would open fire on anyone who actually attempted to close up the honky tonks, and this is what I mean when I say that I like country music.
PATSY YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn. Nadine Hubbs on Marty Robbins’ EL PASO | Elizabeth Nelson on Dave Dudley’s SIX DAYS ON THE ROAD | Lynn Peril on Jean Chapel’s WELCOME TO THE CLUB | David Cantwell on Porter Wagoner’s MY BONFIRE | Will Hermes on Johnny Cash’s RING OF FIRE | Mimi Lipson on Loretta Lynn’s I’M A HONKY TONK GIRL | Charles Hughes on Roger Miller’s YOU DON’T WANT MY LOVE | Eric Weisbard on Lefty Frizzell’s THE LONG BLACK VEIL | Steacy Easton on Jean Shepard’s A SATISFIED MIND | Josh Glenn on Johnny Cash’s THE REBEL — JOHNNY YUMA | Carlo Rotella on Buck Owens’ CLOSE UP THE HONKY TONKS | Annie Nocenti on Patsy Cline’s THREE CIGARETTES IN AN ASHTRAY | Douglas Wolk on Lucky Starr’s I’VE BEEN EVERYWHERE | Will Groff on Ray Price’s NIGHT LIFE | Jonny Auping on Willie Nelson’s CRAZY | Brian Berger on Ernest Tubb’s THE YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS | Jason Grote on Bill Browning and His Echo Valley Boys’ DARK HOLLOW | Peter Doyle on Willie Nelson’s FUNNY HOW TIME SLIPS AWAY | Sam Glenn on Johnny Cash’s BIG RIVER | Annie Zaleski on Patsy Cline’s WALKIN’ AFTER MIDNIGHT | Adam McGovern on Elvis Presley’s BLACK STAR / FLAMING STAR | Chris Spurgeon on Ricky Nelson’s BELIEVE WHAT YOU SAY | Stephen Thomas Erlewine on George Jones’ WHITE LIGHTNING | Devin McKinney on George Hamilton IV’s ABILENE | Mark Richardson on Elvis Presley’s BLUE MOON.
ALSO SEE: DOLLY YOUR ENTHUSIASM (25 of our favorite Country records from 1964–1973) | & more Country at HILOBROW, including short appreciations of Gene Pitney, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, Buck Owens, George Jones, June Carter Cash, Charley Pride, and many others.
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