The Bakersfield Sound
Roll Out the Red Carpet
Presented by the Lazzerini Family Foundation, with additional support from Oriole Homes, Chelsea McClintock Foundation, Don and Catherine Lucas, Guitar Masters/Carney’s, Dr. & Mrs. Javier Bustamante, City of Bakersfield, and Grimmway Farms
February 11, 2021 – August 28, 2021
Rose Maddox Suit (Red), Nathan Turk, 1940, Courtesy of Kern County Museum, accession number 88.870.01
In 1951, America was reveling in an array of postwar possibilities. The country’s imperfect but resolute goodness had triumphed over formidable evil, and now no obstacle on the scale of our ordinary lives seemed insurmountable.
The vitality of the day produced colossal bursts of creativity: Tupperware, aerosol paint, restroom hand dryers, credit cards -- all introduced within five years of Japan’s surrender -- and the sinewy, cocksure Corvette was nearing readiness for its 1953 unveiling.
“I am a member of the Buck Owens Fan Club” Pin, From the Anna Reading Carey Collection
Into that place came the most drastic departure ever from the accustomed form and function of the guitar: The Fender Telecaster, a solid-body instrument whose name evoked that other great innovation in entertainment technology -- television, then seeding America’s rooftops with thickets of antennae. Its design lines conjured forth visions of interstellar space flight, but its sound reverberated with the natural wonder of a lightning bolt striking a tin roof.
Leo Fender’s invention found a place in the emerging genre of rock ‘n’ roll but also into another developing microculture: Bakersfield, where Dust Bowl migrants and war industry transplants had settled among the more staid Presbyterians of the town and refined a raucous homogenization of hillbilly and pop into a Sound that, in time, became altogether more than the sum of its parts.
In 1951, a used, white Fender Telecaster passed from the hands of one Lewis Talley to one Alvis Edgar Owens Jr. for the equivalent of a typical week’s pay: $35.00. Bakersfield was never the same. And, in a very real sense, neither was America.
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Related to the exhibition
The Bakersfield Sound was the focus of August 2020’s Art After Dark.
We held a roundtable discussion with local music historians and performers for a deep dive into all things Bakersfield Sound. We bring the conversation to you via a takeover of the Hello, Bakersfield podcast.
Listen to the podcast here.
BMoA Curator Rachel Magnus and Moneywise’s David Anderson interviewed Jamie Cuevas Nudie, granddaughter of Nudie and Bobbie Cohn, to discuss the colorful life and legacy of Nudie Rodeo Tailors for episode 3 of our podcast.
Find some Bakersfield Sound related items in our Gift Shop