By ROBERT PRICE

Californian staff writer

An abandoned artifact of music history stands alone, ringed with weeds, on a neglected lot in east Bakersfield. The faded lettering on an exterior wall identifies the empty building as an old auto-upholstery shop, but Charles “Fuzzy” Owen remembers it as a whimsical landmark in the evolution of the Bakersfield Sound.

It was here in 1956, in this comically tiny building a half-block off East Truxtun Avenue, that Owen’s cousin, the late Lewis Talley, first opened the Tally Records recording studio. Owen joined him later that year.

Among their first customers was 26-year-old Buck Owens.

The song they recorded, “Hot Dog,” was a foot-stompin’ number that reflected Owens’ zeal for singers like Elvis Presley and Little Richard. Owens, however, was worried that a rockabilly tune, with his name on it, might damage his country-music aspirations. He was certainly not yet the sort of big-name act who could afford to call his own shots, so he adopted a pseudonym: Corky Jones.

“Corky” apparently managed to play guitar on “Hot Dog” without bumping his elbows against the walls of 601 E. 18th St., but it must have been a close call.

“That little old building ain’t much bigger than a bathroom,” Fuzzy Owen said. “We only stayed there two or three months. We did a couple records in there; neither one did anything. Then we moved.”

Fuzzy Owen’s place in Bakersfield music history is secure, given his long tenure as Merle Haggard’s manager, his status as a longtime regular on Cousin Herb Henson’s “Trading Post” TV show, and his early connection with clubs like the Blackboard, the Lucky Spot and the Clover Club. But the long-defunct Tally recording studio - Lewis Talley chose to drop the “e” from the company’s name - remains one of Fuzzy’s most memorable associations.

Owen, born in Conway, Ark., in April 1929, came west to stay with Bakersfield relatives in 1949. He picked cotton during the day and played three nights a week at the Blackboard, then just a hole-in-the-wall tavern. Their Ernest Tubb-inspired sound featured Fuzzy on steel guitar alongside his first cousin Lewis (rhythm guitar and vocals) and George French (accordion). Later Fuzzy worked in Springville, near Porterville, playing a three-month gig with the Sons of the Ryaneers. A two-year stint in the U.S. Army followed, and Owen returned to Bakersfield in 1952.

In 1953 he and Bonnie Owens, recently separated from Buck, recorded “A Dear John Letter,” a Hillbilly Barton composition. “But this little MarVel Records we put it on didn’t have no distribution,” Fuzzy said. “They printed up 100 copies, maybe.” But Lewis and Fuzzy liked the song so much, they engineered a barter with Barton, trading him Talley’s 1947 Kaiser for ownership of “Dear John.” The car-for-a-song transaction paid off when their friends, Ferlin Husky and Jean Shepard, recorded the same duet later that year. It went to No. 1 on the national country charts.

“We were happy for them,” said Bonnie Owens. “It told us we were on the right track.”

By 1955, Talley and Owen had started up Tally Records, Lu-Tal Publishing (owned by Talley), Owen Publishing (owned by Owen), and their laughably cramped recording studio.

After a few months, they moved the studio to Baker Street, next door to Saba’s men’s store, whose owner was their landlord.

“We built the studio inside a little room there,” Owen said. “We put a bunch of thick blankets against the walls, and put in acoustic tile. We had a used, monaural one-track Stencil Hoffman (tape machine). That’s the first time I ever heard of that brand, and the last time. You can’t get no smaller than one track.”

It was in that studio in Saba’s, in early 1956, that Owen and Talley recorded a Bakersfield rock ‘n’ roller named Wally Lewis. His song “Kathleen,” leased for production and distribution to another company, reached No. 15 on the charts in 1957.

A few months later, the studio moved for the third and final time - to Talley’s house on Hazel Street. “We built it from the ground up,” Owen said. “Lewis and his wife lived in the front, and we built this thing in the back. We put all our stuff in there - the same old Stencil Hoffman and a little three-channel mixing board we hooked together. The whole thing was 20-something (feet) by 30 feet.
“We built a horseshoe-shaped echo chamber, and the bathroom was in the echo chamber. While the tape was running no one could go to the bathroom.”
The studio was open for about three years, until Talley got a divorce and sold the house.

Owen and Talley met Haggard in about 1961, shortly after Haggard completed his two-year, nine-month stay at San Quentin prison for a series of escapades culminating in a drunken, botched burglary. Merle had a sometime-job at the Lucky Spot, playing with Jelly Sanders and others as a fill-in entertainer on the two nights Johnny Barnett’s band was off.

“They would just throw together a band,” Owen said. “It was a different band every night, but it was pretty good. Sometimes I was in the band, sometimes Merle, once in a while both of us together.”

Haggard had a tendency to forget the words to the songs, and Owen would razz him mercilessly about it. Finally Haggard had had enough; he put his mind to the task and learned the lyrics he needed to know.

“Merle was really nervous when I first heard him sing,” Owen said. “He was paranoid, just got out of the joint. But he was good. Even his mistakes sounded good. I thought, ‘Hey, I better listen to this guy a little bit.’ Turned out he could do ‘em all, rock ‘n’ roll and everything. Still can.”

Owen liked Haggard so much, he convinced him to record for Tally Records in 1962. Haggard recorded an original composition, “Skid Row,” and Fuzzy’s own tune, “Singing My Heart Out,” in a Bakersfield Quonset hut that had been converted into a studio. A friend, Ed Smizer, brought a tape machine and a rinky-dink, three-channel amplifier that barely qualified as a mixing board.

They traveled to Phoenix to polish up the tapes, and then pressed 200 copies or so to distribute to radio stations. The songs didn’t do much, but they did enough to get the attention of Capitol Records’ Ken Nelson.

“When I put out records with Merle, it was with the intention of selling to a major label,” said Owen, who became Haggard’s manager - and his first producer - in 1962. “The idea was to build him up so he’d be worth something. I tried peddling him earlier and they weren’t interested. But Ken Nelson finally wanted him.”

Owen sold Haggard’s Tally Records catalog to Capitol in 1964, and in January 1965, Haggard had his first top-10 release, “(All My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers,” which had been a minor hit on Tally Records the year before. Haggard and his band, dubbed the Strangers in honor of that first hit song, were on their way.

Talley, living on Lake Street with his mother, died of a heart attack in 1986 at age 58. He was Haggard’s bus driver and close confidante at the time of his death.

Owen, who today lives near the Bakersfield Country Club, remains an active member of Haggard’s managerial entourage, spending half his time on the road. Haggard, he says, still records three or four times a year at his studio near Redding. A new Haggard album, he said, will be released ... eventually.

“I can’t tell you when,” Owen said. “Just put it this way: Merle’s still putting out records.”