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BOOK REVIEW & DISCUSSION: Ain't Got No Cigarettes: Memories of Music Legend Roger Miller By Lyle E Style "It's an endless story about Roger. He was one of the cleverest people I've ever met in my life." (Waylon Jennings) This is my own review of Ain't Got No Cigarettes, the first Roger Miller book ever published. My review is based on reading the book (twice) and having several discussions with Lyle E Style, the author. He may stop by later to answer questions (as his schedule allows). This one is a must-read, folks. And for you radio personalities who...

Michael Owens thinks he knows what his father would have said if he'd had a chance to size things up at Valley Baptist Church Sunday afternoon. "So," Owens' 56-year-old son said, surveying the full house as he imagined his famous father might have, "you came to see ol' Buck." They did indeed, a good 2,000 of them. Fans, employees, business associates, music-business elite -- the people he'd touched in a half-century as a chart-topping megastar, weekly TV host, industry icon and civic booster without peer. Thousands more watched from home or listened via radio or the Internet. They praised Owens,...

Buck Owens was a different kind of country music star: He played Carnegie Hall, not the Grand Ole Opry; he lived for Bakersfield, not Nashville. Owens, the "Act Naturally" singer-songwriter who made a music mecca of a central California farming town, and a weekly event of a cornpone TV variety show known as Hee Haw, died Saturday at his home, according to his Website, BuckOwens.com. He was 76. And, yes, as if there were ever any doubt, Owens' home was in Bakersfield. Bakersfield, California, is where the Texas-born Owens moved in 1951. And it was where he helped give rise...

BUCK OWENS PASSES AWAY Bakersfield, Ca By: Kyle Brown 1:36 PM Saturday, March 25th, 2006 03-25-2006 KUZZ Radio owner and Country Music Hall of Fame musician Alvis E. "Buck" Owens died early Saturday morning at his Bakersfield, CA home. His family says Buck died in his sleep and the cause of death is not yet known. Buck was born on August 12, 1929 in Sherman, Texas. The son of a sharecropper, Buck traveled with his family to the Phoenix, Arizona area in 1937 as they searched for a better life. Eventually, they traveled to California's San Joaquin Valley, doing farm...

Singer Buck Owens, the flashy rhinestone cowboy who shaped the sound of country music with hits like "Act Naturally" and brought the genre to TV on the long-running "Hee Haw," died Saturday. He was 76. Owens died at his home, said family spokesman Jim Shaw. The cause of death was not immediately known. Owens had undergone throat cancer surgery in 1993 and was hospitalized with pneumonia in 1997. His career was one of the most phenomenal in country music, with a string of more than 20 No. 1 records, most released from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. They were recorded...

Country singer Buck Owens, who had a string of US hit records, has died at the age of 76. Owens, who notched 15 consecutive US country number ones in the mid-1960s, died at home in Los Angeles, his spokesman said. Owens co-hosted US variety TV show Hee Haw from 1969 to 1986 and had hits with singles including I've Got a Tiger by the Tail and Love's Gonna Live Here. The Beatles recorded a cover of his song Act Naturally in 1965. Born in Texas, Owens moved to the Californian town of Bakersfield in 1951 and became associated with...