MISS BONNIE OWENS: That Little Boy of Mine / Capitol 2716 / 1969

Bonnie (Campbell) Owens, was born to a sharecropping family in Blanchard, OK, and moved with her parents to Arizona when she was 12. Always musical, she became known in her teens as one of the state’s best yodelers. She met Buck Owens at a roller-rink and sang with him on local radio shows, appearing with a group called Mac MacAtee and the Skillet Lickers. They married in 1948 when she was 18, and moved to Bakersfield, CA, but their relationship crumbled several years later. A waitress at a popular bar called the Blackboard, Bonnie would sing from time to time and jot original lyrics on cocktail napkins. She recorded for producer Fuzzy Owen through the 1950s and for Owen’s Tally label in the early 60s. She met Merle Haggard at a Bakersfield bar in 1961, and her marriage to him lasted from 1965 to 1978. The two recorded Liz Anderson’s “Just Between the Two of Us” in 1964, and the song remained a hit on the country charts for more than six months. Bonnie was named best female vocalist by the Academy of Country Music in 1965. From this point, Owens dedicated her time to Haggard's children and his career, and toured with Merle's band, The Strangers, as a backup vocalist. As Haggard said, she “sort of dropped the torch of her own career to stoke mine.” Owens and Haggard divorced in 1978 and after a brief hiatus, she continued touring with him. Bonnie Owens died at the age of 76, in hospice for Alzheimer's disease.

Bonnie (Campbell) Owens: October 1, 1929 – April 24, 2006
[adapted from Owens’ obituary by Steve Chawkins in the LA Times: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-apr-26-me-owens26-story.html]

[That Little Boy of Mine, Bonnie Owens, Capitol 2716, recorded 6/10/69, matrix 72570]
The flip side of this disk is Philadelphia Lawyer: https://youtu.be/l7AREVC2QzQ