Dwight! Did You Sing Dixie As He Died?

Word of the day:  Gotterdammerung\gher-ter-DEM-uh-roong\ noun: a collapse (as of a society or regime) marked by catastrophic violence and disorder; broadly : downfall.

"Either you  decide to stay in the shallow end of the pool or you go out in the ocean."  Christopher Reeve

Honky Tonk has been a genre of country music I've found a considerable amount of joy in listening to.  However, it was not  Buck Owens who helped me find this genre.  It was Dwight Yoakam, who with his Appalachian roots caught my ear with the spunky sound and educated me that Buck Owens was notorious for Honky Tonk music.  At the time, I only thought Buck Owens had had only a few country hits and was most famous for his and Roy Clark's hosting of Hee Haw. 

The Heart Of Honky Tonk Has Stopped!
Buck Owens, who died early Saturday at his ranch north of Bakersfield, Calif., at 76, was on the crest of a late-blooming second act when he came to the Birchmere in 1989. One of country's biggest, most charismatic stars in the 1960s and early '70s, he'd stopped recording and touring for a decade before his No. 1 fan, newcomer and neo-traditionalist Dwight Yoakam, helped pull him back into the spotlight with a chart-topping duet of "Streets of Bakersfield."

It was in Bakersfield's blue-collar juke joints that Owens and his onetime bass player Merle Haggard had fine-tuned a hard-core honky-tonk sound informed by the energy and edge of rockabilly and rock-and-roll and defined by their authoritative, emotion-drenched vocals. Dubbed the "Bakersfield sound," it was a flat-out rejection of the smoothed-out, string-laden, pop-driven "Nashville sound" that ruled in the '50s as country music eschewed its rural roots to go uptown

My spiritual connections have surfaced again.  Last night as I was going to sleep, I was listening to WAMU, the local Washington, DC NPR affiliate.  There was this program which mentioned a group BR-5-4-9 who sang an old Hank Williams, Sr. song "Your Cheatin' Heart".  BR-5-4-9, was a number from Jr. Samples' skit on Hee Haw.  The announcer introducing the BR-5-4-9 group, misspoke it by saying BR-5-49.  I suppose the announcer acknowledged his nescience of 70's entertainment.  Was this the spiritual telling me to keep my eyes open for news about Buck Owens?