Back in 2021 Patrick and I made our first visit to the Kern County Museum, an outstanding museum with over 50 buildings across 16 acres in Bakersfield. Our visit was amid COVID restrictions, and meant that few of the buildings were open, and between then and now, it has opened a Bakersfield Sound exhibit and tracked down a long lost neon sign to to add to its already stunning neon sign collection. Needless to say, I was excited to return.

The one of the larger buildings houses an exhibit featuring skeletal remains of early mammals, including California’s official state fossil, the saber tooth cat, as well as Indigenous artifacts, clothing belonging to early settlers, carriages, and World War II artifacts. Adjacent is what amasses to a small village, with buildings that either once were or represent nearly every form of business a western town would have had, including old homesteads, blacksmith, church, school, train cars, and much more. Tucked away in a corner you will find a 1930s gas station with a fabulous neon courtyard filled gorgeous signs from various local businesses as well as a large warehouse with vintage automobiles, carriages, and more.

 

While the neon courtyard may have been my old favorite, it is the Bakersfield Sound exhibit that really has my heart. The wooden buildings evokes an old honky tonk and inside features many western outfits worn by artists hailing from and near Bakersfield, with multiple made by famed western tailors Nudie Cohn and Nathan Turk, as well as artifacts from the many honky tonks that dotted the Bakersfield highways. But just what is the Bakersfield Sound? By the 1960s, Nashville, the undisputed Mecca of country music was getting a little more polished. Artist and collector Marty Stuart said artists “were doing everything the could to make it more elegant, and more ‘listenable’ more palatable.” The result was “countrypolitan.” This included a very clean studio sound, backing vocals, and orchestral elements. Gone was the once iconic hillbilly twang. In the meantime, rough working class folk who had fled the Dust Bowl for California were growing up and reacting to this less relatable sound and developing their own, which Stuart described as “hardnosed, unapologetic, had a honky tonk bass to it, and a snap to it, and there’s a defiance to it.” While there were many artists who contributed to this sound and played the variety of bars and clubs in and around Bakersfield, the ones who are best known are Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.

Alvid Edgard Owens Jr., was born August 12, 1929 in Texas, but when the Dust Bowl hit, his family made tracks for California, but stopped just shy of it in Arizona. In 1951, Owens, who had earned the nickname “Buck” would complete the journey, arriving in Bakersfield in 1951. By the 1990s, Owens would further solidify Bakersfield as his home by building the venue the Crystal Palace.

Born a few years later in 1937, Merle Ronald Haggard was born in Oildale, near Bakersfield, to parents who had fled the Dust Bowl from Oklahoma, a classic “Okie” tale. Haggard grew up inside a small refurbished refrigerated train car, also on view at the museum, and then went on to become not just one of the top names of the Bakersfield Sound, but in country music.

While not necessarily of the Bakersfield Sound, the The Maddoxes were also Dust Bowl refugees who found a wonderful sound thanks to the vocal talents of Rose Maddox. Originally from Alabama, the family moved to Modesto, near Bakersfield, and performed across the country.  Rose often wore beautifully colorful western ensembles, including a cropped ensemble she wore on the Grand Ole Opry, showing her bare midriff.

Outside of the building looms a neon leaping fish that once lured in those wanting a cold beer and the sounds of country music into the Trout Bar. Founded in 1931 by Ralph Trout, it became a well known honky tonk with live music every day of the week. It sadly closed in 2017, and in the same year its sign was removed for “repairs” and the building burned to the ground in 2022. Meanwhile the sign had gone missing, despite negotiation agreements for it to go to the Kern County Museum. Desperate for the iconic sign to return, Chris Hayden, a local businessman, teamed up with the museum and offered a $10,000 reward for its return. Thanks to the work of a private investigator funded by Hayden, the sign was located in November 2024 over 200 miles away in the small gold country town of Jamestown. The sign was gloriously restored and installed outside of the Bakersfield Sound building in the spring of 2025.

While born in Bakersfield, it didn’t take long for the Bakersfield Sound to travel south of Los Angeles, where it would continue and grow. The Bakersfield South laid the groundwork for the blending genre of country-rock of the later 1960s, and Outlaw Country that would follow in the 1970s.

Next time you pass through Bakersfield stop by the Kern County Museum, located at 3801 Chester Avenue in Bakersfield.

What’s Nearby?

Andre’s Burgers

The Last Woolworth’s Lunch Counter

Sources
Duncan, Dayton & Burns, Ken. Country Music: An Illustrated History. Knopf, 2019. Print.
Plaques on site.
Price, Robert. “Trout’s neon sign, missing since 2017, recovered in Tuolumne County, comes home to Kern County Museum.” KGET. 8 November 2024.