Buck Owens and His Buckaroos "Live At Carnegie Hall"

Would have loved to have been in the audience for this one.

"I immediately turned off iTunes and went in search of the vinyl to give it a listen top to bottom and I’m still floored by the production on this record, especially given the time it was recorded in 1966."

October 31st, Gooooooood morning live music lovers. It’s back to business today here at the “Live Vinyl Lovefest” Today I have a dandy for ya. I’ve shared my love for this record with many friends and colleagues over the years. It’s Buck Owens and His Buckaroos live at Carnegie Hall.

My family were pretty big Buck Owens fans so I got a good dose of him when I was a kid, let alone the weekly exposure to Hee Haw a bit later on.

But I did not discover this album until much later in my life. I bought it on a whim of nostalgia and it sat in my collection for a long time before actually listening to it.

I have all the music I own ripped in to a server that I have available in my office. I have a TON of titles on that server. Probably well in excess of 50,000 titles. And when I’m in the office, or working in the tech shop etc. iTunes accesses that server and it plays on shuffle spitting out wildly different genres of music all day long. One day a track from this album came up and as I sat there taking it in, the thought struck me that “man, this is a good sounding record” and most especially the recording of the audience. I immediately turned off iTunes and went in search of the vinyl to give it a listen top to bottom and I’m still floored by the production on this record, especially given the time it was recorded in 1966. After a little digging, much to my surprise I discovered that the album actually got to #1 on the Billboard Country Album charts in that year.

I have not been able to find any info about the technology used to record the performance and there are no personnel credits on the record, but this is one of a number of albums that I use as a reference on crowd recording for live performance which in my opinion can kind of make or break a live recording for me.

I think about this record every time I go to Carnegie Hall. This album sits in stark contrast to the failed Jimmy Reed "non-recording" at Carnegie Hall just a few years earlier that I shared a few weeks back.

Oh to be able to time travel and be a fly on the wall.