Buck Owens and Merle Haggard emerged from the dim lights, thick smoke and loud, loud music of Bakersfield, California's thriving honky-tonk scene of the 1950s and '60s and changed country music forever. But what is the 'Bakersfield Sound?' While twanging Telecasters and crying steel guitars come to mind, the music that emanated from Central California in that era reflected a variety of influences that was expressed in myriad ways. "We represent the end results of all the years of country music in this town," Haggard once remarked about the California city that served as home base for the two Country Music Hall of Fame inductees. But how did the musical world from which Buck and Merle emerged come to be? How were the twin pillars of the Bakersfield Sound shaped by the city's larger musical community? Who were their influences, and what were the musical markers along their paths to success? In what ways did their achievements reshape the local scene from which they emerged? This first sprawling multi-disc anthology of Bakersfield's country music heritage begins with 1940s field recordings of migrants who fled the ravages of dust and economic depression in search of a better life in California. It traces the development of the music they brought with them all the way through 1974, the last full year Merle Haggard made his home in Bakersfield, the year of Buck Owens' final Top 10 hit as a solo artist, and the year Bakersfield guitar hero Don Rich was killed in a motorcycle accident. Sometimes called 'Nashville West,' Bakersfield became hotbed that fostered the careers of Ferlin Husky, Herb Henson, Jimmy Thomason, Billy Barton, Fuzzy Owen, Lewis Talley, Tommy Collins, Dallas Frazier, Semie Moseley, Jean Shepard, The Farmer Boys, Wynn Stewart, Tommy Duncan, Billy Mize, Cliff Crofford, Bonnie Owens, Don Markham, Al Brumley, Tommy Dee, Jelly Sanders, Oscar Whittington, Johnny Barnett, Vancie Flowers, Bobby Durham, Bob Morris, Roy Nichols, Don Rich, Red Simpson, Kay Adams, Bobby Austin, Dick Curless, Joe & Rose Lee Maphis, Buddy Mize, Gary Paxton, The Gosdin Brothers, Ronnie Sessions, Gene Moles, Clarence White, Tony Booth, Freddie Hart, David Frizzell, and countless others. Collected here are a diverse range of recordings that includes Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys in a Bakersfield radio studio in the mid-1940s; previously unheard work tapes of a recently-paroled Merle Haggard recording demos with only his acoustic guitar to accompany him; a newly discovered Haggard session for Tally Records that was believed to have been lost and has never been heard before; previously unknown live recordings of Buck Owens and the Buckaroos at the very last of Buck's legendary annual Toys for Tots shows before Don Rich's death; unreleased recordings by Red Simpson, Billy Mize, Bonnie Owens, and Johnny Bond; radio broadcasts from the stage of the legendary Blackboard Café; and an early Bill Woods vanity record that predates any of his previously-known recorded output....