Billy Barton
- 5 -
When Ferlin Husky took the song
A Dear
John Letter
to his record producer Ken
Nelson in 1953, it touched off a relationship
between Ferlin’s then-home of Bakersfield,
California and Capitol Records that
eventually flowered into the monumental
success of the twin pillars of country
music’s Bakersfield Sound - Buck Owens
and Merle Haggard. As detailed in ‘Go
Crazy Man: The Other Side of Bakersfield,
Vol. 1,’ the song was written by Hillbilly
Barton, who famously traded his interest
in the tune to Bakersfield’s Lewis Talley in
exchange for a car. Talley then sold half to
his cousin, Fuzzy Owen, another
Bakersfield musician who recorded the
song as a duet with Bonnie Owens. Bonnie
was not related to Fuzzy, but
was
recently
divorced from Buck Owens, who played
guitar at Bakersfield’s famed Blackboard
Club with popular bandleader Bill Woods.
Husky convinced Ken Nelson to record
Jean Shepard doing her own version of
A
Dear John Letter
, and enlisted Woods,
Lewis Talley, Fuzzy Owen, and Tommy
Collins - yet another up-and-coming
Bakersfield picker - to play on the session.
Nelson liked their style. He liked it even
more when the song became a #1 country
by Scott B. Bomar
