Success in the entertainment industry takes hard work, creativity, and, more often than not, the stars aligning just right—and on October 1, 1929, the cosmos locked into place over the tiny city of Blanchard, Oklahoma, as the woman responsible for some of Merle Haggard’s most iconic hits was born (Bonnie Owens, born Bonnie Campbell, would meet Haggard 32 years later).
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That introduction would set off a romantic and collaborative relationship that would produce some of country music’s most memorable songs. The former connection didn’t survive the 1970s, but the music they wrote certainly did.
“There wouldn’t have been no ‘Mama Tried’ or ‘Working Man Blues’ if it wouldn’t have been for her,” Haggard later recalled at the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2012. “She took the words down at the right time. I think it was 68 or 69, we had six BMI Awards that year, and she took down the songs. Each one of them, she took down.”
Bonnie Owens Was a Star in Her Own Right
At fifteen years old, Bonnie Owens married her first husband, Buck Owens, and moved to Bakersfield, California. The couple both started respective music careers that would go on to outlive their marriage, which they ended in 1953. Bonnie enjoyed success as a country singer in the early 1960s with songs like “Don’t Take Advantage of Me” and “Why Don’t Daddy Live Here Anymore?” The Academy of Country Music even named her the Female Vocalist of the Year in 1965. Despite her star’s fast upward trajectory, she opted to take more of a backseat role as a collaborator, homemaker, and child caretaker after developing a romantic relationship with Haggard.
The early years of their marriage were incredibly prolific for Haggard in regard to songwriting, which Bonnie helped make happen with her companionship, assistance, and encouragement. She would jot down ideas and lyric snippets for Haggard to use later, ensuring that forgetful memory wasted no good ideas. “If I even indicated that I was going to write, she was there with a pad and a pen,” he said in 2012.
Sometimes, Bonnie even came up with the song ideas. One of Haggard’s most iconic hits, “Today I Started Loving You Again”, came from a conversation he had with his then-wife about coming home from the road. Haggard said something about finally having time to pay attention to their relationship after all that time away, and Bonnie told him there was a song idea there. And indeed it was. Haggard’s version charted but not amazingly well, but it has become a country music standard nonetheless.
Merle Haggard and Bonnie Owens divorced in 1978, but they maintained a great deal of respect and admiration for one another until her death in 2006.
Photo by © Roger Ressmeyer/CORBIS/VCG via Getty Images
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