Bonnie Owens, 76, Country Singer, Is Dead

[alicia-w]

FROM THE NY TIMES

BAKERSFIELD, Calif., April 25 (AP) — Bonnie Owens, a backup singer who married and helped build the careers of the country musicians Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, died here on Monday. She was 76.

She died at a hospice after suffering from Alzheimer's disease, said a family spokesman, Jim Shaw, who played keyboards in Buck Owens's band the Buckaroos. Buck Owens died on March 25.

Born Bonnie Campbell, she met Buck Owens in Mesa, Ariz., in the mid-1940's when she was a teenager and he had a local radio show called "Buck and Britt." When Mr. Owens discovered that she could sing, he helped her get a job with him on another radio show in 1947.

They married a year later, had two sons, and separated in the early 1950's. They remained friends when they resettled in Bakersfield and sometimes performed together.

While working as a waitress at a Bakersfield club, she sang with Fuzzy Owen and his band, the Sun Valley Playboys. It was Owen who suggested that she record a duet with a young Merle Haggard, and their rendition of "Just Between the Two of Us" topped the country charts in 1965 and won the best vocal group award from the Academy of Country Music.

She married Mr. Haggard that same year and toured with him and his band, the Strangers, for nearly a decade. They divorced in 1978 and she later married Fred McMillan.

Despite the multiple marriages and divorces, she remained friends with Mr. Owens and Mr. Haggard and said the men in her life always got along.