Buck Turner and the Buckaroos

Rural Entertainment from Memphis

Buck Turner and the Buckaroos

Buck Turner (center) and the Buckaroos with Sam Phillips in Phillips'
Memphis Recording Service studio, prob. 1950 (image from unknown source)

Buck Turner and his band, the Buckaroos, were one of Memphis' most popular country music bands in the 1940s and early 1950s. They were mainstays on local radio and Turner was even involved in bringing Sam Phillips' Memphis Recording Service up and running, therefore paving the way for the musical revolution that would come (at least to some small degree).

Actually, there were at least three different artists using the name "Buck Turner". Before we proceed, it makes sense to tell apart the different Buck Turners. There was a blues singer named Babe Kyro Lemon Turner, who most frequently performed as "Black Ace" but also used "Buck Turner" and various other names for performing and recording purposes. The other one was more similar in musical style but considerably younger. Houston "Buck" Turner was from Chattanooga and was active as a songwriter and singer, working steadily during the 1950s and 1960s with Gene Woods, the Dixieland Drifters, and Murray Nash. To add to the confusion, he was also working with another Memphis based act, Tani Allen and the Tennessee Pals.

Considering the group's popularity in Memphis and surrounding areas, it is surprising that researchers and journalists have mostly omitted Buck Turner and the Buckaroos from history books and articles. It is also astonishing that this group, and this fact may have caused their absence from the books, made no commercial recordings.

The leader and namesake of the band, Bodo Otto "Buck" Turner was born in 1909 in rural Greene County, Southeast Mississippi, near the Alabama state border. The area was sparsely populated (only about 6,000 habitants in 1910) and its economy based on hog and cattle breeding. It seems that Buck Turner had German ancestors but his father's family, originally coming from South Carolina, lived in Mississippi since the early 19th century. Parts of his mother's family came from Alabama. Turner's parents married in 1896 in Greene County and had a total of nine children, Buck Turner being the youngest. In 1910, a year after his birth, his mother died from blood poisoning. His father passed away in 1924 when Buck Turner was circa 15 years old.

By the early 1930s, Turner seems to have married and moved northwest to Covington County, Mississippi, as we found a grave at Mount Olive City Cemetery of an infant: Bodo Otto Turner, Jr., who was born on May 4, 1934, and died on June 1, 1934, at the age of 28 days. We have no proof that this child was Buck Turner's son but it is quite probable. After the early loss of his parents, this would have been the third tragic incident in his life.

Billboard September 5, 1942

Newspaper advertisements from a local Jackson, Tennessee, paper indicate that Turner began performing music around 1933. By the late 1930s (probably even earlier), Turner had left Mississippi in favor of the booming city of Memphis, just across the Mississippi-Tennessee state border. By this point, he had assembled a group of musicians, which became known as the "Buckaroos". Soon, Turner and his band were performing in Memphis as well as Southwest Tennessee and North Mississippi. They would play school houses, beer joints, and other venues across these areas. The Buckaroos soon became regulars on local Memphis station WREC with their early morning show and developed into mainstays over the years. By 1944, their show could be also heard on WHBQ, sponsored by Black & White Stores.

Line-ups of the band cannot be determined from the few sources but particular names are known, though. Blind pianist Paul Whiteside was a long-time member of the group, at least performing with the band during the 1940s and early 1950s. Memphis steel guitarist Hugh Jeffreys was also a member in the early 1950s (he had performed previously with Paul Howard's Arkansas Cotton Pickers). Other names included fiddler, guitarist and singer Homer Clyde Grice and multi-instrumentalist Grover Clater O'Brien, both from Mississippi. Harry Bolick and Tony Russell cite O'Brien in their book "Fiddle Tunes from Mississippi" regarding Buck Turner: "After he [O'Brien] finished his schooling and before he joined the Army in 1945, Grover played with several country bands including an often low-paying one with Buck Turner: 'One boy that used to play with us was Buck Turner, and we were starvation box-beaters...' Still 'He said he made way more money playing music than working on the farm or in the sawmill.'"

Billboard July 25, 1942

A testimony to the Buckaroos' popularity was given by professor Al Price, who grew up in Mississippi during the 1940s and mentioned the band in his autobiography. "[...] The favorite musical group in our area was the Buck Turner Band from Memphis. Fans such as my mother and father made them popular and rich. Their radio program could be heard all over North Mississippi. They booked shows throughout the mid-South. I remember one special show they did at the Legion Lake, which was located about halfway between Coffeeville and Oakland, on Highway 330. [...]" Although Turner and the Buckaroos likely did not get rich from their fans, their enduring popularity in the rural areas of North Mississippi and Southwest Tennessee likely gave them a welcomed income. Price continues: "[...] One night the Buck Turner Band performed for the dance. I was not allowed to go inside, but I could see what was going on from the door. After about an hour, and after several men had gotten fairly drunk, a fight broke out on the dance floor. I was horrified, but my mother made sure that I was out of the way and prevented my dad from going inside. The band tried to get outside by a back door to avoid getting involved. They had a blind guy playing for them, and I could see them trying to direct him out of the door. Some of the spectators were helping them escape the scene." In the end, a man was stabbed during the fight. This incident also shows that Turner and the band had to deal with the rough habits that were common back then at dances, beer joints, and many other venues throughout the South. The "blind guy" that Price is mentioning was pianist Paul Whiteside.

Billboard 1944 Music Year Book

But Turner and the Buckaroos were more than a popular regional country band. In fact, through their radio shows and countless personal appearances in the area, they had an influence on many young men that later became part of Memphis' thriving music scene and the development of rock'n'roll. Kern Kennedy, pianist with Sonny Burgess' Pacers, cited the band as one of his influences. "We listened to KNBY Newport and WREC Memphis. A group from Memphis I enjoyed was Buck Turner and the Buckaroos. They had a blind piano player named Paul Whiteside that really inspired me."

Besides from a musical point of view, Buck Turner assured his little mention in history books by putting up some money for Sam Phillips' newly opened Memphis Recording Service, the tiny recording studio that would evolve into Sun Records. Phillips had opened the studio on January 2, 1950, on 706 Union Avenue but at first, found little to none musical acts to record but rather earned some money by recording private acetates, funerals or school events. Turner and Phillips knew each other from WREC, for which Sam Phillips worked, too, at that time. Turner and the band recorded their show on WREC for the Arkansas Rural Electrification Program to send out to different radio stations in Arkansas and Phillips transcribed those recordings. In Martin Hawkins' book "Good Rockin' Tonight", Sam Phillips is cited: "The very first job I had after opening my recording studio was in January 1950. I recorded transcriptions for radio with a country singer, Buck Turner. This was for the Arkansas Rural Electrification Corporation. We made fifteen-minute programs that I transcribed onto big ol' sixteen-inch discs. They were distributed to about eighteen or twenty stations." Turner was so pleased with the sound of their shows' recordings that he offered Phillips to invest some money in the venture. In the end, he put in approximately $ 2.000 to buy some hardly needed equipment.

In addition to the radio shows, Phillips had plans to record Turner and the Buckaroos as commercial artists, although this was not a goal straight from his heart but an intermission until Phillips found something that really caught his ear. He also recorded Slim Rhodes' band, another Memphis mainstay on the country music scene, and both were "good solid local combos [but] I never did see anything particular about either Buck or Slim's band that stood out, as far as style," Phillips is cited by Peter Guralnick in his book "Sam Phillips - The Man Who Invented Rock'n'Roll". By summer 1950, Sam Phillips' own "The Phillips" record label (in partnership with DJ Dewey Phillips) had come into existence and the first release was out by local blues man Joe Hill Louis. Phillips also announced that he would record more acts on his new label, including "Your Red Wagon" by Turner and Buckaroos, who "had a knocked-out version of the tune [that] we feel certain...will sell." Due to different reasons, the label crashed and its life ended even before it really began. None of the tapes survived, if they ever existed. Plans on recording Turner and the band were laid to rest finally. By September 1952, Phillips had paid off Turner completely, which ended their relationship both artistically and mercantile. Turner's wife was not happy with her husband's venture either, so it was likely a welcomed way of exit.

As the band's association with Sam Phillips came to an end by 1952, it seems they never had the chance of recording commercially again. However, they remained a popular act in those years and seemed to feature a couple of artists that later became well-known to rockabilly fans - another proof for their historical significance. Both Hayden Thompson and Johnny "Ace" Cannon performed with the band at least occasionally. It seems the Buckaroos were a rock'n'roll tinsmith similar to Clyde Leoppard's Snearly Ranch Boys - though on smaller scales. In fact, both Thompson and Cannon performed with the Snearly Ranch Boys, too.

The Buckaroos remained active throughout the 1950s, playing such events as the annual Farmers Day celebrations in Arkansas. Their radio show likely came to an end in the late 1950s when live music on air was replaced by DJs. There is no exact break-up date documented for the Buckaroos but late 1950s or early 1960s seems to be a good bet.

Billboard April 16, 1966

Buck Turner switched from live music to working as a DJ on WREC and Billboard named him in its April 16, 1966, issue one of Memphis' top disc jockeys in the pop LP sector. A year before, he was part of a six song EP released by Eddie Bond's Millionaire label (Millionaire #MC-109/10) that featured popular Memphis DJs of the time, including Bond, Chuck Comer, and Turner, who is featured with "What Will I Do". This seems to be Turner's only commercial recording.

In 1966, Buck Turner passed away at age of approximately 56 years. He is buried at Memorial Park Cemetery in Memphis. His death remained largely unnoticed just like his efforts in Memphis music, which paved the way for rock'n'roll music.

Sources
• Goodwin Family History Website
• Find a Grave entry
• 45cat entry for Millionaire EP
• Steel Guitar Forum
• Al Price: "Gravel and Dirt - A White Boyhood in the Segregated South" (Xlibris US), 2020
• Peter Guralnick: "Sam Phillips - the Man Who Invented Rock'n'Roll" (Little, Brown), 2015, pages 74, 88, 97
• Martin Hawkins/Colin Escott: "Good Rockin' Tonight - Sun Records and the Birth of Rock'n'Roll" (St. Martin's Press), 1991, pages 111-112
• Harry Bolick/Tony Russell: "Fiddle Tunes from Mississippi" (University Press of Mississippi), 2021, pages 192, 486
• Marvin Schwartz: "We Wanna Boogie - The Rockabilly Roots of Sonny Burgess and the Pacers" (Butler Center for Arkansas Studies), 2014, page 158