'I've Got A Tiger By The Tail'

A simply fantastic lil' country album. A whole lot of twin-fiddle, steel-guitar, three-chord early country mixed with a little early rock and roll.

There's not a bad song on the record. Mostly their about sleeping with women and generally really not wanting to settle down, which sounds agreeable.

Ironically (or not), Owens himself married five times and divorced all five times. One marriage, to a fiddle player in his band, lasted a couple of days before she threw in the towel. Either Owens knew exactly what he was singing about or he knew absolutely nothing about what he was singing about. You could probably write a book about it.

Owens is actually a Texan. Before he made Bakersfield, Calif. as a kind of hub of musicians, he was born in Sherman (there is a mall currently on the property where his house once stood) and later attended school in Garland, which in the 1930s was probably a series of farm and pasture land.

Owens died of a heart attack, in his sleep, in 2006. By all accounts, he had a chicken fried steak, was about to not perform until he learned a group of fans from Oregon came to see him and decided to play anyway. He played the gig, went home and died in his sleep.

Not the most glamorous of deaths, he didn't die of alcohol poisoning in the back of his car, but he's a hell of a way to go.