What it is, what to hear first, and what sits next to it.
The Bakersfield sound was a genre of country music developed in the mid to late 1950s in and around Bakersfield, California. The town, known mainly for agriculture and oil production, was the destination for many Dust Bowl migrants and others from Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and other parts of the South. Bakersfield country was a reaction against the slickly produced, string orchestra-laden Nashville sound, which was becoming popular in the late 1950s. .