Bobby Bare Biography | Country Music | Ken Burns

One of country music’s most respected performers and recording artists, Bobby Bare enjoyed commercial and chart success from the late 1950s through the mid-1980s. His emotionally compelling, rural-inflected voice and gift for storytelling gave life to songs like “Miller’s Cave,” “500 Miles Away from Home,” and “Four Strong Winds”and, historian Bill C. Malone argues, helped revive the narrative tradition in country music, moving it closer to its roots.

Born in eastern Ohio and raised across the state line in Kentucky, Bare suffered tragedy early in life. His mother died when he was just five years old and his father, unable to feed and care for the children himself, was forced to split the family apart. By the time he was 15, Bobby was working to help make ends meet, first on a farm and later in nearby factories. At the same time, Bare discovered his love of music and built his own guitar out of a coffee can and a stick.“I got some strings off of a screen door and wired it up,” he laughs, “and I’d sit around and flog on that, you know?”

After early success in the pop market, Bare moved to Nashville to make his way back to country music, where he felt he most belonged. He was signed by Chet Atkins to RCA and developed a distinctive blend of folk, pop, and country. Within a year he had a No. 6 country / no. 16 pop hit with Mel Tillis and Danny Dill’s “Detroit City,” the GRAMMY award winner for Best Country and Western Recording (1964) and today one of the great country music standards. Not long after, travelling through Phoenix, Arizona, Bare discovered Waylon Jennings and helped him secure a contract with RCA. In Nashville, Bare and Jennings would become fast friends, spending time together at “Hillbilly Central” and other haunts frequented by country music’s “Outlaws.”