Yoakam Champions Buck, Bakersfield

The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce is probably not chomping at the bit to adopt “L.A.: The Bakersfield of the ‘80s” as its new motto.

For many country music fans, though, the slogan has an appealing ring. It suggests that L.A. denizens such as Dwight Yoakam--local boy made good--are the true heirs of Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and other proponents of the celebrated “Bakersfield sound” of the ‘60s.

Owens himself certainly thinks so. He may be Yoakam’s--and the L.A. country resurgence’s--biggest fan. The veteran has come out of a decade-long musical retirement to record a duet with his devotee (the newly released Tex-Mex polka “Streets of Bakersfield”) and to join him on about a dozen selected tour dates, including a stop tonight at the Universal Amphitheatre.

“The thing that parallels what Buck did more than anything else is that we record with a band ,” Yoakam observed during a recent interview. “In other words, I take a band into the studio and make a record. That’s the thing that separated him from Nashville’s studio work, where they made ‘session’ records, if you pick up the distinction.”

The L.A.-based singer/songwriter also hopes that the duet single (included on his upcoming third album, “Buenos Noches From a Lonely Room,” which is even more traditional-sounding than his first two efforts) will spark interest in Owens among younger fans.

“His old records are currently not in production; he owns all the masters,” says Yoakam. “That’s one of the things that contributed to a whole generation of people being unaware of the wealth of honky-tonk shuffles and classic country music that Buck Owens produced from ’58 to ’70. Our generation that was growing up with ‘Hee Haw’ saw him hosting the show, and that’s not an accurate assessment at all of the man’s musical career.”

Owens, in a separate interview, recalled the reasons for his retirement. “I did the straight-ahead things a lot like Dwight has done ‘em and let the chips fall where they may. And when the pop/country thing came along . . . it almost seemed like I couldn’t get arrested as far as radio stations went in those days.

“It just became apparent to me that they’d had a lot of Buck Owens stuffed down their throats for 20 years, and it was kind of their nice way of saying it by not playing it anymore. . . .

“That’s why I eased out of it. I didn’t feel that I could fit in. Obviously, I tried a couple of times what I thought was some sort of a compromise, and that even made it worse.”

Since he “eased out” of the performing and recording ends of the music business about a decade ago, Owens says he’s turned down offers from Alabama, Waylon Jennings and many other Nashville stars to join them on stage. But when relative newcomer Yoakam invited him to make a cameo at the Kern County Fair last year, Owens saw enough of himself in the relative newcomer--and enough of the old Bakersfield sound in the new L.A. sound--to give in.

“There’s never a dull moment with the kid,” said Owens. “Dwight is young, has got a lot of energy, and at this time in my life, I think I need somebody like that. I’ve never seen many people could get along with me, and I’ll bet not many can get along with him! He’s very positive, he’s brash, he’s honest. I think he’s confrontational. What am I gonna say? So was I!”

Yoakam is trying to cut down on the contentiousness a little, though. It’s not as easy to bait him into insulting the Nashville country establishment and its watered-down sounds as it used to be.

Said Yoakam, “I made some comments that made people very angry; I kind of upset the dinner table. And I think I paid a price for that. Now, I don’t indulge in that too much because it’s redundant, and at this point I feel like it’s only conducive to sensationalizing the topic and not constructively commenting on it.

“So I think there are lingering bad tastes in the mouths of some people in the industry, but I think that in time they’ll understand that I’m not saying that in some trite, juvenile way. I mean, I dig this music . . . . I’m a fan, and fans are fanatics.”

LIVE ACTION: The Judds and Randy Travis will be at the Universal Amphitheatre Sept. 21-24. Tickets are on sale now. . . . Tickets are also available now for a second Def Leppard/Europe concert at Irvine Meadows, on Aug. 20. . . . The two-day Long Beach Blues Festival lineup includes Johnnie Taylor, Albert King and Ruth Brown (Sept. 17) and Albert Collins and the Staple Singers (Sept. 18).