Three years after he was born on a farm outside Sherman on August 11, 1923, Alvis Edgar Owens, Jr. announced he liked the donkey’s name better and Buck Owens it was.

Even though he had 21 Number One hits on the country music chart, Owens is best known for “Hee Haw,” the TV show he co-hosted from 1969 until 1986.  He died in his sleep from a heart attack in 2006 after a final show at his restaurant, club and museum in Bakersfield, California.  The folks back in Sherman named the stretch of Highway 82 that runs through town the “Buck Owens Freeway.”

Country music star Jim Reeves perished in the crash of his private plane on July 31, 1964 when he tried to land in a rainstorm at the Nashville airport.

The 40 year old East Texan pitched three seasons in the minor leagues before an injury ended his baseball career.  By the late 1950’s, he was the hottest thing in country music with classic ballads like “Four Walls” and “He’ll Have to Go.”  Reeves is buried beside his favorite dog in a roadside shrine outside his home town of Carthage.

Roy Orbison was on a four-year roll in the early 1960’s.  When it was over in 1964, the native Texan (born in Vernon, high school in Wink) would have 22 Top 40 hits to his credit.  But it was on June 5, 1961 that an Orbison single climbed to the top of the Billboard chart for the very first time, and that song was “Running Scared.”