Bonnie Guitar
Bonnie Buckingham (March 25, 1923 – January 12, 2019),[1] better known as Bonnie Guitar, was an American singer, musician, producer, and businesswoman. She was best known for her 1957 country-pop crossover hit "Dark Moon". She became one of the first female country music singers to have hit songs cross over from the country charts to the pop charts.
She co-founded the record company Dolton Records in the late 1950s, that launched the careers of The Fleetwoods and The Ventures. In 1960, she left Dolton and became part owner of Jerden Records.
Early life and rise to fame[edit]
Born in 1923 in Seattle, Washington, United States,[2] to John and Doris Buckingham, Bonnie was initially raised in Redondo Beach along Puget Sound. Later, the family (including her five siblings) moved inland to a farm just outside the rural town of Auburn. She began performing at age 16, having taken up playing the guitar as a teenager, which led to her stage name, Bonnie Guitar. She later started songwriting.
In 1944 she married her former guitar teacher Paul Tutmarc;[3][4] the couple had one daughter, Paula (born 1950), but split up in 1955, and Bonnie moved to Los Angeles. Through much of the 1950s, she worked as a session guitarist at quite a few small labels, like Abbot, Fabor, and Radio Recorders.[2]
Working at these places got Guitar noticed as a professional guitarist as she ended up playing on sessions for many well-known singers, like Jim Reeves, Dorsey Burnette, Ned Miller, and the DeCastro Sisters. After working with so many singers, she acquired her own singing aspirations herself and a desire to make her very own recording career in the process.
Following the release of her first single, "If You See My Love Dancing" on Fabor Records, Bonnie heard a demo of "Dark Moon" from Fabor's owner, Fabor Robinson, a tune written by Ned Miller, with whom she worked as a session guitarist. Robinson was dissatisfied with how Dorsey Burnette sang a version of it and offered it to Guitar. "I said, 'I'll give up my royalties and everything just to do this song,'" she told Robinson in recounting their collaboration on "Dark Moon" to Wayne Jancik in The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders. "I knew it was up for grabs and somebody was gonna get it. I got it, but he took me at my word, and I really did give up my royalties. It was one of the hardest things I ever put together. Ned [Miller] wrote it, but we tried in maybe five or six different ways in different studios before it came out right." The final version consisted of just two guitars and a bass backing Bonnie.[5]
The song was originally issued under Fabor Records in 1956. "Dark Moon" was then issued over to Dot Records[2] and by the spring of 1957, "Dark Moon" hit the pop top 10 list and went into the country top 15 list.
Later career[edit]
In the 1970s, Guitar recorded for Columbia Records and MCA Records and had occasional minor hit records.[2] She charted for the first time in many years in 1980 with the single "Honey On the Moon".[2] In 1986, she recorded for the Tumbleweed label. She later continued performing and playing until she announced she was retiring in 1996. She lived in Soap Lake, Washington, and in 2014 started producing and writing music and still performed on weekends at the age of 92 with her band.