The Bakersfield sound is a genre of country music developed in the mid- to late 1950s in and around Bakersfield, California. Bakersfield country was a reaction against the slickly produced, string orchestra-laden Nashville sound, which was becoming popular in the late 1950s. Buck Owens and The Buckaroos, Tommy Collins, and Merle Haggard and the Strangers, are the most successful artists of the original Bakersfield sound era. Other major Bakersfield country artists include Wynn Stewart, Jean Shepard, Susan Raye, Dennis Payne and Freddie Hart.