The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Singer, songwriter, actor, playwright and entrepreneur Jim Owen spent a part of his honeymoon in Sisters.

While in town last week, he performed at Sisters Middle School, providing a sample of some of his better known songs, interspersed with country insights and one-liners from his Nashville career. The crowd was filled with old fans and aspiring young entertainers.

Owen was widowed a few years ago and met a woman nine months ago who also had been widowed. They were married just over two weeks ago on a cruise that sailed to the Mexican Rivera. The Sisters visit was Owen's second trip to Oregon; he had traveled to Coos Bay many years ago.

After the cruise, the couple drove to Central Oregon to spend the night in Sisters so Owen could perform, leaving the next day to head home to Branson, Missouri.

"We have been driving for 4,000 miles. We left Branson, drove to Texas where we picked up our cruise and got married, then drove to here. We have an SUV, but after 4,000 miles I came to the conclusion they should be called a SUX. When we get home we will have been gone a month," said Owen.

Owen has wanted to be an entertainer since he was a child in rural Tennessee.

"This is all I ever intended to do all of my life. I have never had any other intentions or dreams except baseball. I was a pretty good baseball player, and I did that for a while but realized that my talent wasn't enough to get to the major leagues - so I gave it up. But this was my dream - forever," said Owen.

Owen worked hard and tried everything possible to make the break into the industry. He believes that there is no substitute for hard work and perseverance. There were times it seemed like he should have given up, but he refused to let go of his dream.

"I would travel the 125 miles to Nashville. I would go down every Monday and take my songs and get turned down. Then, go down the next Monday and get turned down again. I did that for years - just years. I would make a record every now and then but not getting very many people to listen to my songs. But I kept doin' it and doin' it and finally it worked," Owen said.

Along the way he would make a little money, and it worked a little like an appetizer for him - never enough to fill him up but enough that there would be promise of more.

"The first time I got paid for a show, I was a senior in high school. That's when you turn pro - when you start getting paid. It was in the late '60s that I had enough success to figure that I could make a living at it," he said.

Owen's biggest success came with a song titled "Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man" which was made famous by Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn. Although other artists have performed the same work, no other duet has taken it to the same heights as the original Twitty/Lynn arrangement.

"Around the world it has sold almost 20 million records," Owen said. "It has been a fabulous song. It is one of the top rated songs of all times - the number-two duet of all times. It has played on the radio a million and a quarter times. A song becomes a hit when it plays a 100,000 times."

When in his 50s, Owen had what seemed to be a minor bout with a cold or flu and found that he had suffered severe hearing loss. After discovering that he was not going to recover his hearing, his career branched into a new direction. He decided he wanted to make an impact with young people to try to direct them away from life-wrecking decisions. Earlier in the day before his performance in Sisters, he spoke with middle schoolers in Redmond about the dangers of drugs, alcohol and cigarettes.

"Kids tend to listen to strangers more than they do their parents, their grandparents and their teachers. So, I just talk to them about what has happened in my life and the people I have known that have suffered from it."