The sudden appearance of a 61-year-old live recording from one of America’s legendary country and western performers would be newsworthy enough. The fact that it’s a complete live concert from ’60s chartbuster Buck Owens, captured in Richmond at North Side neighborhood venue, the Bellevue Theatre, is cause for local celebration.

“The Exciting Sounds of Buck Owens And His Buckaroos Live From Richmond, Virginia, 1964” is the earliest known full-concert performance of Owens and his band onstage, captured at a time when they were the hottest country act in the U.S. The Sept. 14, 1964 recording, painstakingly restored and remastered by Grammy award-winning engineer Michael Graves, was released on vinyl by Omnivore Records last week.

“I think that it’s as good as any of Buck’s live albums,” says co-producer Jim Shaw, a former member of the Buckaroos who now oversees the late singer’s publishing and licensing through the Buck Owens Foundation. “They were really smoking at this time in Buck’s career.”

He says that, to many fans, this is the “classic lineup of the band, with Tom Brumley on steel and Willie Cantu [drums] and Doyle Holly [bass] and Don Rich [guitar, harmony]. That group was only together for a year and a half or two and then it started changing.” Shaw himself joined on keyboards in 1970.

“The show sounds great,” says Buck superfan Stephen McCarthy, who wrote about the archival recording in the North of the James community newspaper. The renowned Americana artist, a North Side resident who has performed in alternative country bands ranging from the Long Ryders (which he co-founded) to the Jayhawks, found out about the release from a friend who works at Omnivore. “I was, like, you’ve got to be kidding me? This was recorded next to Dot’s on MacArthur Avenue?”

Prior to the Bellevue concert, the earliest known live recording of the Buckaroos was released on their top-selling “Live at Carnegie Hall” album, made in March 1966, 18 months later. The Bellevue show includes such Buckaroos classics as “Act Naturally,” “Love’s Gonna Live Here,” and “Together Again”—five number one country singles in all.

“It’s an undiscovered, never-before-heard concert,” McCarthy says. “If you are a honky tonk fan, if you are a Buck Owens fan, it’s like finding gold… the version of ‘Together Again’ with Tom Brumley on steel, I got a lump in my throat from hearing that.”

Buck and his band were touring behind that song in 1964 when they performed two shows at the 200-seat art deco movie theater on MacArthur Avenue. Tickets were $2 and both performances were sold out. “The band is in good form,” Shaw says. “Sometimes I wish we could change the mix a little bit but there’s nothing we can do about that.”

Among its other charms, the recording is a time capsule of its era, a period when Buck’s Capitol Records labelmates the Beatles—who had just covered his “Act Naturally”—were conquering the world. In tribute, the Buckaroos conclude the Bellevue concert (as they did at Carnegie Hall) with a rollicking, if jokey rendition of “Twist and Shout,” the Isley Brothers tune memorably covered by the Fab Four.

“Buck liked the Beatles,” says Shaw, who co-produced Buck’s 1989 collaboration with Ringo Starr on a duet cover of “Act Naturally.” “Buck especially liked the royalty checks. But [longtime Buckaroo] Don Rich was probably the one who brought the Beatles into the band. To be honest, I don’t think Buck listened to music that much. Don Rich was the one who was listening to everything, from jazz to rock.”

The live album includes extensive liner notes from co-producer Scott B. Bomar, a Buck scholar. But Shaw says that little is known about the origins of the Bellevue recording, which came to the Foundation through a private collector. “It was on a cassette that sounded terrible. Michael Graves did an unbelievable job remastering it.”

Later it was discovered that the Country Music Foundation also had a recording of the show in its vast archives, but its origins were also shrouded in mystery.  At the time of the concert, the Bellevue had been the site for the weekly “New Dominion Barn Dance,” a revamping of the classic country music show broadcast live on WRVA, which is why it would have had professional recording equipment in house.

The stately Bellevue was sold in 1966 to Samis Grotto, a Freemason social club. Today, it is being restored and its second floor spaces converted into apartments. But those twangy sounds of old linger on, as does the mystery. “It’s still up in the air why the recording was made and what the purpose was,” says Shaw.

McCarthy adds that the band definitely knew they were being recorded.

“We know that because, at the beginning of the show, Buck Owens asks the sound man if he’s getting a good level for his tape recorder.”

For more on “The Exciting Sounds of Buck Owens And His Buckaroos Live From Richmond, Virgina, 1964,” go to omnivorerecordings.com/shop/live-from-richmond/