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Donald Eugene Ulrich, best known by the stage name Don Rich (August 15, 1941-July 17, 1974) was a country music guitarist who helped develop the Bakersfield sound in the early 1960s. He is recognized as one of the most influential guitarists of the twentieth century. Rich started playing violin at age three. As a teenager growing up in Tumwater, Washington, he learned to play guitar as well. During those years he caught the ear of Buck Owens, then a disc jockey and musician in Tacoma. After Rich graduated from high school, he planned to become a music teacher, but he quit college to join Owens' band, The Buckaroos. Rich started out playing fiddle with the band, and switched to guitar in 1962. Rich, like Owens, played a custom sparkle-finish Fender Telecaster electric guitar, and he took advantage of this guitar's unique tones to create the bassy rhythms and twangy "chicken pickin'" that became a characteristic of the genre. His playing style can be heard in the 1963 Buck Owens hit "Act Naturally," a song which was later covered by The Beatles. The Buckaroos had 19 #1 country hits in the 1960s. Rich released a solo album in 1972 titled That Fiddlin' Man. Rich died on July 17, 1974 in a motorcycle accident along Highway 99 north of Bakersfield, California. After a recording session at the Buck Owens Studios, then located in Oildale, Rich was traveling to Morro Bay, California, to join his wife and family for a summer vacation when he lost control of his motorcycle and struck a guard rail. He was buried in Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery in northeast Bakersfield.