Accordionist Flaco Jiménez recorded the bouncy accordion accompaniment to the song, which can resemble a Mexican polka.

[3][4][5][6] Homer Joy, the song's writer, was approached in 1972 by representatives from Buck Owens' studio in Bakersfield, California, about recording a "Hank Williams Sr.

[7] One night, Joy decided to take a walk around downtown Bakersfield, only to have the brand-new cowboy boots he'd been wearing give him blisters all over his feet: "[I] barely made it back to the car, and on top of that, I was still upset about everything, and I went back to my hotel room and wrote "Streets of Bakersfield"".

"[7] Buck Owens released a recording of the song in 1973, and while that version wasn't a major hit, the re-recording he did with Dwight Yoakam in 1988 (with slightly changed lyrics) reached #1 on the Billboard Country Music charts.

The second half of the song details an incident in San Francisco where the narrator is arrested and has to spend a night in jail, presumably for vagrancy.

While he was passed out, the narrator takes $15 from the drunk man, leaving him his watch and his old house key, saying "I don't like folks thinking that I'd steal/ Then I thanked him as he was sleeping/ and I headed out for Bakersfield".