[Today: The wit and wisdom of Merle Haggard...]
Prison sentences, hard labor and truck driving are the stuff of fiction for most country singers, but Merle Haggard has lived a life that is genuinely reflected in his music. His family relocated to Bakersfield, CA to escape the Oklahoma dust bowls of the Great Depression, and his father died when he was just 9 years old. He soon embarked on a life of petty crime, menial jobs and riding the rails, and by the time he was in his early-30′s, he’d done several stints in reformatories and prisons. In fact, he was in the audience for three of Johnny Cash’s performances at San Quentin, and those shows helped convince him to turn his life around and get serious about music.
His music reflected the so-called Bakersfield Sound, a rough-edged version of country music that featured Fender Telecaster in addition to pedal steel or more traditional country guitars. Developed by Buck Owens, the Bakersfield Sound eventually became a strain of the Outlaw movement in country music, and Haggard became its leading face. “I don’t know if you could call my music cowboy music,” he told Rolling Stone in 1968. “I don’t sing about horses. I call it country music, or American music. It’s one of the only musics that began with our nation.”
Whatever you choose to call the music, Haggard does it right. He has scored a remarkable 38 #1 hits in a career that landed him on the cover of Time magazine in 1977 and earned him a spot in the Country Music Hall Of Fame. His first #1 was the title track to his 1967 album, I’m A Lonesome Fugitive. This was Haggard’s fourth album, and it finds him rounding his sound into shape. Here his band The Strangers are augmented by legendary session guitarists James Burton and Glen Campbell, and while it’s far from the over-polished product that Nashville was creating at the same time, it’s a tight set of 12 songs that reflect the wit and wisdom of the down and out.
Haggard the songwriter swings between tragedy and comedy, touching on bad love, lean bank accounts and long prison sentences. But Haggard the singer never plays for sympathy, and seems to find humor in places where others find tears. With a rich, careworn voice and a name that even a screenwriter couldn’t come up with, Merle Haggard made music for the back roads and stout souls of America – music that was much bigger than Bakersfield.
Listen: I’m A Lonesome Fugitive
Listen: Life In Prison
Listen: Someone Told My Story
Tags: Bakersfield Sound, Buck Owens, Glen Campbell, I'm A Lonesome Fugitive, James Burton, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Rolling Stone, San Quentin, The Strangers, Time
2 March 2010 at 12:08 am |
The hottest spot I’ve ever been on earth was Bakersfield, CA. One summer in the early 80′s, my dad, brother and I made the trip down to Disneyland in his ancient green Datsun pickup, and when we passed through Bakersfield it was 118° in the shade. We stopped and got popsicles, and they melted as fast as we could eat them.