Merle Ronald Haggard (born April 6, 1937) is an American country and Western song writer, singer, guitarist, fiddler, and instrumentalist. Along with Buck Owens, Haggard and his band The Strangers helped create the Bakersfield sound, which is characterized by the unique twang of Fender Telecaster and the unique mix with the traditional country steel guitar sound, new vocal harmony styles in which the words are minimal, and a rough edge not heard on the more polished Nashville Sound recordings of the same era. By the 1970s, Haggard was aligned with the growing outlaw country movement, and has continued to release successful albums through the 1990s and into the 2000s. In 1994, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.[1] In 1997, he was inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame.[2 Early life[edit] Haggards parents, James Francis and Flossie Mae, moved to California from their home in Checotah, Oklahoma, during the Great Depression, after their barn burned in 1934.[3] They settled with their children, Lowell and Lillian, in an apartment in Bakersfield, while James Francis Haggard started working for the Santa Fe Railroad. A woman who owned a boxcar, which was placed in Oildale, a nearby town north of Bakersfield, asked Haggards father about the possibility of converting it into a house. He reformed the boxcar, and soon after moved in, also purchasing the lot, where Merle Ronald Haggard was born on April 6, 1937.[4][5] The property was eventually expanded by building a bathroom, a second bedroom, a kitchen and a breakfast nook in the adjacent lot.[4] His father died of a brain hemorrhage in 1945,[5] an event that deeply affected Haggard during his childhood, and the rest of his life. To support the family, his mother worked as a bookkeeper.[6] His brother, Lowell, gave Haggard his used guitar as a gift when he was 12-years-old. Haggard learned to play alone,[4] with the records he had at home, influenced by Bob Wills, Lefty Frizzell and Hank Williams.[7] As his mother was absent due to work, Haggard became progressively rebellious. His mother sent him for a weekend to a juvenile detention center to change his attitude, which worsened.[8] Haggard committed a number of minor offences, such as thefts and writing bad checks. He was sent to a juvenile detention center for shoplifting in 1950.[9] When he was 14, Haggard ran away to Texas with his friend Bob Teague.[7] He rode freight trains and hitchhiked throughout the state.[10][11] When he returned the same year, he and his friend were arrested for robbery. Haggard and Teague were released when the real robbers were found. Haggard was later sent to the juvenile detention center, from which he and his friend escaped again to Modesto, California. He worked a series of laborer jobs, including driving a potato truck, being a short order cook, a hay pitcher, and an oil well shooter.[10] He debut performance was with Teague in a bar named Fun Center, being paid US$5, with free beer. He returned to Bakersfield in 1951, and was again arrested for truancy and petty larceny and sent to a juvenile detention center. After another escape, he was sent to the Preston School of Industry, a high-security installation. He was released 15 months later, but was sent back after beating a local boy during a burglary attempt. After his release, Haggard and Teague saw Lefty Frizzell in concert. After hearing Haggard sing along to his songs backstage, Frizzell refused to sing unless Haggard would be allowed to sing first. He sang songs that were well received by the audience. Due to the positive reception, Haggard decided to pursue a career in music. While working as a farmer or in oil fields, he played in nightclubs. He eventually landed a spot on the local television show Chuck Wagon, in 1956.[7] Married and plagued by financial issues,[7] he was arrested in 1957 shortly after he tried to rob a Bakersfield roadhouse.[12] He was sent to Bakersfield Jail,[6] and was later transferred after an escape attempt to San Quentin Prison, on February 21, 1958.[13] While in prison, Haggard discovered that his wife was expecting a child from another man, which pressed him psychologically. He was fired from a series of prison jobs, and planned to escape along with another inmate nicknamed Rabbit. Haggard was convinced not to escape by fellow inmates.[14] Haggard started to run a gambling and brewing racket with his cellmate. After he was caught drunk, he was sent for a week to solitary confinement where he encountered Caryl Chessman, an author and death row inmate.[15] Meanwhile, Rabbit had successfully escaped, only to shoot a police officer and return to San Quentin for execution.[14] Chessmans predicament, along with the execution of Rabbit inspired Haggard to turn his life around.[15] Haggard soon earned a high school equivalency diploma and kept a steady job in the prisons textile plant,[15] while also playing for the prisons country music band,[16] attributing a 1958 performance by Johnny Cash at the prison as his main inspiration to join it.[17] Upon his release in 1960, Haggard said it took about four months to get used to being out of the penitentiary and that, at times, he actually wanted to go back in. He said it was the loneliest he had ever felt.[citation needed] According to Rolling Stone, In 1972, then–California governor Ronald Reagan expunged Haggards criminal record, granting him a full pardon. Country success[edit] Upon his release, Haggard started digging ditches and wiring houses for his brother. Soon he was performing again, and later began recording with Tally Records. The Bakersfield Sound was developing in the area as a reaction against the over-produced honky tonk of the Nashville Sound. Haggards first song was Skid Row. In 1962, Haggard wound up performing at a Wynn Stewart show in Las Vegas and heard Wynns Sing a Sad Song. He asked for permission to record it, and the resulting single was a national hit in 1964. The following year he had his first national top ten record with (My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers, written by Liz Anderson (Mother of country singer Lynn Anderson) and his career was off and running. In 1966, Haggard recorded his first number-one song Im a Lonesome Fugitive, also written by Liz Anderson, which Haggard acknowledges in his autobiography remains his most popular number with audiences. In 1968, Haggards first tribute LP Same Train, Different Time: A Tribute to Jimmie Rodgers, was released to acclaim. Okie From Muskogee, 1969s apparent political statement, was, according to some Merle Haggard interviews decades later, actually written as a humorous character portrait. In one such interview, Haggard called the song a documentation of the uneducated that lived in America at the time.[18] However, he said later on the Bob Edwards Show that I wrote it when I recently got out of the joint. I knew what it was like to lose my freedom, and I was getting really mad at these protesters. They didnt know anything more about the war in Vietnam than I did. I thought how my dad, who was from Oklahoma, would have felt. I felt I knew how those boys fighting in Vietnam felt. Later, Alabama Gov. George Wallace asked Haggard for an endorsement, which Haggard declined. However, Haggard has expressed sympathy with the parochial way of life expressed in Okie and songs such as The Fightin Side of Me. After Okie was released, it was a hit. Regardless of exactly how they were intended, Okie From Muskogee, The Fightin Side of Me, and I Wonder If They Think of Me were hailed as anthems of the so-called Silent Majority and presaged a trend in patriotic songs that would reappear years later with Charlie Daniels In America, Lee Greenwoods God Bless the USA, and others. In 1969 the Grateful Dead began performing Haggards tune Mama Tried, which appeared on their 1971 eponymous live album. The song became a staple in their repertoire until the bands end in 1995. The Grateful Dead also performed Haggards Sing Me Back Home numerous times between 1971 and 1973. In addition, The Flying Burrito Brothers recorded and performed White Line Fever in 1971, and toured with Sing Me Back Home and Hungry Eyes. Singer-activist Joan Baez, whose political leanings could not be more different from those expressed in Haggards above-referenced songs, nonetheless covered Sing Me Back Home and Mama Tried in 1969. The Everly Brothers also used both songs in their 1968 country-rock album Roots. Haggards next LP was A Tribute to the Best Damn Fiddle Player in the World, dedicated to Bob Wills, which helped spark a permanent revival and expanded audience for western swing. On Tuesday, March 14, 1972, shortly after Carolyn became another number one country hit for Haggard, then-California governor Ronald Reagan granted Haggard a full pardon for his past crimes. During the early to mid-1970s, Haggards chart domination continued with songs like Someday Well Look Back, Carolyn, Grandma Harp, Always Wanting You, and The Roots of My Raising. He also wrote and performed the theme song to the television series Movin On, which in 1975 gave him another number one country hit. The 1973 recession anthem If We Make It Through December furthered Haggards status as a champion of the working class. Haggard appeared on the cover of TIME on May 6, 1974. In the fall of 1972, Let Me Tell You about A Song, the first TV special starring Merle Haggard, was nationally-syndicated by Capital Cities TV Productions. It was a semi-autobiographical, musical profile of Haggard, akin to the contemporary Behind The Music, produced and directed by Michael Davis. In 1981, Haggard published an autobiography, Sing Me Back Home. That same year, he alternately spoke and sang the ballad The Man in the Mask. Written by Dean Pitchford (whose other output includes Fame, Footloose, Sing, Solid Gold, and the musical Carrie), this was the combined narration/theme from the movie The Legend of the Lone Ranger, a box-office flop. Country star Willie Nelson believed the 1983 Academy Award-winning film Tender Mercies, about the life of fictional singer Mac Sledge, was based on the life of Merle Haggard. Actor Robert Duvall and other filmmakers denied this and claimed the character was based on nobody in particular. Duvall, however, said he was a big fan of Haggard.[19] If We Make It Through December turned out to be Haggards last pop hit. Although he won a Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance for his 1984 remake of Thats The Way Love Goes, newer singers had begun to take over country music, and singers like George Strait and Randy Travis had taken over the charts. Haggards last number one hit was Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Star from his smash album Chill Factor in 1988.[citation needed] In 1989, Haggard recorded a song, Me and Crippled Soldiers Give a Damn, in response to the Supreme Courts decision to allow flag burning under the First Amendment. After CBS Records Nashville avoided releasing the song, Haggard bought his way out of the contract and signed with Curb Records, which was willing to release the song. Of the situation, Haggard commented, Ive never been a guy that can do what people told me...Its always been my nature to fight the system.[ Comeback[edit] In 2000, Haggard made a comeback of sorts, signing with the independent record label Anti and releasing the spare If I Could Only Fly to critical acclaim. He followed it in 2001 with Roots, vol. 1, a collection of Lefty Frizzell, Hank Williams, and Hank Thompson covers, along with three Haggard originals. The album, recorded in Haggards living room with no overdubs, featured Haggards longtime bandmates The Strangers as well as Frizzells original lead guitarist, Norman Stephens. In December 2004, Haggard spoke at length on Larry King Live about his incarceration as a young man and said it was hell and the scariest experience of my life.[citation needed] Haggards number one hit single Mama Tried is featured in the 2003 film Radio with Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Ed Harris as well as in Bryan Bertinos The Strangers with Liv Tyler. In addition, his song Swingin Doors can be heard in the 2004 film Crash and his 1981 hit Big City is heard in Joel and Ethan Coens 1996 film Fargo and in the 2008 Larry Bishop film Hell Ride.[citation needed] In October 2005, Haggard released his album Chicago Wind to mostly positive reviews. The album contained an anti-Iraq war song titled America First, in which he laments the nations economy and faltering infrastructure, applauds its soldiers, and sings, Lets get out of Iraq, and get back on track. This follows from his 2003 release Haggard Like Never Before in which he includes a song, Thats The News. Haggard released a bluegrass album, The Bluegrass Sessions, on October 2, 2007. In 2008, Haggard was going to perform at Riverfest in Little Rock, Arkansas, but the concert was canceled because he was ailing, and three other concerts were canceled as well; however, he was back on the road in June and successfully completed a tour that ended on October 19.[citation needed] In April 2010, Haggard released a new album, I Am What I Am.[21] Released to strong reviews, Haggard performed the title song on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in February 2011.[citation https://youtube/watch?v=ffHcGlF0xDw&list=PLC7E4ECAA7C8A4966
Posted on: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 07:59:09 +0000
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