Merle Haggard: The Living Embodiment of the American Experience
His was a birth in abject poverty to Okie parents who made a home out of a boxcar after migrating to California in search for work. He was the son of a father who died when he was still young, and was a young man who saw the troubles of adolescence lead to troubles with the law, many times just to win his daily bread. This led to criminalization and incarceration, and the potential of a life lost forever before turning into a story of rehabilitation and redemption through the call of country music. Then it was on to recognition, stardom, and even superstardom; and eventually to becoming a legend of American culture that few can stand beside and measure as equals. This was the life of Merle Haggard; not just the one he lived, but the one he captured in song, and the one we all followed along with as he wrote and sang about what he had learned and what he had lived during his iconic American story.
Are the lives of celebrities any more special than our own, and is their passing any more tragic than the common, unheralded people who pass every single day without as much as a word beyond loved ones, or a tiny blurb in a local paper? In short, no they’re not. But that’s also what made Merle Haggard special. He was the embodiment of America’s forgotten: the poor, the imprisoned, the wrongfully accused, the silent majority inhabiting middle America, the bereft and brokenhearted that have been forestalled by the rest of society. Merle Haggard could sing to them all and do it in a language they could understand, and with an integrity to the words because Merle had lived it all himself.
Merle Haggard was the poet and the champion of the ones the rest of society looked beyond or lampooned. Merle succeeded despite the incredible odds, and not through pragmatism and compromise, but through hard-nosed doggedness, and a fierce principled individualism that was unwavering throughout his life. He gave the forgotten masses hope that they too could eventually persevere. Merle Haggard went on to log 38 #1 hits in country music—and not one of them was an effort for attention or a reach for commercials success. Every song Merle Haggard wrote or sang, and every album he ever released was an extension of himself and the life he had lived manifested into song.
Though early in his career Merle Haggard was known for being incredibly proud and stubbornly idealistic, especially when it came to his stances on America and how it was perceived, underneath the bluster of patriotic odes he remained curiously unassuming and open-minded, leading to the eventual softening of certain stances later in life, and the changing of others. Merle Haggard wasn’t just respected for the perspective he was able to share through his own eyes, but his ability to see the world through someone else’s, and share their story as if it was his own: “The Lonesome Fugitive,” or the “Okie from Muskogee.” No matter what the offense, no matter how closed-minded someone may be, to Merle Haggard, there was still a beauty and a value to them and their story that was as important to tell as anyone else’s.
Like America and many of its people, Merle Haggard was not perfect. He had sinned, he had failed, he had stuck to principles that eventually proved to be wrong. But he learned, he persevered, he pulled himself up by his boots straps, and he eventually succeeded.
Merle Haggard was just a man, no different than anyone else who has ever walked the Earth. But as the bard of the common people, canonizing the lives and struggles of the forgotten faces, he made the lives of every man that more meaningful, and that more valuable. Merle Haggard was America embodied in song. And now he’s gone. But like the many lives he sang about, the legacy lives on. Forever.
Scotty J
April 6, 2016 @ 7:34 pm
I think one of the things that separated Haggard from the other country greats (and I do think he was the greatest all around country artist) was the diversity of subject matter in his songs. From family songs to love songs to social commentary songs to more overtly political songs he was able to come across as authentic and never above the subjects of his songs. And I think one of the reasons for that was because as you mentioned he in many ways led the quintessential American life from poverty to prison to redemption to incredible fame and wealth.
Beyond the sadness for his family in losing a husband and father I think it is also sad because lives like his are becoming much rarer and that is sad because we are all the richer for those experiences.
Brett
April 6, 2016 @ 7:42 pm
“Every song Merle Haggard wrote or sang, and every album he ever released was an extension of himself and the life he had lived manifested into song.”
That’s the beauty of Merle in particular and our beloved country music in general. I have driven trucks down dirt roads and drank beer on tailgates; I’ve never been to prison or known true poverty. Yet it’s Merle Haggard’s songs that speak to me, and that’s because their authenticity, their honesty, and their truths make them universal. Long live the Hag.
Bill
April 6, 2016 @ 7:53 pm
There was a BBC documentary entitled “Johnny Cash: The Last Great American”. Merle Haggard deserved that title too.
We are diminished, yet his work will live on and continue to touch people’s lives. Bless him.
Jake W
April 6, 2016 @ 8:02 pm
Beautiful words for our champion. The champion of the working man, the average hard working Joe. Hero to the outlaws like me that live on the edge of society, poet, road scholar, every guitarist will be in your debt every songwriter will be in your debt and I will be in your debt for the joy your music brings to my life. HAGFOREVER!!!!!!!
Andrew
April 6, 2016 @ 8:04 pm
I’ve found myself strangely sad today… I mean, of course I knew I would be sad to see someone like Merle Haggard pass on, but I cried when I heard this news. And I’m not an emotional guy. Part of it was that I never got to meet him or see him play live. I had been planning on seeing him this year. I makes me appreciate the fact that the outlaws will soon be gone. Willie, David, Kris, and Billy Joe are the only ones left.
Thank you for your music Merle Haggard- you are a huge influence to me, and I will always respect your name and legacy.
Sincerely, a southern man born 20 years too late….
luckyoldsun
April 6, 2016 @ 9:31 pm
Bobby Bare is still with us. Interestingly, he was exactly two years–less one day–older than Haggard. Bare turned 81 today, Happy Birthday, Bobby.
I don’t think Bare wrote many songs, but he imbued whatever he sang with his laconic, outlaw personality. He put out a great comeback album on Plowboy Records a few of years ago, “Darker Than Light,” which I think was on a par with Johnny Cash’s final works on American Recordings–but it did not meet much commercial success.
Andrew
April 6, 2016 @ 9:46 pm
I like Bobby, I was just thinking of the more famous outlaw crowd. No disrespect to Mr. Bare intended.
Luckyoldsun
April 8, 2016 @ 12:47 am
If you check out Bare’s history, he was on country radio almost continuously for more than 20 years, with four singles in most years and at least one Top 40 every single year from 1962 through 1983. He hosted a TV show on TNT or CMT for several years–and he’s a Hall of Famer. I think he was more famous than you think–though if you’re talking about today, I’ll admit his profile seems to have faded.
Trey
April 6, 2016 @ 8:32 pm
The good times are really over for good… RIP, Merle.
My favorite classic country artist…. Sad day.
Jody
April 6, 2016 @ 8:32 pm
Poet, lyricist, outlaw, badass, american. Those are the words that come to mind when I think of Merle. I only shed tears when songs mean something. Hags’ songs meant something…and always will. Merle Haggard is Music, transcending generations. Why? I think because the music is from the heart…music, and more importantly words, that many people feel.
Biglerville
April 6, 2016 @ 9:08 pm
By God! Merle Haggard has meant as much to me as anyone outside of my parents and family, and, I feel like Lincoln must have felt when his “beau ideal” of a statesman, Henry Clay, died. And you have captured in one little “blog post” everything I could say for myself about the GREATEST COUNTRY MUSICIAN WHO EVER LIVED, Merle Ronald Haggard. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
Tim
April 6, 2016 @ 9:13 pm
I think simply out of respect for the lore of legends like Hank, Willie, Cash, Waylon…Merle is mentioned after them all on a country top 5 list. But in all honesty, Merle was all that everyone one of them ever sang about.
Merle had Hank’s heartbreak.
Merle was freedom of Willie.
Merle was the prison Cash wasn’t.
Merle was the train Waylon chased.
What made him so special, Merle once summed up in a simple sentence, and I’m paraphrasing. He said “I sing about me. It is really the only thing I’m qualified to sing about.”
Canuck
April 7, 2016 @ 6:16 pm
Very well put, Tim. To me, even though there are some amazing artists on that list, Merle ultimately surpassed them all. Waylon has always been my favourite country artist, with Merle being a close second, but even saying that, Merle eclipsed him, as well as Hank Williams Sr, in the end. Even George Jones, for all his wonderful songs and voice, never had anything on Merle.
He was, quietly, the best country country artist to ever live, and his legend will only grow from here on out. We did not realize how lucky we were to witness his talents while we had the chance.
Luckyoldsun
April 8, 2016 @ 12:56 am
Jones, like Randy Travis, were great SINGERS. They didn’t necessarily have anything to say, but give them a good country song and they could make it great.
Merle–like Cash and Willie–usually used their music to communicate their thoughts.
John_G
April 8, 2016 @ 10:02 am
Tim, it couldn’t be put better. And Trigger, as always, spot on sir. RIP merle
Todd Villars
April 6, 2016 @ 10:18 pm
Very well written, here’s something to think about, everybody mentions Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, George Jones as the greatest in Country Music history. But if you take into account Merle’s songwriting and recording career together none of the others mentioned can hold a candle to Merle, with the exception of Hank Williams, Hank and Merle wrote almost all of their own music. I’m not discounting the others mentioned and they are great but Hank and Merle were in a class all by themselves. I think it is safe to say that there will never be another Merle Haggard, never in modern country music anyway. It is a shame that country music has no depth anymore it’s all superficial BS. I am sure glad that I grew up in the era when Merle Haggard was still making music heard on the radio. I sure feel for this younger generation that never hears a story song or one that makes you think. I grew up in his MCA years, Big City, Misery & Gin, Stay here and Drink, etc. Sorry to be so long winded. God Bless Merle Haggard!
Todd Villars
Okeechobee, Florida
albert
April 6, 2016 @ 10:50 pm
” It is a shame that country music has no depth anymore it”™s all superficial BS. I am sure glad that I grew up in the era when Merle Haggard was still making music heard on the radio. I sure feel for this younger generation that never hears a story song or one that makes you think.”
Amen Todd .
And Amen Trigger for a superb article that could have easily gone the way of the maudlin and overly-sentimental .
I don’t mind saying …. I cried a lot today . More than I expected to . Most of us here will understand that , particularly those of us for whom Merle’s music was a huge and important part of the soundtrack of our lives. Playing music in the trenches for my entire life I became very acquainted with the Merle Haggard catalogue . As a writer I have been moved and inspired time and again by his songwriting genius and vocal delivery . As a performer I’ve enjoyed singing his timeless songs for years and marveling at the effect , on most nights , that his music can have on listeners . It was Merle’s deceptively simple yet powerful approach to his art that makes the state of country music today so frustrating and baffling to me ,as it most certainly must have been to the man himself .
God bless Merle Haggard and God bless his legions of grateful fans . This hurts .
Scott S.
April 6, 2016 @ 11:13 pm
When I was growing up in Bakersfield my mother worked for Buck Owens during the annual Buck Owens rodeo. Her and my father would get invited to the after party on the last night of the rodeo, and my mother would come come home with autographed shirts and hats, and pictures of Merle and Willie and all the big country stars back then. It wasn’t unusual to see Buck or Merle around back then, and I went to school with Merle’s son Noel. I wish I still had some of the stuff from back then.
RIP Merle. Another legend gone.
Justin
April 7, 2016 @ 2:36 am
Great piece of writing about a brilliant man trig!
Louis Knoebel
April 7, 2016 @ 4:16 am
Maybe the impact of his death will cause some pop-country fans to actually take a listen to something, no, someone real. Ha, we can dream at least can’t we.
RIP Merle.
Michael Reddy
April 7, 2016 @ 5:04 am
Merle Haggard is not only one of the greatest artists Country music has ever had he is also one of the greatest artists humanity has had period. He stands for me with the likes of Charles Dickens, Monet and Beethoven as one of the great shining lights of Human Kinds creative spirit. He is one of those artists that come along once in a blue moon and leave an impact so profound that not only is there chosen art form forever changed for the better the world in general is better off because they let there light shine. Merle Haggard for me personally is somebody who had a unwavering commitment and dedication to his craft and listened to his heart and not what the latest fads were. We need more artists with the level of integrity he showed. Thank You Merle Haggard for the decades of music and for leaving this world a little better off. Now go play with all the greats we have lost.
DRob
April 7, 2016 @ 5:09 am
Thanks, Trigger!
Craig
April 7, 2016 @ 5:38 am
My granddad died listening to Hank Williams but he lived listening to Merle. When he was gone and I couldn’t go to him any more I’d play some old Haggard and it was like he was back with me. The beautiful thing about music is that it never dies. God bless Merle Haggard.
Fat Freddy's Cat
April 7, 2016 @ 6:15 am
Well said. This describes how I felt when I heard his song “What Have You Got Planned Tonight Diana”. It was as if he knew my parents personally.
Sauron the Deceiver
April 7, 2016 @ 7:03 am
Beautifully written article Trigger.
Razor X
April 7, 2016 @ 7:13 am
Wonderful tribute, Trig.
Josh Calahan
April 7, 2016 @ 7:13 am
Two Guns Up
ElectricOutcast
April 7, 2016 @ 7:44 am
Would I be a bad music fan to tweet my thanks to Merle for giving me my own musical heroes Garth, Trisha, Strait, Wade Bowen and Jack Ingram?
This guy influenced my favorite singers to follow in his footsteps and that’s one of the big reasons why I respect him.
Marc
April 7, 2016 @ 7:58 am
Great piece Trigger. My dad called me yesterday to tell me about Merle’s passing. I was surprised that my dad knew who he was at which point my dad told me when came here from Mexico the first job he got was working the fields in Central California. It was during those times and after work not only were they listening to rancheras but he and my uncles would listen to Merle and Buck. In his broken english my dad sang a few lines from Okie From Muskogee…it was great. Merle was the everyman’s poet. RIP.
Jim
April 7, 2016 @ 8:17 am
I saw him play about 12 years ago in Glenside PA. He wasn’t happy with the sound system that night and complained a few times onstage, but we couldn’t tell the difference. All I know is that he played for almost two hours, and I still walked out of there with my dad going, “oh man, he didn’t do ‘Rainbow Stew,'” “oh man, he didn’t do ‘If We Make It Through December…'” Not that we were complaining. I’m saying the guy did a great show for two hours and there was still no way he was going to fit all of the classics into one set. He basically wrote the great american songbook. Christ, I was listening to “Silver Wings” yesterday and I seriously thought, “He could have stopped right then and he’d still have been a legend. That’s how good he was.”
Bertox
April 7, 2016 @ 8:44 am
His body of work speaks for itself. May he fly with the angels on “silver wings”
liza
April 7, 2016 @ 8:53 am
Merle singing at Mandalay Bay in February.
The Bottle Let Me Down 2/6/16 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1suSx3QFOEg&nohtml5=False
The Fightin’ Side of Me 2/6/16 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0sYiS5GXE4&nohtml5=False
Goin’ Where The Lonely Go 2/6/16 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JznkqiXyik&nohtml5=False
Eric Norby
April 7, 2016 @ 9:13 am
Great words Trigger!! I’m going to save this piece for future days. Thanks.
Razor X
April 7, 2016 @ 9:14 am
Merle had a tremendous talent for making pretty much any situation relatable and for making the characters in his songs seem sympathetic. We don’t know why the protagonist in “Mama Tried” is serving a life sentence before the age of 21, nor do we know the backstory of the condemned man in “Sing Me Back Home.” They may very well have deserved their fates. We don’t know why they are in these situations, nor do we care. We just feel tremendous sympathy for them. Most of us are probably not inclined to feel sympathetic towards the prison population, yet Merle managed to make us feel that way nonetheless. That’s no mean feat.
RD
April 7, 2016 @ 9:20 am
I guess Coe, Hank Jr., and Willie are the only real legends left.
Andrew
April 7, 2016 @ 11:21 am
Also Kris, Billy Joe, Bobby Bare, and Charlie Daniels. But yes, an era is coming to an end.
mee reyrey
April 8, 2016 @ 12:28 pm
Hank 3
Pablo
April 7, 2016 @ 12:41 pm
Your tribute is very touching, and perceptive. I appreciate the reader comments, too. When I heard the news, the first thing I felt was alone… Amazing, the effect that Merle, his life and music had on so many people. Below is my attempt, mostly written late last night, to make some kind of sense of the man and his legacy, beyond the angry-patriot caricature that’s all most people not schooled in classic country know about Merle, based on a certain pair of songs from 45 years ago.
* * *
R.I.P. Merle Haggard, a true giant of music, a tough guy with the sensitive soul of a poet. Nothing written about him will really be able to capture what he was, and what he accomplished. He’s not just the greatest there’s ever been in country music, he’s beyond category and beyond compare.
Songwriter extraordinaire, with the most heartbreakingly beautiful, expressive voice in country, maybe in all American music, from the early 1960s all the way up to the mid 1990s (and still a great singer, even after the voice began to wear down). He never showed off, he always treated songs with reverence and he brought them to life like nobody else. Listen to any number of outstanding singers sing “Green Green Grass Of Home” (Conway, Porter Waggoner, Johnny Cash, Paycheck, Bobby Bare, Charley Pride, Tom Jones, on and on) and then listen to Merle’s performance. There is no comparison. Merle makes each and every word tell a story. For those singers who happen to be reading this, I’ll give one example: the repeated “green green” in the lyric: other singers just treat it as a repeated word, Merle makes the second “green” say something different from the first one.
He loved American music of all kinds… jazz, blues, gospel, country, bluegrass, Mexican… and wove it all into his music. He pioneered the concept/tribute album in country music with his tributes to Jimmie Rodgers, Lefty Frizzell, and Bob Wills (Merle single-handedly created the western-swing revival with the latter tribute, and he taught himself to play the fiddle so he could join in with the surviving Texas Playboys, and had the joy and blessing of playing with them in front of Wills himself, who was then terminally ill).
His LP “Land Of Many Churches” was a double gospel album which included live performances at Big Creek Baptist Church near Millington, Tenn., among others. (It also includes a live performance of “Amazing Grace” that is so tender, so deeply felt, so humble, it makes you feel the song was written for Merle Haggard to sing.)
He was a man of musical vision… and not just musical. He always cared deeply about the little guy. He once wrote (in a song called “Wishing All These Old Things Were New,” no doubt inspired by watching COPS or some such on TV, and no doubt drawing on his own troubled youth, which went off the rails when he lost his father at the age of 9): “Watching while some young men go to jail/ And they show it all on TV, just to see somebody fail.” This man was DEEP!!!
In “The Immigrant” (a song he co-wrote with Dave Kirby), Merle sings “American ranchin’ consists of a mansion/ Where illegal immigrants do much of the labor by hand/ They sneak ’em thru customs till time comes to bust ’em/ Then haul em back over the border to their own native land.”
There is so much more to say. His “Strangers” and their collaborators and guests over the years were the baddest country/western swing outfit there was… with Roy Nichols, Tiny Moore, Johnny Belkin, Norman Hamlet, Freddy Powers, and so many more.
And Merle was also unclassifiable in his politics. Yes there was the angry patriotism of “Fighting Side Of Me” and the (partly tongue-in-cheek) hymn to Middle America, “Okie From Muskogee” but his “Irma Jackson” a love song about a white man and a black woman was his choice for his next single (only his label nixed it). “Somewhere In Between” penned in 1971 explored Right and Left and expressed sympathy for the disaffected young people of that era. Merle also became strongly antiwar in later decades.
Norrie
April 7, 2016 @ 2:57 pm
Great tribute Trigger.A man that did not hide from his past and whose songs were always honest.I didn’t always agree with his views but when it comes from the heart of an honest man it doesn’t matter I listen and enjoy anyway.RIP Merle.
albert
April 7, 2016 @ 5:47 pm
‘… other singers just treat it as a repeated word, Merle makes the second “green” say something different from the first one..’
Pablo . I so appreciated your informed and heartfelt appreciation of Merle posted above. Its certainly a measure of consolation for all of us to be able to mourn the man by celebrating our remembrances of him together here at SCM. Next to the great George Jones and Hank , of course , I can’t imagine anyone in country music being as missed by so many as will Merle Haggard .I believe that each of us knows someone who had a bit of Merle in his life somewhere along the way.
CAH
April 8, 2016 @ 5:36 am
Merle was a true American troubadour – a wandering minstrel.
The juxtaposition of his authenticity with today’s banality is stark.
The abject poverty he experienced as a young man shaped and molded his vision of the world and of humanity.
He didn’t need Music Row writers to script catchy songs for him, because his life was itself a wealth of stories waiting to be told.
I will miss him very much.
I. Simpkins
April 8, 2016 @ 7:44 am
“His was a birth in abject poverty to Okie parents who made a home out of a boxcar after migrating to California in search for work.”
An embellished myth according Hag’s sister, Lillian:
“In 1935, a fire, thought to be the work of an arsonist, burned the family”™s barn to the ground, destroying the new Ford, a hay crop, and most of the farm”™s equipment. James Haggard ran a service station for a few months and got the family back on its feet, but after he underwent an appendectomy he decided to try the next rebound in California. The Haggards settled in Oildale, just outside Bakersfield, not far from Flossie”™s sister. James soon found work””first as the manager of a dairy, then as a carpenter for the Santa Fe Railway. Merle-inspired versions of those early days in California have Flossie milking cows to help feed the family. “Definitely not true,” Lillian said. “Then you get the born-in-a-boxcar business. A woman in Oildale had the idea of converting a boxcar into a house, and she asked Dad if he thought it was possible. He thought it was such a good idea that he built it and then bought it for us to live in until we could build a bigger house. What it was was a comfortable early-style mobile home.” The boxcar house still stands, behind the house that the family eventually built, in a clean, quiet, working-class neighborhood dominated by pickup trucks and children”™s bicycles parked in front of small, well-tended lawns.”
http://longform.org/stories/ornery-merle-haggard
H.
April 8, 2016 @ 9:04 am
The life of an artist is no more intrinsically valuable than any other life – but it is symbolically valuable, and symbols are the lifeblood of our collective consciousness.
Hal
April 8, 2016 @ 9:32 am
I’m 65 years old. I grew up on rock&roll music. When I was18 I came home from college for the weekend and went to a party at a friend’s apartment. They played Merle Haggard’s greatest hits album all night. At first I thought “why are they playing this redneck shit?” But, over the course of that night, my life was transformed. It was like being born again. I went out the next day and bought the album. I learned to play and sing every song on it. I’ve been a died in the wool country music fan ever since. And he is still my all time favorite. Thank you Merle Haggard. RIP.
Ghost of Country Past
April 8, 2016 @ 10:44 am
This loss hurt hard. He was coming to WV in May and I thought I would finally get to see him. I guess God decided he finally wanted him back first. Merle is a legend unlike any other. It hurt my heart worse when so many people my age had no clue who he was. Even self-professed “country” fans. The world will forever miss him though.
Long live the Hag.