Merle Haggard
A singer, guitarist, fiddler and songwriter from Oildale, California, who with his band the Strangers made some of the defining records of the Bakersfield sound, among them "Mama Tried" (1968) and "Okie from Muskogee" (1969).
Oildale and Capitol
Merle Ronald Haggard was born on April 6, 1937 in Oildale, outside Bakersfield, California, to Flossie Mae Harp and James Francis Haggard, Dust Bowl migrants from Oklahoma. His father died in 1946, when Merle was nine, and his youth was a troubled one that he later wrote about. In 1960 he saw Johnny Cash perform at San Quentin. Fuzzy Owen signed him to Tally Records in 1962, and then he moved to Capitol, where his first album was Strangers (1965). "Sing a Sad Song", by Wynn Stewart, was a national hit in 1964, "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers" by Liz Anderson was his first top ten in 1965, and "I'm a Lonesome Fugitive" his first number one, in 1966 or 1967 depending on the source.
His band, the Strangers, included Roy Nichols on guitar, Norm Hamlet on steel, Tiny Moore on fiddle and mandolin, and Bonnie Owens on harmony vocals; the Country Music Hall of Fame notes that they won eight Academy of Country Music touring band awards.
The long run
1968 brought Sing Me Back Home, The Legend of Bonnie and Clyde and Mama Tried, and 1969 "Okie from Muskogee", a number one country hit that reached number 41 on the Hot 100. His 1970 tribute to Bob Wills helped spark a Western swing revival, and he was the Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association entertainer of the year in 1970. Richard Nixon wrote him an appreciative letter and invited him to perform at the White House. From 1973 to 1976 he had nine consecutive country number ones, among them "If We Make It Through December" (1973); he moved to MCA in 1977 and to Epic in 1981, made A Taste of Yesterday's Wine (1982) with George Jones and Pancho and Lefty (1983) with Willie Nelson, and had his last number one with "Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Star" in 1988.
In 2000 he signed with Anti-, for If I Could Only Fly, and later records include Roots Volume 1 (2001), Chicago Wind (2005), Last of the Breed (2007, with Nelson and Ray Price) and I Am What I Am (2010). He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1977 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1994, received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a BMI Icon award in 2006 and Kennedy Center Honors in 2010, and in 2017 Rolling Stone ranked him first in its list of the 100 greatest country artists. His last concert was at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland on February 13, 2016, and his final recording, "Kern River Blues", came out on May 12, 2016. He died on April 6, 2016, his 79th birthday, at his home in Palo Cedro, California. David Cantwell's Merle Haggard: The Running Kind (2013) is the standard biography.
Albums
- Mama Tried 1968 · Capitol
His seventh album: twelve honky-tonk songs, including the title song and a version of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues".
- Kern River 1985 · Epic
His 1985 album for Epic, with the title song about a drowning in the Kern River.
Songs
- Mama Tried Mama Tried · 1968
His 1968 number one: a song about a mother who did everything right and a son who did not listen, kept in the Library of Congress.
- Kern River Kern River · 1985
The title song of his 1985 album, a narrator's lament for a girlfriend lost to the river; the album's only single.
Sources
- Merle Haggard, Wikipedia
- Merle Haggard, Country Music Hall of Fame
- Merle Haggard, 1937-2016, GRAMMY.com
- Merle Haggard discography, Wikipedia