Merle Ronald Haggard was born April 6, 1937, in Oildale, near Bakersfield, the youngest of three children of James Frances and Flossie Mae Haggard. To him, country music remained what it had ever been: “An art form,” he called it. He lamented the absence of seriousness in this music, and condemned what he saw as the “bubble-gum side.” Randy Travis, Garth Brooks, George Strait, Mark Chesnutt and Clint Black are just a few of the artists whose style recalls Haggard’s.ĭespite this, Haggard in late middle age struggled as new waves of country-pop passed him by. He recounted efforts to hone his voice to approach the authenticity and restless inflection of his idol, country singer Lefty Frizzell.Įventually, his style would prove so influential that the Haggard sound became a standard country sound. He spoke as a man seeking to master difficult maneuvers. It gave vocal form to the electric Fender-guitar twanginess of what came to be known as the “Bakersfield Sound” - that made-in-California genre calculated to cut through the noisy din of Bakersfield bars. The voice dipped, broke and warbled with despair. Haggard’s scores of plain, rough-livin’ character songs made him a critics’ choice for one of the leading songwriters of his generation Hilburn once claimed only Willie Nelson rivaled him among living songwriters in the country tradition.īut Haggard was also famous for his rich baritone singing voice. “You’ve got to remember songs are meant to be sung,” he said. Simplicity was his creed, Haggard told Hilburn in a 2003 interview. Whitney from where the mighty Kern River comes down” is a typical Haggard lyric, “so simple it is hard to see the craft involved,” Times critic Robert Hilburn wrote. “There’s the south San Joaquin where the seeds of the Dust Bowl are found / And there’s a place called Mt. He sang of “Tulare Dust” and the Kern River. Often, they evoked the landscapes of California, his lifelong home. ![]() Many of his songs were blues-tinged and desolate. He wrote, for example, “Irma Jackson,” an anti-racist protest song about a love affair between a white man and black woman, the same year he wrote “Okie from Muskogee.” (Capitol Records delayed the release of “Irma Jackson.”) Neither his songs nor views were predictable. He was private, cryptic, and, long after his train-hopping days, he was a fanatic for model trains. ![]() Drugs, divorce and bankruptcy dogged his path, long after success came his way. But it didn’t exactly straighten him out. The experience famously helped turn his life around. Sent to prison after a botched burglary attempt, he was among the inmates who watched Cash perform at San Quentin in 1958. ![]() He had grown up a troublemaker - a teenage runaway who rode the rails and turned petty criminal. In life Haggard was by no means the clean-cut square of the Muskogee song, about which he expressed mixed feelings (though after a hiatus, he eventually resumed singing it). A Times critic described his ballads as “caked with the dust of hard-won experiences.” ![]() The game malfunctioned, but I was able to get an attendant to get the prize for her.But patriotic pride and political songs made up only a portion of the vast and diverse Haggard portfolio, which included autobiographical laments, odes to working men and women, drinking songs and love songs. My daughter won a game that was supposed to drop a prize and it did not. It was hot, sweaty and miserable plus we had to wear masks making it more unbearable. The game surfaces were sometimes sticky and I thought it should have been cleaner and cooler on the game floor. I overheard that 2 people had called in sick so they were short staffed in the restaurant. Hannah has alot to learn but I'm glad she showed up for work. A good hostess would fix this and we would have never known. I was beyond angry because my husband was willing to just leave after waiting 45 minutes for a table. After expected wait time I asked hostess for an update on our table and she said she lost our reservations. After spending 2 hours playing we went to the restaurant and was put on a waiting list.
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