RIP Merle Haggard

Had tickets to go see him about 15 years ago. Can't remember why I gave them away. Wish I had seen him perform.

 

To be a teenage boy in 1950 Bakersfield ...

 

Only a great song like "Okie From Muskogee" can make non-fans of that genre appreciate it.

RIP, Merle.

 

I was on both of their websites last night, looking at tour dates for this very reason. I got a chance to see him sing a couple of songs at a fundraiser for the Hall of Fame a few years back.

I'd see Berry this weekend, but he's in Denmark and Moscow. He'll be back in St. Louis in about a month.

 

The 1b. to BB King as artists who've had the most musical influence on me as a young adult.

 

RIP, Merle.

Based solely on his songs, it's interesting that he seems to have become more liberal as he got older.

Probably that stretch in the pokie.

 

"I turned 21 in prison doin' life without parole...." doesn't get more hardcore badass than that

 

The Dead played it live 300+ times.

 

Old 97's do a good version of it too.

 

Merle was the real country I grew up on. Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Conway Twitty, Buck Owens, Tammy Wynette, Possum, etc. Then I heard 2112 and pushed away from country music for a couple of decades. I was in on the ground floor of the alt-country boom, and about 20 years ago I got to see Cash and June Carter before their health problems caught up with them and took them from this mortal coil.

On trips across country alone, when I get tired of my CD collection and fighting fleeting FM signals, I'll tune in to an AM station playing country gold and listen to the world I knew long ago.

 

One of the guys I work with thought he was a part of The Highwaymen.
I wanted to smack him.