DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Merle Haggard dead on his 79th birthday

Goodbye Mr. Haggard and thanks for the wonderful memories. RIP

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/04/06/merle-haggard-dead-on-his-7th-birthday/?intcmp=hpbt4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxLtXJzo3Ew

are the good times really over for good?

Many days in my backyard ( and many drinks in bars ) have been spent listening to this musical great . Simple good old fashion story telling with music but I love it . I grew up listening to " real " country music like Merle and his contemporaries so modern day country music doesn't appeal to me but for a few exceptions . Think I'll crank up the stereo and bend my elbow a few times tonight in his honor .





(photo: Owen Sweeney/Invision/AP, File)

Country legend Merle Haggard, often called “the Poet of the Common Man,” whose music reflected his hardscrabble roots and hard-living ways as well as a tenderness that made him a revered songwriter, has died at his home near Redding, Calif. He was 79.

The Associated Press confirmed his death.

Haggard along with fellow Bakersfield, Calif., superstar Buck Owens defined the West Coast sound of country music in the 1960s and ’70s.

Emerging from the central California city’s raucous honky-tonky country music scene of the post WWII-era, first recording for the local Tally label and then for Capitol Records, Haggard became a towering figure, producing 38 chart-topping records along with his longtime recording and touring band, the Strangers. Among his biggest hits were the controversial “Okie From Muskogee” — alternately seen as a reactionary Nixon-era anthem or a good-hearted spoof of heartland mores — as well as enduring and much-covered ballads such as “Today I Started Loving You Again,” “If We Make It Through December,” “Sing Me Back Home” and “Hungry Eyes.” His uptempo “drinking” songs such as “The Bottle Let Me Down,” “Swingin’ Doors,” “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink” and “Working Man Blues” helped create the prototype of 1960s and ’70s country honky-tonk hits.

Two of his best-regarded albums were tributes to early country star Jimmie Rodgers (“Same Train, A Different Time,” 1969) and Western swing bandleader Bob Wills (“A Tribute to the Best Damn Fiddle Player in the World,” 1970).

Haggard scored with several film and TV hits over the years, most notably penning and singing the eponymous theme song for the 1974 TV series “Movin’ On,” as well as chart-toppers “Barroom Buddies” and “Misery and Gin” for Clint Eastwood’s film “Bronco Billy.” “Mama Tried” was featured in the crime film “Killers Three,” in which Haggard also co-starred.

Haggard was born in Oildale, Calif., to Oklahoma immigrants who migrated west during the Great Depression, and he quite literally grew up in a boxcar, albeit one converted into a home. His father died when Haggard was 9, and in his early life he committed a series of petty crimes, leading to longer and longer incarcerations. But Haggard was also gaining a reputation in the Bakersfield area as a first-rate singer and instrumentalist. Holding his own onstage with his idol, country music great Lefty Frizzell, was an indication of the career ahead of him, once he put crime and punishment behind him.

A botched robbery, however, saw him tried as an adult and sent to San Quentin, where he spent three years. Haggard recalled that seeing Johnny Cash onstage in San Quentin in 1958 was a particular inspiration, and the two men later became close friends and mutual fans.

Once out of prison, Haggard worked blue-collar day jobs and played the rowdy honky-tonks of Bakersfield at night, which led to him cutting several tracks for Tally.

Haggard’s first released song was the minor hit “Skid Row.” A cover of country superstar Wynn Stewart’s “Sing a Sad Song” charted nationally in 1964. The following year he had his first national top-10 record with “(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers,” followed in 1966 by his first No. 1 song, “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive.”

Haggard, in a 1999 interview with Variety, described his rise as he moved from local music sensation to national star after signing with Capitol Records: “We had this little label in Bakersfield (Tally) that we were doing pretty good on. About 1964, I think it was, we sold forty-something-thousand records out of our apartment back before the interweb (sic) and all that s—. So Capitol called us and said, ‘Don’t you think it’s time you let us help you?’

“They were also disappointed in everything but the Beatles. There was nothing in the world selling except Beatle music. Every country act in the entire f—ng world had just got fired. And it just so happened that during that really strange Beatlemania I got a goddamn hit.”

The ’60s and ’70s were Haggard’s peak period creatively and professionally. Haggard scored hits for three labels — Capitol, Epic and MCA — before turning to independent label status in the late ’90s. He briefly returned to Capitol (via its Nashville division) in the new millennium, and released a collaborative album with Willie Nelson, “Django and Jimmie,” through Sony Legacy in 2015; the latter set reached No. 1 on the country chart and No. 7 on the pop side.

While Haggard’s stature as one of the music industry’s top acts grew over the decades, his personal life endured rocky patches. As his two autobiographies attest, the much-married and divorced Haggard struggled with alcohol and drug dependencies well into the ’90s, when health and financial problems took him to medical rehabilitation and an IRS lien proceeding decimated his ownership of dozens of hits in his valuable song catalog.

Haggard described his strategy for creative and financial survival during that difficult time to Variety in 1999, noting, “Making records is something I guess I’ll always do, because of the fact that I’m a songwriter.”

Between 1965 and 1974 Haggard scored 11 Academy of Country Music honors as well as four top Country Music Assn. honors.

He won two competitive Grammys, as well as a spot in the Grammy Hall of Fame for his song “Mama Tried.” He was inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1994, the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1977 and was a Kennedy Center Honors inductee in 2010.

Haggard is survived by his wife Theresa Ann Lane; their children Jenessa and Ben Haggard, the latter of whom served as lead guitarist in the Strangers for several years; and his children from previous marriages, Marty, Noel, Dana and Kelli. Married five times, his second and third wives were stage and recording partners Bonnie Owens and Leona Williams.

Just posted this as well . So many favorites I can't pick just one but a few favorites are Silver Wings, I Take A lot Of Pride In who I Am and of course Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down .

Made it OK to be an Okie.

Passage, RIP Merle.

My mother loved his songs. She was a Loretta Lynn, Conway Twitty, Merle Haggard kind of country music lover. The real stuff.

Me and Mom.

This hits me hard. About as hard as when John Lennon was murdered.


Hard to pick a top song....so many to choose from...the best concert I ever attended was a Hag concert ....I am not in the mood for any jokes here, I understand some of you don't get Country Music.....yet

Ok...I pick [url=thishttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brkY2Lry3Hk][url=thishttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brkY2Lry3Hk][url=thishttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brkY2Lry3Hk]thishttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brkY2Lry3Hk[/url][/url][/url]

This hits me hard. About as hard as when John Lennon was murdered.


Hard to pick a top song....so many to choose from...the best concert I ever attended was a Hag concert ....I am not in the mood for any jokes here, I understand some of you don't get Country Music.....yet

Ok...I pick this...

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=ch...ramblin%20fever

Can't think of a song of his I didn't enjoy.

I like to think, being he died on his Birthday, it must have been one heck of a party that killed him.

A party that songs are written about...

I don't like what country has become but the old school outlaw stuff is hard to not like. I saw Dale Watson a few years back at a festival. Great show.
RIP Merle. Music lost a true outlaw original.

Never listened to him much at all. What made him an outlaw?

Outlaw Country is a genre of country...

Outlaw country[1] is a subgenre of country music, most popular during the late 1960s, 1970's and early 1980's, sometimes referred to as the outlaw movement or simply outlaw music.[2][3] The focus of the movement has been on "outlaws", such as Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and Hank Williams Jr. Other associated artists include David Allan Coe, the Eli Radish Band, Leon Russell, Townes Van Zandt, Billy Joe Shaver, Steve Earle, and Gary Stewart. The reason for the movement has been attributed to a reaction to the Nashville sound, developed by record producers like Chet Atkins who softened the raw honky tonk sound that was predominant in the music of performers like Jimmie Rodgers, and his successors such as Hank Williams, George Jones and Lefty Frizzell.[clarification needed] According to Aaron Fox, "the fundamental opposition between law-and-order authoritarianism and the image of 'outlaw' authenticity... has structured country's discourse of masculinity since the days of Jimmie Rodgers."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw_country

"Sing Me Back Home" and "Mama Tried" were just a couple of favorites. RIP Mr. Haggard.

They also called them 'outlaw' because almost all those guys did hard time in prison.

I was never really into Haggard, but my dad was.

He may be gone but his music will still live on for many more years.

Both covered by Grateful Dead. That's how I came to know them. In turn turning me on to Merle.