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| Merle Haggard’s son shares emotional picture of dad’s final moments |
His absolute activity adventures of abjection as the son of Oklahoma migrants, an aboriginal assignment in bastille and a activity lived on the alley gave his songs accurate dust if others would just accept to brainstorm those scenarios for inspiration. Haggard wrote songs for the American alive chic to alcohol to, to ball to and to cry to.
Haggard died Wednesday at his home in Palo Cedro, California on his 79th birthday, according to his manager.
"We've absent one of the greatest writers and singers of all time," said his acquaintance Dolly Parton in a statement. "His affection was as breakable as his adulation ballads. I admired him like a brother. Rest easy, Merle."
A adept guitarist, fiddler, songwriter and singer, the Country Music Hall of Famer with the firm, absolute baritone arise dozens of albums and No. 1 hits over the decades. His music was asperous yet sensitive, absorption on childhood, alliance and circadian struggles, cogent belief of abashment and redemption, or just putting his bottom down in "The Fightin' Side of Me" and "I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink."
General audiences knew him best for "Okie From Muskogee," a affectionate canticle arise in 1969 at the acme of the Vietnam War. It bound became a cultural criterion for its anti-hippie lyrics proclaiming "we don't bake our abstract cards down on Main Street; we like active appropriate and getting free."
The Byrds, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Grateful Dead, Emmylou Harris, Dwight Yoakam, Lucinda Williams and Reba McEntire all covered his songs, while others accept paid accolade to the angary he brought to country music, such as Eric Church's 2006 song "Pledge Allegiance to the Hag," or the Dixie Chicks' "Long Time Gone," a criticism of Nashville trends in 2000.
Haggard's songwriting becoming him comparisons to folk songwriter Woody Guthrie because of his allure with the accepted man, such as "If We Accomplish it Through December." But his a lot of agitating songs were the a lot of personal, like the casual carol "Hungry Eyes," or the autobiographical "Mama Tried."
"I don't accept a abundant apprenticeship and music was a way out of poverty," Haggard said in a 2014 account with The Associated Press. "I knew there was not abundant for me to attending advanced to if I didn't accomplish it in music."
His adolescence was out of a John Steinbeck novel; his ancestors migrated from Oklahoma to California and lived as outsiders in their adopted state. Born in 1937 abreast Bakersfield, Haggard was aloft in a adapted railway boxcar, the alone abode his parents could afford. If Haggard was 9, his admired ancestor fell ill and died, abrogation Haggard with abiding grief. He angry to petty abomination and spent several years in and out of institutions.
He served three years in San Quentin as bedfellow 845200 for burglarizing a bistro during a bashed spree. It was during that assignment he saw Johnny Cash play, and he alternate to Bakersfield at age 22 in 1960 accessible to address music.
"My decisions accept been easy," Haggard said in 2014. "It was either aback in the affection application or go to plan in the oil fields... They didn't analyze with music. I was able to accomplish added money in a beer collective than I was digging ditches."
Singer-bandleader Wynn Stewart was an aboriginal patron, hiring Haggard to play bass in his group. Haggard's aboriginal hit was a awning of Stewart's "Sing a Sad Song" and by 1966 he had been voted a lot of able diva by the Academy of Country and Western Music. He became a superstar in 1967, aboriginal with a awning of Liz Anderson's "I'm a Lonesome Fugitive," again with such originals as "Sing Me Aback Home" and "The Legend of Bonnie and Clyde," featuring Glen Campbell on banjo.
Fame brought him abrupt respectability. His bent almanac was asleep by California's then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, who pardoned him in 1972, and he was arrive by President Richard Nixon to sing at the White House.
He was that attenuate aggregate of a harder country artisan who aswell was a bartering success. Between 1966 and 1987, he had 38 songs acceleration to No. 1 on the Billboard country singles archive and becoming two Grammys and was called amateur of the year by the Country Music Association in 1970.
Still, Haggard referred to the improvisations of his band, the Strangers, as "country jazz," and in 1980, became the aboriginal country artisan to arise on the awning of the applesauce annual "Downbeat." His bandage over the years congenital horns, saxophones and trombones and included well-respected musicians such as Norm Hamlet, Roy Nichols, Biff Adam and Clint Strong, as able-bodied as his wife Theresa and son Ben.
"Merle Haggard was an original. Not just a singer, not just a songwriter, not just addition acclaimed performer. He was your accepted accustomed alive man," said Hank Williams Jr. in a statement.
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