Merle Haggard Book by 314 Design

“Time Life” Jerry Lee Lewis FINISHED SIZE 5 5/16” x 9 13/16” 1/8” BLEED ALL AROUND SADDLE STITCH BOOK

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“Time Life” Jerry Lee Lewis FINISHED SIZE 5 5/16” x 9 13/16” 1/8” BLEED ALL AROUND SADDLE STITCH BOOK

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Merle Haggard first cracked the country charts in December 1963, just weeks after

Merle’s late-career rebirth. These jaggedly emotional songs weren’t hits, but they

President Kennedy’s assassination. In the nearly forty-five years since then, he has

leave us in no doubt about who Merle Haggard is or where he stands. Most of the

reflected us back at ourselves. Unafraid to confront what he sees, he has been

fifty-plus hits in this collection were newly minted songs, but Merle has eclectic taste

unflinching in his commitment to make music that is honest, plainspoken and true

in vintage country music, and we’ve represented that side of his work with a little-

to his values. During the Vietnam era, he was the voice of the “silent majority”; in

known version of When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again. In Merle’s hands, a sentimental

one of his latest albums to date, he calls for the rebuilding of American infrastruc-

song from the Second World War becomes strangely melancholy. This blue moon

ture before the rebuilding of Iraq. In between, he has poured scorn on “your so-

isn’t turning gold any time soon.

called Social Security” yet showed compassion for the jailbird who is set up to fail

For most of us, our first Merle Haggard records were 45s, LPs, eight-tracks or cas-

(“he can’t find a job, but, man, he’s found a gun”). And he has always been secure

settes. All gone. Now, in the digital era, Merle seems as vigorous and prolific as ever.

enough in his own artistry to pay fulsome tribute to those who have influenced him,

He is out there on the tour that never ends, and when he’s not on the road he’s in

like Lefty Frizzell, Bob Wills and Jimmie Rodgers.

his personal studio. We began our Legends of American Music series to profile artists like

Now in his eighth decade, Merle Haggard still tours and still diarizes his life and

him: artists whose careers are monuments to integrity and dogged perseverance.

beliefs in music. Reducing his career to sixty songs is a daunting task. He has recorded more than seventy-five albums and scored over one hundred charted hits. He has recorded so prolifically and so diversely that everyone’s personal “best of” will be different. We chose to focus on the hits because those are almost always the songs that

Colin Escott Consultant, Time Life

Mike Jason Senior Vice President, Audio & Video Retail, Time Life

people remember (the only No. 1 hit unavailable to us was his duet with Clint Eastwood on Bar Room Buddies). The latter part of Disc Three includes songs from

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“Time Life” Jerry Lee Lewis CUE: FAMILY DISC Flossie and Merle. Period shot. INSET: Later photo of Flossie & Merle from same disc. Caption: Flossie Haggard and Merle. CUE: 45RPM OF “MAMA TRIED” FROM SHOWTIME

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he court transcript reveals only spoken words, but the scene is easy to imagine: Bakersfield defense attorney Ralph McKnight has asked the judge to grant probation and spare his client a prison sentence. But McKnight can offer little to recommend that sort of judicial benevolence beyond the unwavering maternal love of one woman, seated behind him in the gallery. “This mother has tried very hard,” McKnight says, nodding toward her deferentially. The Honorable Norman F. Main looks down at the lengthy rap sheet, glances across the courtroom at anxious Flossie Haggard and then studies the defendant. “If he had tried half as hard as his mother did…” And down deep, 20-year-old Merle Haggard knows that the judge speaks the simple, undeniable truth.

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Merle Haggard apologized to his mother in song, with Mama Tried, which reached No. 1 in 1968. But in the half century since that courtroom exchange, Haggard’s music has more often celebrated the sons and daughters who tried—the paycheck-to-paycheck, rent-to-own citizens who drive the trucks, pick the cotton, punch the time clocks and, yes, sometimes commit the crimes, both petty and grievous, as they struggle against a system that seems weighted against them. Haggard has sung about back doors, swinging doors and cell doors, but he has never strayed far from certain defining themes: blue-collar pride, personal dignity and the quest for balance in a world too often askew. He has always done so in a graceful, lilting baritone that belies his well-deserved reputation as a wild, reck-

Flossie Hag gard and Merle.

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Flossie Haggard and Merle.

“Time Life” Jerry Lee Lewis FINISHED SIZE 5 5/16” x 9 13/16” 1/8” BLEED ALL AROUND SADDLE STITCH BOOK

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CUE: FAMILY DISC. Photo: James, Lillian, Lowell & Ben Newton. Car by side of road. Tires in foreground.

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James Haggard, Ben Newton, Lillian and Lowell Haggard.

less rebel. His harrowing Huck Finn–meets–Harry Houdini youth—hopping freight trains, singing for beer, stealing cars, surviving automobile wrecks, botching burglaries and escaping from jails—was more than ample fodder for the story lines that comprise his prolific body of work. Punk, prodigy, potato packer, ditch digger, cotton picker, convict, patriot, iconoclast—Haggard has played all those roles and more. Merle Haggard never lived in Oklahoma, but he lived in and embodied Oildale, California, an unincorporated working-class town just across the Kern River from Bakersfield. Oildale might as well be part of Oklahoma, even today; it differs from poorer rural corners of Oklahoma only in climate and longitude. Migrants from the Southern Plains had been bringing their plainspoken ways to that part of California a decade before the first Dust Bowl storms of the mid1930s. The Haggards were one such family. James Haggard played the fiddle in local honky-tonk bars as a young man, but his wife Flossie, a faithful member of the Church of Christ, insisted he stop when they married in November 1919, though music never left their lives. Daughter Lillian came along in 1921 and son Lowell a year later, but stability seemed to elude the family. A new crisis attended their every move. James burned his hands in an industrial accident in Pennsylvania in 1929, and he immediately moved the family to Chicago, where Flossie’s health deteriorated in the Great Lakes chill. They moved to California’s southern valley for her sake, moving in with Flossie’s sister, Flora Newton, right around the time of the stock market crash. But it was the valley’s searing heat, not economics, that proved most daunting, and after two months James took his family east again—this time to Checotah, Oklahoma, to try his hand at farming. Their leased farm was sold out from under them, but they quickly found a second farm and prospered well enough to afford a 1931 Ford Model A and—glory of glories—a dog. But things changed one night in early 1934. A heavy rain was pouring when a man knocked at the door. His wife was sick, he said, and he needed to get her to the doctor. Could he borrow the fami-

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“Time Life” Jerry Lee Lewis FINISHED SIZE 5 5/16” x 9 13/16” 1/8” BLEED ALL AROUND SADDLE STITCH BOOK Above: James, Flossie, and Merle Haggard. Right: James and Merle.

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ly’s Ford? James said the car would never make it across the muddy dirt roads, but he’d take the man and his wife in the horse and wagon. The man refused the offer and left. Three months later the Haggards awoke to find their barn in flames—an arson that the family always suspected was payback for refusing the use of their car the night of that downpour. “The animals all got out, but the car didn’t,” Lillian remembers. The fire burned all of their feed and seed grains, too. Discouraged, James and Flossie quit the farm and moved into town, where James and another man opened a two-pump Mobil gas station. Within a few months James was felled by appendicitis. Downhearted again, he felt California beckoning one more time. Flossie agreed, and, fortified by a $40 loan from her sister and the promise of some farm work, they set out on July 15, 1935, with all their possessions in a homemade trailer towed by a battered 1926 Chevy. Merle Ronald Haggard was born on April 6, 1937. By then, James Haggard had landed a $40-per-week job as a carpenter with the Santa Fe Railroad, allowing him to support his family better than most Depression-era fathers. He had also acquired a refrigerated boxcar, situated it on a lot 100 yards south of a heavily used main track

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line, and fashioned it into a sturdy, 600square-foot home. CUE:Merle demonstrated a love for music almost from the start. He recalls pointing to the radio and asking for “stewed ham”—toddler talk, his mother eventually realized, for country singer Stuart Hamblen, whose 4 p.m. broadcast out of Los Angeles was a family favorite. One night in June 1946, nine-year-old Merle Haggard came home from a Wednesday night prayer meeting to find his father paralyzed from a stroke. James Haggard suffered a more severe stroke the next day, and died one week later in a Los Angeles hospital. Flossie was forced to take a $35-a-week job as a bookkeeper for a meatpacking company, and suddenly it was just mother and son. Older siblings Lowell and Lillian had already set out on their own. Merle blamed himself for his father’s death. “That was just what his nineyear-old mind believed,” said Lillian, who was twenty-five at the time. “He couldn’t figure out why his father had died.” At age eight Merle had been ill for months with Valley fever (coccidioidomycosis), a potentially deadly soilborne disease that doctors in those days treated like tuberculosis. The family doctor ordered him to remain in bed, a directive that made sense for TB but not for little-understood Valley fever. Within a few weeks Merle was climbing the walls. And then, soon after he got better, his father died. “He somehow connected the two things,” Lillian said. “This was before we had the sort of psychiatry that might have helped a boy with that sort of burden.” When Merle wasn’t being shuttled from one relative to another, he was alone, restless.

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James, Flossie, and Merle Haggard.

He hopped his first freight at age 11 and was returned home by the police, but he continued to cut classes and ride the rails. Brother Lowell struck upon a useful distraction: He gave Merle, by then 12 years old, his first guitar, a used Sears and Roebuck model somebody had left as payment at the gas station where Lowell worked, and the boy taught himself how to play by listening to records. Already, Merle was a huge fan of Bob Wills, the Western swing bandleader whose Texas

James and Merle.

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FAMILY DISC. These family shots can go in a full-page collage. Merle w/rifle tagged Merle 1. No caption necessary. Merle aged 15. No caption necessary. Merle teen Oildale. No caption necessary. Merle on Lowell’s Harley, Manteca. No cap necessary.

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Playboys had created an addictive hybrid of big-band swing, cowboy ballads and distilled jazz and blues. Merle’s passion for music increased manifestly in October 1950, when Lefty Frizzell seized the airwaves with I Love You a Thousand Ways. “Oh, God, he was unbelievable,” Haggard said later of Frizzell. “He was different. He had his own tone…He had done this little stint in jail, so he knew more about being away than a lot of people did. He was really good at writing about separation— that was his main subject matter—and he wrote about it with sincerity and [in] the only vocabulary he knew.” Merle, still an adolescent, learned to imitate Frizzell’s vocal style, and worked at developing the performer’s guitar technique. By this time Merle was attending Standard School in Oildale. One morning, just a few weeks from his eighth-grade graduation, the school’s chorus teacher was late for class. Merle, full of mischief, called the class to order, and, with a grand sweep of his arms, began directing them through one of their songs, mimicking the teacher’s distinctive style. The teacher, of course, walked in on this raucous scene. Such a display might have drawn a laugh from a good-natured teacher or detention from an ill-natured one, but this teacher recommended expulsion. The principal agreed. Merle was forced to move in with his aunt Flora in Lamont and finish there. The bitter taste of injustice still lingered when he started at Bakersfield High School the following fall. His head was even more full of music and adventure by then, and he neglected to attend many of his classes that first week. His sister Lillian, who had landed a job as the school registrar, was concerned, as was his counselor, Fred Robinson. “Fred came over and said, ‘What do you think about having him hauled off to spend the weekend in juvvy [juvenile detention]?’” Lillian recalls him saying. “‘Think that might straighten him up?’ I agreed it might, and that’s what we did. But Merle didn’t think it was fair—the punishment didn’t fit the crime.

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“Time Life” Jerry Lee Lewis FINISHED SIZE 5 5/16” x 9 13/16” 1/8” BLEED ALL AROUND SADDLE STITCH BOOK FAMILY DISC: Merle & Leona in Manteca with car. Caption: Merle with his first wife, Leona Billie Hobbs, Manteca, California, 1956.

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So he got out of there the first day, just walked out. And that was the start of it.” Lillian felt so bad about it, she didn’t get around to telling her brother about her role in his first incarceration for years. “I felt guilty for having said yes to this. He was never really an evil person. He was just a troubled kid.” Merle was incorrigible from that point. He would take any job he could find—pitching hay, bagging up potatoes, roughnecking in the oil fields—then run away, come home when he felt like it (or got hauled back), then run away again. Flossie, desperate to straighten out her son, put him in one juvenile detention center after another, but few could hold him. At age fourteen, Merle and his friend Bob Teague ran away to Texas, where

Merle accomplished two noteworthy goals. He purchased his first pair of cowboy boots in a secondhand store and was relieved of his virginity in an Amarillo whorehouse. “I think the cowboy boots affected me more,” Merle said years later. “I mean, the gal just affirmed what I already knew, but the cowboy boots made a new man out of me.” Four months and one more lockup later, he and Teague took off for Modesto, 200 miles north of Bakersfield. They picked up work here and there, including their first job as performers at a bar named the Fun Center. They played nothing but Lefty Frizzell and Jimmie Rodgers songs—the only tunes they knew at the time—and were paid five dollars a night and all the beer they could drink.

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Arrested again for truancy when he got home, Merle was sent to Fred C. Nelles School for Boys in Whittier. He ran away, was rearrested, and was sent to the high-security Preston School of Industry. He was released after 15 months, then arrested yet again, for helping a kid he had met at PSI beat up a slow-witted, harmless boy in an attempted robbery, an act of which Merle would always feel ashamed. Then it was back to PSI. When he got home Merle was somewhat more inclined to behave—not that it would last. In late 1953, he and Teague bought tickets to see Lefty Frizzell perform at the all-ages Rainbow Gardens dance hall. Some of Merle’s friends were able to go backstage to meet Frizzell, and they told the singer they had a friend who

played and sang just like him. Frizzell told them to bring him back, so they fetched Merle, who summoned the nerve to sing a couple of songs for his idol. Frizzell was so impressed he refused to take the stage until Merle went first, backed by Frizzell’s own band, which included 18-year-old Roy Nichols. Merle, just 16 at the time, played two or three songs, and the audience—young Bonnie Owens among them—loved him. Teague is convinced some in the audience initially thought Merle was Lefty. In 1956 Merle Haggard married a waitress, Leona Hobbs, and supported her with manual labor and the occasional petty crime. He soon moved up to car theft, drawing 19

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Later in life, Merle and Lefty Frizzell get reacqu ainted. # MERLE HAGGARD

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MERLE 2 DISC. MH 003. Crop out guy at right.

Merle with his first wife, Leona Billie Hobbs, Manteca, California, 1956. The Original Outlaw #

“Time Life” Jerry Lee Lewis FINISHED SIZE 5 5/16” x 9 13/16” 1/8” BLEED ALL AROUND SADDLE STITCH BOOK

months in the Ventura County jail, followed by a 90-day sentence for pillaging a scrapmetal yard. His first child arrived while he was locked up. Through it all Haggard continued to perform, lying about his age so he could sneak in (and sit in) at places like the Blackboard, the Clover Club and the Lucky Spot. He put in a guest appearance on KBAK-TV’s Chuck Wagon Gang, starring Billy Mize and Cliff Crofford, and afterward Mize took him aside and told him he’d go far if he tried. But, as Merle said later, “My criminal way of life was taking over.” In late 1957, just before Christmas, Merle and a couple of hooligan friends got drunk on cheap wine and decided to compensate for the shortage of good available jobs by pulling a heist. Leona, unaware of their plans, bundled up the baby and accompanied them to Fred & Gene’s Café, a small restaurant along old Highway 99 co-owned by a friend’s cousin. The drunken trio, believing it was 3 o’clock in the morning, tried to pry open the back door of the restaurant. They were only off by four and a half hours—the café was still open and serving customers. When one of the owners came around back to see what the commotion was about, Haggard and friends made a run for it. The owner recognized the 20-year-old Haggard, of course, and he called the sheriff’s department. Within minutes, Deputies Tommy Gallon and Bob Mooney had pulled over Haggard’s car and made the arrests. Three or four days later, Haggard, increasingly melancholy as Christmas approached, escaped from the jailhouse by filing out the door with fellow prisoners who were being herded into a bus to go to municipal court. Haggard ducked away while the jailers weren’t looking, made a run for it, and spent the night at the Lame Duck Motel with Leona, certain it would be his last opportunity to be with her for months or possibly years. He was right. The escape infuriated Gallon and Mooney, and they spent much of the next 30 hours chasing Haggard down. They finally caught up

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with him at his brother Lowell’s house, sitting at a table having a cocktail. “Can I finish my drink?” Haggard asked them. “I couldn’t say no,” Gallon remembered later. “It was Christmas Eve. I said, ‘Go ahead, it’s the last one you’re going to see for a long time.’” Gallon quit the sheriff’s department in 1962 and went on to work with troubled teens, many of them much like Haggard. He always followed Haggard’s career, though, and when the Bakersfield Planning Commission held a public hearing in 2006 over whether to name a street in Haggard’s honor—the renaming was ultimately approved—Gallon came to speak in favor. The two men met a month later when the singer came to address a class, unannounced, at Cal State Bakersfield. Gallon, who had been secretly invited, introduced himself in a “This Is Your Life” moment that clearly surprised Haggard. The two old adversaries talked privately for a few minutes afterward and seemed to enjoy each other’s company. Haggard remembered with appreciation that Gallon had allowed him to finish that Christmas Eve cocktail—his last, just as Gallon had predicted, for a long time. When Gallon died the following year at the age of 83, Haggard called Gallon’s widow to offer condolences. They had made their peace. By the time young Haggard went to court, however, he had used up the last of his good will. Judge Norman F. Main sentenced him to 15 years in prison, and the convicted singerburglar was escorted through the gates of San Quentin State Prison on March 26, 1958. Haggard, now identified as California A45200, was not a model prisoner. He helped plot an escape, got talked out of it, cooked up some home brew, got caught and was sent to solitary. He not only turned 21 in prison, he spent his birthday alone in a six-by-nine cell with only a pair of pajama bottoms, a Bible (which doubled as a pillow), a blanket and a cement floor. He stayed there for seven lifechanging days, separated from death row

inmates—including the celebrated Caryl Chessman, with whom Haggard was able to converse—by only a vented plumbing alley. He emerged a changed man and asked for a tougher job in the prison textile mill. He studied for his high school equivalency degree and was allowed to join the prison band. When he made his second appearance before the parole board—he had been denied the first time around—his sentence was modified to five years, the last two years and three months of it parole. That meant he had just 90 days left in prison. He wept when he read the words on the parole board’s order. On November 3, 1960, at the conclusion of the longest three months of his life, prison officials gave Haggard fifteen dollars and a bus ticket home. He had spent seven of his first 23 years locked up. Haggard came home to a wife and two children—the second having been fathered by another man while Haggard was in prison. He got a job digging ditches for Lowell’s electrical company while he looked for work in the clubs, hoping he wouldn’t have to explain where he had been for almost three years. Soon enough he landed two fill-in jobs, one of them at the Lucky Spot, playing with fiddler Jelly Sanders and others on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, when Johnny Barnett’s house band was off. It was there that he met Charles “Fuzzy” Owen and Lewis Talley, cousins from Arkansas who also worked at the Lucky Spot as fill-in musicians—and who fancied themselves recording executives-in-training. “Merle was really nervous when I first heard him sing,” Owen said. “He was paranoid, just got out of the joint. But he was good. Even his mistakes sounded good. I thought, ‘Hey, I better listen to this guy a little bit.’” One day Bill Rea, who was married to Haggard’s sister Lillian, took it upon himself to try and advance Merle’s career. He called the producer of Cousin Herb Henson’s Trading Post, a five-day-a-week Bakersfield TV show that featured many of the stars of

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Robert Price clipping emailed to Janine: “Burglar Suspect Captured After Brief Freedom.” No cap necessary.

FAMILY DISC: Color shot of Merle in buckskin jacket w/gtr. No cap needed.

“Time Life” Jerry Lee Lewis FINISHED SIZE 5 5/16” x 9 13/16” 1/8” BLEED ALL AROUND SADDLE STITCH BOOK KERN CO. DISC. Run three shots tagged Tally #1, #2, #3 in strip (CAN WE PAY FOR JUST ONE???)

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The Tally Records publicity session.

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Bakersfield’s growing constellation of country music entertainers. “I’ve got a brotherin-law who sings,” he told Al Brumley, who agreed to an audition. Haggard walked into Brumley’s office the next day, picked up the Martin guitar he kept in a corner, and had Brumley almost from the first note. Haggard was added to the show’s lineup two nights a week. Favorable fan mail started pouring in, and soon Haggard was performing five nights a week on The Trading Post.

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In 1962 Owen persuaded Haggard to record for Tally Records, the small label Owen and Talley had been trying to make money at since 1955. Haggard went into the little studio they had put together in an old Quonset hut and, using a borrowed tape machine and a rinky-dink, three-input board that barely qualified as a mixer, recorded two songs: a Haggard composition,

Skid Row, and Fuzzy’s own Singing My Heart Out. They traveled to Phoenix to polish up the tapes and pressed 200 copies or so to distribute to radio stations. The songs didn’t do much, but then that wasn’t really the idea. “When I put out records with Merle, it was with the intention of selling to a major label,” said Owen, who had become Haggard’s manager. “The idea was to build him up so he’d be worth something.” Haggard took a break from the Lucky Spot in late 1962, moving to Las Vegas on a lark with his old pal Dean Holloway. Haggard landed a job playing bass with Wynn Stewart at the Nashville Nevada Club (where Stewart was part owner), making the most legally earned money he had ever seen in his life: $225 a week. As an added bonus, he got to play alongside Roy Nichols for the first time. But Haggard and Las Vegas were not cut out for each other. He gambled away more money than he earned, and went home to Bakersfield with his tail between his legs six months later— though not before persuading Stewart to give him permission to record a song that Stewart had written, Sing a Sad Song. He recorded it for Tally in 1963, and it climbed to No. 19 on the country charts. Haggard had the hit he had been hoping to find. In 1964 Merle Haggard put together his own band. He had Fuzzy Owen and Lewis Talley, of course, and he brought in Fuzzy’s girlfriend, Bonnie Owens, a regular on The Trading Post. Bonnie had been previously married to Buck Owens, and she was a songwriter in her own right, making ends meet for years slinging screwdrivers and Schlitz beer on the side at the Blackboard and the Clover Club. She was known for jumping onstage and singing when things got slow, and for scribbling song lyric fragments onto cocktail napkins when the inspiration hit, which was sometimes right in the middle of a drink order. In mid-1964 the newly formed band was playing an engagement in Orangevale, just northeast of Sacramento, when an acquaintance of Bonnie’s, songwriter Liz Anderson,

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Merle Haggard and Bonnie Owens.

came in with her husband and their teenage daughter (who would soon score hits as Lynn Anderson). Liz invited Merle and the band over to their house after the show for breakfast, hoping Merle would take an interest in some of the songs she had written. Haggard was less than thrilled, but agreed to go. “They dragged me to her house at 4 a.m.,” Haggard said years later. “I didn’t want to listen to her songs; I just knew they weren’t any good. I’m sitting over there eating bacon and eggs on a footstool, she’s at a pump organ—a little bitty girl—and she starts singing these

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great songs, like (My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers. I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘I’ll record [that].’” Strangers became a hit at the beginning of 1965, and brought Capitol Records’ Ken Nelson back into the picture. Nelson claims he tried to sign Haggard after he had seen him at a concert at Bakersfield Civic Auditorium honoring the 10-year anniversary of Cousin Herb’s Trading Post. That show, on September 12, 1963, featured Glen Campbell, Joe Maphis, Owens and many others, and was recorded live for Capitol as

Country Music Hootenanny. Haggard played guitar and sang backing vocals. “After we were done (with the show), I walked up to Merle and asked him if he’d like to sign with Capitol,” Nelson said. “He just said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Well, wh-wh-why?’ He said he had a contract with Tally Records. I’d never even heard of [Tally] at the time.” When Strangers broke, Nelson called Fuzzy Owen. “I said, ‘Fuzzy, get on down here.’ So he came to the office and I said, ‘Fuzzy, now you don’t have the promotional ability, you don’t have the distribution, and you’re going to hurt

Merle, now why don’t you just come with Capitol?’ And he agreed, and I guess Merle had.” That was April 1965. Nelson was a hands-off producer who demanded that his artists be practiced, prepared and professional, but otherwise let them be. Nashville producers might make demands about specific material, instruments or musicians, but Nelson was much less likely to call those shots. He’d jump in if he didn’t like something. “But if it was good, Ken would say, ‘A joy to hear and a sight to behold,’” Bonnie said. “If he said that, we all

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MERLE 2 DISC. MH 002. “Hi there…” No caption needed.

Owens

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Merle Haggard and Capitol Records producer, Ken Nelson.

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knew it was good. But he never tried to tell Merle how to sing. They made a good team.” The hits started to come, starting with Haggard’s own composition Swinging Doors. Haggard had an inkling he had a hit on his hands, because weeks before he even went into the studio, Buck Owens had called wanting to know if he could record it instead. If anyone knew how to spot a hit, Haggard reasoned, it was Buck, who had suddenly developed the Midas touch. Buck was still able to participate in the song’s success, because he had already signed Haggard as a songwriter to his Blue Book music publishing company, thereby cutting himself in for a half share of Merle’s songwriting revenue. The success of Ken Nelson’s approach as a producer was underscored in March 1966, when he was unavailable and Haggard was ready to record a follow-up to Swinging Doors. Haggard and the Strangers went to Nashville and got themselves another producer. The results were abominable, and the tapes were buried. Haggard—back in Hollywood, with Nelson and co-producer Fuzzy Owen in the booth—cut The Bottle Let Me Down with honky-tonk guitarists Glen Campbell and James Burton (later to bring his searing lead guitar to Elvis Presley’s band) playing alongside Roy Nichols. Haggard’s marriage to Leona Hobbs had crumbled the year before, and the children— there were now four—lived with Merle’s mother. Bonnie Owens, who had been having some trouble getting along with Fuzzy, was touring Alaska, and Haggard realized he missed her. He flew to Seattle and called her: could he visit, and maybe look for some club work? Bonnie was wary about it, but she said

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Merle Haggard and Buck Owens with a fan. okay. Two weeks later, on June 28, 1965, they were married in Tijuana. By this time Bakersfield had become something of a country music Mecca. The club scene had been going strong for more than a decade, but Buck Owens had lifted the farming and oil town to a new level of national exposure. The Bakersfield Sound was distinctly different from the soft, textured Nashville Sound of the time. Bakersfield country had grown out of hardcore electrified honky-tonk with elements of Western swing and rockabilly, and it had a trebly character that translated well to monophonic, singlespeaker car radios. And Buck Owens was its champion. Haggard had met Owens back in

1961, and he had even briefly played bass for his band. It might have been on that early tour that Owens signed Haggard as a songwriter. Even the canny Owens couldn’t have foreseen how profitable that would become. “It’s amazing to me the things that come out of Merle’s mouth when he’s writing,” Bonnie said years later. “I never heard him talk like that. He’d say later, ‘Bonnie, I don’t ever remember saying those words. It’s like God put them through me.’ I knew he said them. I was there. I’d write them down. Today, I Started Loving You Again was one of them. If We Make It Through December was another. I’d say, ‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’ And he’d say, ‘Yeah, read it to

me.’ I would. Then he’d say, ‘I did not remember saying that line.’ He was just amazed.” It was 2 a.m. in Dallas when Haggard wrote Today, I Started Loving You Again. He asked Bonnie to go down the street and get him a hamburger. When she got back to their motel room just a few minutes later, he had scribbled the words on a brown paper bag. He sang it to her as she cried. Haggard’s music has always had a jazz sensibility to it, most likely owing to his devotion to Bob Wills and Western swing. Roy Nichols had become his guitarist, and Nichols’s jazz inflections were traceable to his affinity for Belgian Gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. Not surprisingly, Haggard devel-

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King of the jukeboxes

oped an appreciation for musicians that was more reminiscent of a jazz bandleader than a country front man, and over time his vocal style evolved into a tender, twang-free delivery. His voice struck listeners as sensitive, even if some of the lyrical themes of his “country jazz” addressed harsher topics. “I realized that jazz meant that you could play anything,” said Haggard, the only country musician ever to appear on the cover of Down Beat magazine, the jazz bible. “It meant that you were a full-fledged musician, that you could play with Louis Armstrong or Johnny Cash.” The hits were coming regularly now. Haggard was voted Top Male Vocalist by the Academy of Country Music Awards, and he and Bonnie were named Top Vocal Group for the second year in a row. Haggard put aside his concerns about his criminal past, taking Johnny Cash’s advice to address his problems openly in song. “I was bullheaded about my career. I didn’t want to talk about being in prison,” Haggard said. “But Cash said I should talk about it. That way the tabloids wouldn’t be able to. I said I didn’t want to do that and he said, ‘It’s just owning up to it.’” Haggard, who had admired Cash since he had seen him perform at San Quentin years before, couldn’t argue with that. Cash introduced Haggard on his variety show as “a man who writes about his own life and has had a life to write about,” and Haggard was forever free. Prison and crimethemed songs became a trademark, with Mama Tried, Sing Me Back Home, Branded Man and The Legend of Bonnie and Clyde all reaching the top of the charts. But Haggard retained his soft side with You Don’t Have Very Far to Go (co-written by Bakersfield’s Red Simpson), I Threw Away the Rose and many others. Haggard’s music took a political turn in 1969 with Okie from Muskogee, hailed as the anthem of the Vietnam-era silent majority. Of course, Haggard had been covertly political for most of his career—so covertly, perhaps, that

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he did not fully realize it himself. I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am, Hungry Eyes and Workin’ Man Blues, among others, had already firmly positioned him as a man with working-class, anti-elitist, populist sentiments. Okie from Muskogee both reinforced and contradicted that stance. The song’s meaning and intent have long been debated, and Haggard has more than occasionally joined the fray. Is it a parody, or a sincerely indignant jab at the pot-smoking left? Its origins suggest the former. Haggard’s tour bus was heading east through Oklahoma in mid-1969 when he and his bandmates spotted a road sign: “Muskogee, 19 miles.” A band member joked that they probably didn’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee, and twenty minutes later Merle had written the song. Haggard didn’t know what he had created until he played it publicly for the first time on that same road swing. It was at a small club for noncommissioned Army officers in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and the crowd had seemed exceptionally uninterested all night. Then the Strangers launched into Okie, and people sat upright in their seats. As the song progressed, the audience got increasingly agitated. Haggard, then 32, initially feared he had incited the crowd to anger. “The whole place went berserk,” he recalled. He remembered how he had stiffened as soldiers poured into the aisles before he realized that they were rushing the stage to shake his hand and pat his back. The song, recorded in Hollywood on July 17, 1969, made Haggard the hottest commodity in country music. When he performed the song at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles a few months after its release, the audience kept time with thunderous, rhythmic claps. “Almost every phrase of Okie from Muskogee brought applause from the crowd,” reported the reviewer from California Country magazine. The Atlantic Monthly described a similar scene in Dayton, Ohio: “Suddenly they are on their feet, berserk, waving flags and stomping and whistling and cheering…and for those brief moments the majority isn’t silent anymore.”

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As a single, Okie from Muskogee sold 264,000 copies the first year; the album, recorded live in Muskogee, surpassed 885,000 copies, propelling Haggard to the Country Music Association’s 1970 Entertainer of the Year award. It became perhaps the most parodied song of the Vietnam era, inspiring left-ofcenter knockoffs by Kinky Friedman, Commander Cody and Arlo Guthrie. So many country, rock and country-rock groups released transmogrified versions that a writer from Rolling Stone magazine decided to keep score. As of March 1971, the song had been recorded 20 times. The tally then: “Honkies, 12, Hippies, 8.” Some critics recoiled at the song’s ultraconservatism; others tried to rehabilitate it by reading it as a working-class assault on upper-class arrogance. Still others were convinced Haggard had recorded it as a straight-faced parody. Most country music fans believed Haggard wrote it and sang it because he believed it. For Haggard, a man of many contradictions, it might have been all those things at one time or another, as suggested by his declaration to an interviewer in 1974: “Son, the only place I don’t smoke is in Muskogee.” In the context of Haggard’s lifelong body of work, it becomes clear that when Haggard saw protesting college students, he didn’t just see disrespect for flag and country, he saw class distinction and privilege. These were coddled rich kids who had never been hungry a day in their lives—trust-fund snotnoses who had never had dirt under their fingernails. The marijuana was one thing—and maybe not such a big thing at that—but the naïveté and presumptuousness were quite another.

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Merle meets President Ri chard Nixon.

Eventually, however, Haggard began expressing misgivings about the song’s tendency to get him branded a reactionary. “Boy, I tell you, I didn’t realize how strong some people felt about those things,” he said in 1971. “[The song] made me appear to be a person who was a lot more narrow-minded, possibly, than I really am,” he said in 1981. There’s no denying it was a gold mine, however, and Capitol seized the momentum by releasing The Fightin’ Side of Me, a pugilistic sequel. From a business standpoint it was the right call, and Fightin’ followed Okie right to the top of the country charts. The George Wallace campaign asked Haggard to endorse Wallace in his 1970 bid

for reelection as governor of Alabama (Hank Snow and Marty Robbins were already on board), but Haggard declined. He had, though, become the darling of the American political right, a fact made evident in 1970 when California governor Ronald Reagan granted him a full and unconditional pardon for past crimes. Richard Nixon, like Wallace and Reagan, understood the political practicality of having country music stars in his camp, having given Wallace a preemptive taste of his own medicine back in 1968 by inducing endorsements from Roy Acuff, Tex Ritter and Stuart Hamblen. It wasn’t until 1973, however, that President Nixon solicited an endorsement-by-association from Haggard, inviting

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him to the White House to sing at wife Pat’s staid birthday party. CUE: It was also in 1973 that Haggard released If We Make It Through December, a song that remained at the top of the charts longer than Okie or any other of his hits. Again, he drew on real-life drama. One day he had asked Roy Nichols how things were going with his wife, with whom Nichols had been having troubles. Believing that Christmas usually magnified marital problems, Nichols replied, “Well, we might be okay if we make it through December.” Haggard took that poignant line and grafted onto it the uncertain economic days of that difficult autumn, telling the story of a workingman who loses his job as Christmas is approaching. The song sold 468,000 copies in six months and became Haggard’s first to cross over to the pop top 40, where it peaked at No. 28. By that Christmas Haggard had turned on Richard Nixon because of Watergate and the many economic troubles he had seen across the country. Gas was getting tough to buy, fami-

lies were struggling, and automobile manufacturers were laying off workers. Haggard stayed with Capitol Records until 1977, when he moved to MCA Records. His first two singles for his new record label, If We’re Not Back in Love by Monday and Ramblin’ Fever, made it to No. 2, as did two later hits, I’m Always on a Mountain When I Fall and It’s Been a Great Afternoon. He and Bonnie divorced in 1978 —they had always been more like big sister and little brother—and after a short hiatus she resumed touring with his band, and even stood as a bridesmaid for his third marriage, to Leona Williams, the same year. In 1981—the year Haggard published his first stab at autobiography, Sing Me Back Home— he left MCA for Epic Records and began producing his own records. His first two singles, My Favorite Memory and Big City, went to No. 1. A Billy Sherill–produced duet with George Jones, Yesterday’s Wine, also went to No. 1, as did his 1983 duet with Willie Nelson on Pancho and Lefty. He scored another No. 1 hit in 1988, at the age of 50, with Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Star. Amid it all,

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Haggard endured financial problems, including trouble with the IRS that he chalked up to having given too many people too much access to too much of his money while he concentrated on his music. “I had earned maybe a hundred million dollars in twentyfive years,” he wrote in 1999. “By 1990 I was practically broke.” That was the year he changed to Curb Records, a move he came to regard as among the bleakest periods of his career. “There is nothing more frustrating than to be a recording artist who isn’t recording or who, if he is, isn’t getting his recordings released,” he wrote. When his contract ran out, Haggard happily skipped over to Anti, a subsidiary of the Epitaph punk-pop label. By that time Haggard had long since sold his $700,000 Kern River Canyon mansion east of Bakersfield and moved to the Lake Shasta area of Northern California. He shares the 200acre spread, which he calls Shade Tree Manor, with his fifth wife, Theresa Lane, whom he wed in 1993, and their two children. “People who haven’t been around me in years wouldn’t know me,” he wrote. Shade Tree Manor has a petting zoo for the kids and a first-rate recording studio adorned with assorted memorabilia: some of Lewis Talley’s dusty, half-empty bottles of bourbon (Talley died in 1985); one of Bob Wills’s old cigar butts, tenderly preserved in a glass case; and printed words of inspiration, courtesy of Roger Miller: “We Shall Over Dub.” CUE:Merle Haggard continues to record, grousing occasionally about the lack of respect the industry accords its elder statesmen. “If we were in rock ‘n’ roll, they’d be playing us,” he said in 1995. “Eric Clapton and I are about the same age (and) they’re playing him on rock ‘n’ roll stations…In order to be played (on country radio) nowadays, you have to be singing about air. It’s got to have that goddamn linedance tempo to it, and you’ve got to be under 40.” He has no intention of retiring, though. “I’ve thought about it,” he said in 2004. “In fact I’ve even tried a little of it. It’s not good for

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Merle marries Theresa Lane. 13/16” you. You lose what you don’t use. I intend to stay active as long as possible.” It has been a ride. Between 1965 and 1987, Haggard and his band recorded 38 songs that reached No. 1 on the Billboard country charts and another 33 that reached the top 10. By the time If We Make It Through December hit No. 1, Haggard had already sold more than 8 million albums and 3.5 million singles worth $44.5 million, and he was commanding $15,000 a concert. His songs have been recorded by artists as diverse as the Grateful Dead and Elvis Costello, and one song alone, Today, I Started Loving You Again, has been recorded by more than 400 performers. Haggard rose from working as a $40-a-week sideman guitarist to becoming one of the biggest stars in the country music universe. Smoke and flash didn’t put him there. He has never been the type for rhinestones or hand-tooled boots. Neither was it simply the pretty melodies, although they contributed mightily. “He’ll tell you he’s a country singer, but to me the essence of rock ‘n’ roll is a cry for freedom and rebellion,” said producer Don Was, who has worked with Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and Bonnie Raitt. “And I don’t know anyone who embod-

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ies it better. Every aspect of his life is a refusal to submit.” Maybe that’s why rock and folk-rock audiences were so responsive on concert tours that paired Haggard with the Rolling Stones in 2005 and with Bob Dylan in 2006. There was always something about that rebelliousness, that indefinable obstinacy, that set him apart. Haggard the plainspoken poet was once asked to explain that quality of his. “I’m a contrary old son of a bitch, I guess,” he said. No question about it. —ROBERT PRICE Bakersfield, California Robert Price has been a journalist for 25 years, the last 20 in Bakersfield. He writes a general interest newspaper column, writes regularly about music and music history, and teaches a college course on the Bakersfield Sound.

For a list of bibliographical sources, please visit www.timelife.com (REST OF URL TK)

On-stage at the Last of a Breed Tour, Austin, Texas. March 2006.

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position *Indicates highest Billboard chart

Tracks 1–2 performed by Merle Haggard Tracks 3–20 performed by Merle Haggard and the Strangers

1. SING A SAD SONG (W. STEWART) Tally 155 No. 19 (Country)* 1964

2. (MY FRIENDS ARE GONNA BE) STRANGERS (L. ANDERSON) Tally 179 No. 10 (Country)* 1965

3. THE FUGITIVE

(L. ANDERSON, C. ANDERSON) Capitol 5803 No. 1 (Country)* 1967

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4. SWINGING DOORS (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 5600 No. 5 (Country)* 1966

5. I THREW AWAY THE ROSE (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 5844 No. 2 (Country)* 1967

6. THE BOTTLE LET ME DOWN (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 5704 No. 3 (Country)* 1966

7. BRANDED MAN (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 5931 No. 1 (Country)* 1967

8. TODAY, I STARTED LOVING YOU AGAIN (M. HAGGARD, B. OWENS) Capitol 2123 Did not chart. 1968

9. SING ME BACK HOME (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 2017 No. 1 (Country)* 1968

10. THE LEGEND OF BONNIE AND CLYDE (M. HAGGARD, B. OWENS) Capitol 2123 No. 1 (Country)* 1968

11. MAMA TRIED (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 2219 No. 1 (Country)* 1968

12. I TAKE A LOT OF PRIDE IN WHAT I AM (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 2289 No. 3 (Country)* 1969

14. HUNGRY EYES (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 2383 No. 1 (Country)* 1969

15. OKIE FROM MUSKOGEE (M. HAGGARD, R. BURRIS) Capitol 2626 No. 1 (Country)*, No. 41 (Pop)* 1969

16. SOMEDAY WE’LL LOOK BACK (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 3112 No. 2 (Country)* 1971

17. DADDY FRANK (THE GUITAR MAN) (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 3198 No. 1 (Country)* 1971

18. CAROLYN (T. COLLINS) Capitol 3222 No. 1 (Country)* 1972

19. GRANDMA HARP (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 3294 No. 1 (Country)* 1972 Originally released 1972 by Capitol Records Nashville.

20. IT’S NOT LOVE (BUT IT’S NOT BAD) (G. MARTIN, H. COCHRAN) Capitol 3419 No. 1 (Country)* 1972 Originally released 1972 by Capitol Records Nashville. 1–2 produced by Charles “Fuzzy” Owen 3–7, 9, 15 produced by Charles “Fuzzy” Owen and Ken Nelson 8, 10–14, 16–20 produced by Ken Nelson

13. WORKIN’ MAN BLUES (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 2503 No. 1 (Country)* 1969 # MERLE HAGGARD

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Tracks 1–4, 6–12 performed by Merle Haggard and the Strangers Tracks 5, 13–20 performed by Merle Haggard

1. THE FIGHTIN’ SIDE OF ME (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 2719 No. 1 (Country)* 1970

2. I WONDER IF THEY EVER THINK OF ME (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 3488 No. 1 (Country)* 1973 Originally released 1972 by Capitol Records Nashville.

3. KENTUCKY GAMBLER (D. PARTON) Capitol 3974 No. 1 (Country)* 1975 P 1974 Capitol Records Nashville.

4. EVERYBODY’S HAD THE BLUES (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 3641 No. 1 (Country)* 1973 P 1973 Capitol Records Nashville.

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5. IF WE MAKE IT THROUGH DECEMBER (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 3746 No. 1 (Country)*, No. 28 (Pop)* 1973 P 1973 Capitol Records Nashville.

6. OLD MAN FROM THE MOUNTAIN (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 3900 No. 1 (Country)* 1974 P 1974 Capitol Records Nashville.

7. THINGS AREN’T FUNNY ANYMORE (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 3830 No. 1 (Country)* 1974 P 1974 Capitol Records Nashville.

8. MOVIN’ ON (THEME FROM THE NBC-TV SERIES MOVIN’ ON) (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 4085 No. 1 (Country)* 1975 P 1975 Capitol Records Nashville.

9. ALWAYS WANTING YOU (M. HAGGARD) Capitol 4027 No. 1 (Country)* 1975 P 1975 Capitol Records Nashville.

10. THE ROOTS OF MY RAISING (T. COLLINS) Capitol 4204 No. 1 (Country)* 1976 P 1975 Capitol Records Nashville.

11. IT’S ALL IN THE MOVIES (M. HAGGARD, K. HAGGARD) Capitol 4141 No. 1 (Country)* 1975 P 1975 Capitol Records Nashville.

12. CHEROKEE MAIDEN (C. WALKER) Capitol 4326 No. 1 (Country)* 1976 P 1976 Capitol Records Nashville.

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13. IF WE’RE NOT BACK IN LOVE BY MONDAY (G. MARTIN, S. THROCKMORTON) MCA 40700 No. 2 (Country)* 1977 P 1977 MCA Nashville.

14. RAMBLIN’ FEVER (M. HAGGARD) MCA 40743 No. 2 (Country)* 1977 P 1977 MCA Nashville.

15. I’M ALWAYS ON A MOUNTAIN WHEN I FALL (C. HOWARD) MCA 40869 No. 2 (Country)* 1978 P 1978 MCA Nashville.

16. IT’S BEEN A GREAT AFTERNOON (M. HAGGARD) MCA 40936 No. 2 (Country)* 1978 P 1978 MCA Nashville.

17. THE WAY I AM (S. THROCKMORTON) MCA 41200 No. 2 (Country)* 1980 P 1980 MCA Nashville.

18. I THINK I’LL JUST STAY HERE AND DRINK (M. HAGGARD) MCA 51014 No. 1 (Country)* 1981 P 1980 MCA Nashville.

19. MISERY AND GIN (FROM THE ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK OF CLINT EASTWOOD’S BRONCO BILLY) (J. DURRILL, S. GARRETT) MCA 41255 No. 3 (Country)* 1980 P 1980 MCA Nashville.

20. WHEN MY BLUE MOON TURNS TO GOLD AGAIN (W. WALKER, G. SULLIVAN) MCA LP 2267, 1977 P 1977 MCA Nashville. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 produced by Ken Nelson 3, 10–13 produced by Ken Nelson and Charles “Fuzzy” Owen 6, 8, 9 produced by Charles “Fuzzy” Owen 14, 20 produced by Hank Cochran 15–16 produced by Hank Cochran and Charles “Fuzzy” Owen 17 produced by Charles “Fuzzy” Owen and Don Gant 18 produced by Jimmy Bowen 19 produced by Snuff Garrett 13–20 courtesy of MCA Nashville, under license from Universal Music Enterprises

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All tracks performed by Merle Haggard unless otherwise indicated

1. BIG CITY (M. HAGGARD, D. HOLLOWAY) Epic 02686 No. 1 (Country)* 1982 P 1981 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

2. MY FAVORITE MEMORY (M. HAGGARD) Epic 02504 No. 1 (Country)* 1981 P 1981 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

3. YESTERDAY’S WINE

Merle Haggard and George Jones

(W. NELSON) Epic 03072 No. 1 (Country)* 1982 P 1982 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

4. GOING WHERE THE LONELY GO (M. HAGGARD, D. HOLLOWAY) Epic 03315 No. 1 (Country)* 1983 P 1982 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

5. YOU TAKE ME FOR GRANTED

(L. WILLIAMS) Epic 03723 No. 1 (Country)* 1983 P 1982 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

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6. PANCHO AND LEFTY

Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard

(T. VAN ZANDT) Epic 03842 No. 1 (Country)* 1983 P 1982 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

7. THAT’S THE WAY LOVE GOES (S. SHAFER, L. FRIZZELL) Epic 04226 No. 1 (Country)* 1984 P 1983 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

8. LET’S CHASE EACH OTHER AROUND THE ROOM (M. HAGGARD, F. POWERS, S. RODGERS) Epic 04512 No. 1 (Country)* 1984 P 1984 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

9. SOMEDAY WHEN THINGS ARE GOOD (L. WILLIAMS, M. HAGGARD) Epic 04402 No. 1 (Country)* 1984 P 1983 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

10. TWINKLE, TWINKLE LUCKY STAR (M. HAGGARD) Epic 07631 No. 1 (Country)* 1988 P 1987 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

11. WHAT AM I GONNA DO (WITH THE REST OF MY LIFE)

12. ARE THE GOOD TIMES REALLY OVER (I WISH A BUCK WAS STILL SILVER) (M. HAGGARD) Epic 02894 No. 2 (Country)* 1982 P 1981 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

13. NATURAL HIGH Merle Haggard with Janie Fricke

(F. POWERS) Epic 04830 No. 1 (Country)* 1985 P 1984 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

14. OUT AMONG THE STARS (A. MITCHELL) Epic 06344 No. 21 (Country)* 1986 P 1986 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

15. A PLACE TO FALL APART Merle Haggard with Janie Fricke

(M. HAGGARD, W. NELSON, F. POWERS) Epic 04663 No. 1 (Country)* 1985 P 1984 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

16. LONESOME DAY (M. HAGGARD, D. COLOSIO) Hag CD 0005, 2003 P 2003 Hag Records, Inc. Courtesy of Hag Records, Inc.

17. WISHING ALL THESE OLD THINGS WERE NEW (M. HAGGARD) Anti CD 86593, 2000 P 2000 Epitaph Records Courtesy of Epitaph Records

18. AMERICA FIRST (M. HAGGARD) Capitol CD 7243-8-74929, 2005 P 2005 Capitol Records, Inc. Courtesy of Capitol Records, Inc., under license from EMI Music Marketing

19. SOME OF US FLY Merle Haggard and Toby Keith

(M. HAGGARD) Capitol CD 7243-8-74929, 2005 P 2005 Capitol Records, Inc. Courtesy of Capitol Records, Inc., under license from EMI Music Marketing

20. HAGGARD (LIKE I’VE NEVER BEEN BEFORE) (M. HAGGARD, D. COLOSIO) Hag CD 0005, 2003 P 2003 Hag Records, Inc. Courtesy of Hag Records, Inc.

(M. HAGGARD) Epic 04006 No. 3 (Country)* 1983 P 1983 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT 1, 2, 4, 11, 12 produced by Lewis Talley and Merle Haggard 3 produced by Billy Sherrill 5, 7–9, 13, 15 produced by Merle Haggard and Ray Baker 6 produced by Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and Chips Moman 10 produced by Ken Suesov and Merle Haggard 14 produced by Bob Montgomery 16–17, 20 produced by Merle Haggard and Lou Bradley 18–19 produced by Jimmy Bowen and Mike Post # MERLE HAGGARD

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COMPILATION PRODUCER: COLIN ESCOTT EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: MIKE JASON MASTERING ENGINEER: JOSEPH M. PALMACCIO AT THE PLACE FOR MASTERING PROJECT MANAGER: JANINE MORRIS DESIGN: 314 DESIGN EDITORIAL RESEARCH: OLIVIA KIM SPECIAL THANKS: EMI: REX DONATI, KATHERINE FRAMKE, JACQUELINE VARGO; SONY BMG: NICOLE GORMAN, DARREN RODNEY, VINNY TABONE, GREG YOUNG

SPECIAL THANKS TO ROBERT PRICE FOR INVALUABLE PHOTO RESEARCH.

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PHOTO CREDITS: TK

CDs 1 and 2: This compilation P 2007 EMI Music Special Markets Manufactured by EMI Music Special Markets, 1750 Vine Street, Hollywood, California 90028. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is a violation of applicable laws. Printed in the U.S.A. CD 3: This compilation P 2007 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT. Manufactured for Time Life by SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT / 550 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 100223211. WARNING: All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws. Printed in U.S.A. © 2007 Direct Holdings Americas Inc. TIME LIFE and the TIME LIFE logo are registered trademarks of Time Warner Inc. or an affiliated company. Used under license by Direct Holdings Americas Inc., which is not affiliated with Time Inc. or Time Warner Inc.

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