MARCH, 2024
HERITAGE MUSIC REVIEW
ELECTRONIC EDITION: Now free to email subscribers and supported by tasteful, music-oriented advertising with a unique news-format approach.
A monthly guide to early rock, blues, country, folk, and traditional jazz in the Seattle area and beyond.
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CONTENTS—MARCH, 2024
PART TEN: MERLE HAGGARD: New Biography Chronicles The Life of One of Country Music's Most Complex Legends
WHAT's IN STORE: News From The Musical Marketplace
CHECKIN, OUT THE SOUNDS: MARCH MUSIC CALENDAR (next message)
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Part Ten:
MERLE HAGGARD: New Biography Chronicles The Life of One of Country Music's Most Complex Legends
By Doug Bright
Summary of Parts 1-9:
"Merle Haggard has always been as deep as it gets," Bob Dylan once said. "He's probably one of our greatest living songwriters." He died on his 79th birthday—April 6, 2016—at his ranch in Shasta County, California, but his legend lives on, and it's the subject of a new biography by Marc Eliot. It's entitled
The Hag:
The Life, Times, and Work of Merle Haggard.
Merle Ronald Haggard was born on the morning of April 6, 1937, in Bakersfield, California and raised in the working-class suburb of Oildale. His father had been a popular fiddler during his youth in Oklahoma at local dances and weddings, and it soon became obvious that his penchant for music had been passed on to his infant son. Lying in his bassinet, Merle would keep time with his feet whenever country music played on the radio.
Of all the artists he heard in early childhood, his two favorites were "Mississippi Blue Yodeler"
Jimmie Rodgers
and
Bob Wills,
who popularized western swing with his Texas Playboys. In 1951, at age 14, Haggard discovered another country artist who made a deep impression: up-and-coming singer/songwriter
Lefty Frizzell,
⠱⠕⠍ he saw for the first time at Bakersfield's Rainbow Gardens.
A pivotal point in young Merle's life had come years earlier when his older brother Lowell, who had moved out on his own and taken a job at a filling station, brought him a cheap Sears Roebuck guitar that a customer had given him in exchange for two dollars' worth of gas. After his father taught him a few chords, Haggard took the proverbial football and ran with it, figuring out more chords by playing along with the records in the family collection. Eventually, he was writing his own songs.
On June 19th, 1946, Jim Haggard died from a stroke that may have been brought on by a head injury from a car accident a month earlier, and the loss had a devastating effect on his young son. "He thought there must have been some connection between his own recent illness and his father's stroke," Eliot
explains.
"He soon transformed that guilt into a thirst for adventure."
The adventures began when, at age eleven, he hopped a freight train with another boy despite the fact that as the son of a Southern Pacific employee, he was entitled to ride as a passenger whenever he wanted. Three years later, Haggard was still cutting classes most of the time and hopping freights whenever he could.
When 14-year-old Merle Haggard returned to school in September 1951, Eliot
recounts,
"it took only nine days before he decided he'd had enough, even if the truant officers, all of whom knew his name, came looking for him." A family court judge sent him to the Fred C. Nelles Youth Correctional Facility for Boys, where he endured a year of very harsh treatment. After another long truancy, the same judge pronounced him incorrigible and sent him to a much stricter facility.
"He was sixteen by the time he was released, tougher than ever and hardly reformed," Eliot
writes.
Nevertheless, Merle Haggard was soon to get the first big break of his teenage life the following January when
Lefty Frizzell
returned to the Rainbow Gardens. It was then that he met his idol through singer/steel guitarist Billy Mize, a well-known figure in local country-music circles whose band was opening for Frizzell. "I got to use his guitar and have his band play behind me," Haggard later
said.
"It was quite a thrill."
When Mize invited him to appear on his new local TV show, it appeared to young Merle Haggard that nothing could stop him from realizing his dream of a career in country music. "He was wrong," Marc Eliot
writes.
"He hadn't counted on the brick wall of self-destruction that stood in his way."
Haggard took menial jobs by day but spent his evenings sitting in with local country bands, and in two years he had built a reputation as a solid rhythm guitarist and was picking up regular work. Nevertheless, one evening over a beer with a co-worker, the conversation turned to stealing cars, and at his suggestion, they searched for an unlocked vehicle, intending to cross the Nevada line, avail themselves of the state's legalized prostitution, and get home for the next morning's shift.
They were caught with an almost-new '56 Oldsmobile 88, and Haggard was carried off to the local jail. More bad decisions followed, including a robbery, an attempted robbery, and a short-lived escape from the Bakersfield jail on Christmas Day 1957. Consequently, he found himself in the notorious San Quentin prison by the end of February 1958 with a sentence of six months to fifteen years and all privileges revoked, including access to the Martin guitar his mother had bought him when he was 14.
Merle Haggard was finally released on November 3rd, 1960. Back home, he started showing up at local nightspots again and landed steady gigs that enabled him to work six nights a week. At a temporary engagement in the fall of 1962, he was rediscovered by steel guitarist Fuzzy Owen, to whom he had submitted a demo tape years earlier for Owen's local Tally label. The two sides he recorded,
released
in early 1963, caught the ear of Ken Nelson, whose country music division had launched
Buck Owens
at Capitol Records.
After a hit with Wynn Stewart's "Sing A Sad Song" and a less successful follow-up, Haggard signed with Capitol in February 1964. His first Capitol single, songwriter Liz Anderson's "(my friends are gonna be)
Strangers,”
reached Number 10 on the Billboard country chart, and his first album,
Strangers,
emerged in September 1965, earning him a citation from the newly formed Academy of Country Music as Best New Male Vocalist of 1965.
By this time, Haggard had married Buck Owens' first wife, Bonnie Owens, whose debut Capitol album, DON'T TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ME, garnered her an award for Top Female Vocalist of 1965. "Ken Nelson knew a good thing when he saw it," Eliot
reports,
"and brought Merle and Bonnie back into Capitol Studios to record an album ⠉⠁⠇⠇⠫
which did even better than the one Haggard had just released, vaulting all the way to Number 4 on the Billboard chart.
More top-selling albums followed which included the unforgettable hits
"Swinging Doors",
"The Bottle Let Me Down",
"I'm A Lonesome Fugitive",
"Branded Man",
"Sing Me Back home",
"Mama Tried",
"Hungry Eyes",
"Workin' Man Blues",
"Silver Wings",
"Okie From Muskogee",
and
There were also tribute albums to his first two childhood heroes,
Jimmie ⠠⠗⠕⠙⠛⠻⠎
and
Bob Wills,
as well as a memorable 1973 concert album with a three-piece Dixieland horn section entitled
I Love Dixie Blues
(So I Recorded Live In New Orleans).
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By the fall of 1973, Merle Haggard's marriage had deteriorated to the point that Bonnie requested a formal separation. In anticipation of the holiday season, Ken Nelson at Capitol Records started pushing for a Christmas album, but given the state of turmoil that characterized Haggard's life at the time, he was in no mood. As it turned out, however, the situation yielded one of his greatest songs.
His lead guitarist, Roy Nichols, was also having marital troubles, and when Merle asked him ⠓⠪ his situation was going, he
replied,
"Well, we might be okay if we make it through December."
From that seed of inspiration came a song about a factory worker who gets laid off at the worst possible time. "I don't mean to hate December," Haggard's character mourns, "it's meant to be the happy time of year. But my little girl don't understand Why Daddy can't afford no Christmas here."
"If We Make It Through December”
was recorded in Fuzzy Owen's Bakersfield studio and released on October 27th, 1973, shooting to Number 1 on Billboard's country chart, Number 28 on the Hot 100, and even Number 16 on Easy Listening. It served as the title song for the album that Nelson had requested, but with the exception of Haggard's gospel composition "There's Just One Way", it was a Christmas album in name only. Nevertheless, it rose to Number 4 on the highly competitive holiday music survey.
It included "I'll Break Out Again Tonight", one of the greatest renditions in the Merle Haggard catalog. "These walls and bars can't hold a dreamin' man," he sang, "so I'll be home to tuck the babies in." He didn't write the song, but he delivered it with all the conviction of a man who had been there.
By the end of 1974, with Bonnie out of his life for all practical purposes, Haggard resigned himself to searching for her replacement, musically and otherwise. He finally set his hopes on Dolly Parton, whose songwriting had supplied him that year with his 19th Number One country hit,
"Kentucky Gambler".
"Parton officially began touring with Merle in the summer of 1974," Eliot
elaborates,
"and they were an instant hit onstage. The tour made a lot of money and sold truckloads of albums for both, but it didn't last. She was tired of Merle chasing her around the bus, and her solo career was taking off. She decided to leave the tour."
"The cracks in Merle's life and career continued to widen as the stress of changes began to appear on a more frequent basis," Eliot
writes.
In addition to his unrectified separation from Bonnie and his failure to win Dolly Parton over, several key band members had departed and opportunities for a film career had failed to materialize.
"He had previously avoided taking any drugs, not even pot," Eliot
continues,
"but to help him deal with all the loss, speed became part of his daily routine, creeping into every aspect of his nights and days, and his relationships, with at times disastrous results. He continued to produce quality music and perform to full houses, never failing to deliver a solid show, but his time onstage became shorter and shorter."
In 1976 Merle Haggard's long and fruitful relationship with Capitol Records came to an end. MCA Records' country music division, based in Nashville, had offered him a much more lucrative contract that would give him ownership of all the master recordings he generated there, and when Ken Nelson at Capitol refused to match those terms, he signed with MCA. However, he still owed Capitol three more albums, all to be completed that year. The stylistically varied
It's All In The Movies,
with a pop-flavored title song co-written with his daughter Kelli, was his final chart-topping album.
His follow-up release,
My Love Affair With Trains,
proved to be the last of his heartfelt concept albums. As he begins it with his own familiar song line, "First thing I remember knowin' was a lonesome whistle blowin'", we hear an engine chugging into action and whistling down the track in chillingly lifelike stereo. "That's another song and another story," he tells his listeners with a wistful chuckle, "but it was a train whistle much the same as that which caused some worrisome years for my mama. It started a lifelong love affair with trains."
The title song, written by none other than Dolly Parton, compellingly portrays the inner conflict of a former hobo who now has a family and a steady job but can't ignore the siren call of an approaching train and the careless freedom it represents. Haggard sings it with the conviction born of youthful experience.
The theme of the album is epitomized by songwriter Dave Kirby's co-composition "So Long, Lonesome Whistle". As he introduces it, Haggard explains, "Today you're only able to hear that unforgettable sound now and then maybe in some old movie or in different areas of the United States where the excursion train is still powered with steam. In fact, the one you're hearing in the background has already been removed, and who knows how long the rest will be around?"
Continuing the theme with "No More Trains To Ride", Haggard explains, "The thought that inspired me to write this next song in some ways may seem premature because if you really want to go to enough trouble you can still hop a freight and make your way across the country. But stiffer penalties and trespassing laws on railroad property will discourage most any young man from choosing this method of travel, let's say, over hitchhikin'. If you'll examine the times in which we live, I think maybe you'll agree this song may not be quite so premature after all."
Well, that was 1976, and if you do a news search, you'll find that the only people hopping freights today are foreign migrants desperate enough to attempt an illegal border crossing.
Another album highlight is "Here Comes The Freedom Train", which reiterates Haggard's patriotism, even if he didn't write it. It uses the railroad as a metaphor for two centuries of U.S. history. "The train is called America, your ticket is a dream that lit the torch of freedom for all the world to see." Some may call it corny, as one professional reviewer did, but in this still-passionate American dreamer's not-so-humble opinion, it's just the kind of song that needs to be heard in these toxically divided times, and just for the record: No, I'm definitely not a Trumper!
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(This article will continue in the next issue of Heritage Music Review. Your copy of Marc Eliot's book, THE HAG: The Life, Times, and Work of Merle Haggard, is waiting for you at Phinney Books, 7405 Greenwood Avenue North in Seattle.
Phone: 206/297-2665
Web: www.phinneybooks.com).
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WHAT'S IN STORE: NEWS FROM THE MUSICAL Marketplace
Find The Merle Haggard Story At Phinney Books
"There's the guy I'd love to be and the guy I am," country music legend Merle Haggard once confided to biographer Marc Eliot. "I'm somewhere in between, in deep water, swimming to the other shore." All the complexity of the circumstances and choices that shaped him are revealed with unflinching honesty in Eliot's recent book THE HAG: The Life, Times, and Work of Merle Haggard. Your copy is waiting for you at Phinney Books in Seattle's Greenwood neighborhood.
Phinney Books
7405 Greenwood Avenue North
Web: www.phinneybooks.com
Phone: 206/297-2665
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Learn Old-time Banjo At Dusty Strings
Dusty Strings Music Store and School in Seattle's Fremont district, long known for its array of fine stringed instruments, instructional workshops, and folk concerts, is hosting a series of workshops on old-time Appalachian banjo technique with one of the area's best practitioners and instructors, Molly Tenenbaum. Although the first session already happened on March 9th and online registration is closed for the three remaining ones—March 16th, 23rd, and 30th, walk-up enrollments are still welcome.
Dusty Strings Music Store and School
3406 Fremont Avenue North
Phone: 206/634-1662
Web: www.dustystrings.com
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1963 Martin D-28E At Emerald City Guitars
Emerald City Guitars in Seattle's Pioneer Square, well known for its fascinating selection of new and vintage acoustic and electric guitars, amps, and accessories, has just acquired a 1963 Martin D-28E acoustic-electric guitar with original hard-shell case.
Emerald City Guitars
83 South Washington Street
Phone: 206/382-0231
Web: www.emeraldcityguitars.com
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On The Newsstand: Heritage Music Review
The print edition of Heritage Music Review is available by subscription for $15 per year and on sale at the following Seattle newsstands and music venues:
FREMONT:
American Music: 4450 Fremont Avenue North
Dusty Strings Acoustic Music Shop: 3406 Fremont Avenue North
UNIVERSITY DISTRICT:
Bulldog News: 4208 University Way Northeast
GREENWOOD:
Phinney Books: 7405 Greenwood Avenue North
CAPITOL HILL:
Elliott Bay Book Company: 1521 10th Avenue
PIONEER SQUARE:
Emerald City Guitars: 83 South Washington Street
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