June, 2024
HERITAGE MUSIC REVIEW
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CONTENTS—JUNE, 2024
PART TWELVE: 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: JUNE MUSIC CALENDAR (next message)
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Part Twelve:
MERLE HAGGARD: New Biography Chronicles The Life of One of Country Music's Most Complex Legends
By Doug Bright
Summary of Parts 1-11:
"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
whom 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.
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's Blues",
"Silver Wings",
"Okie From Muskogee",
and
There were also tribute albums to his first two childhood heroes,
Jimmie Rodgers
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).
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.
Haggard's first MCA album,
Ramblin' Fever,
emerged in 1977 and reached Number 5 on the Billboard survey. His next MCA release was motivated by the untimely death of Elvis Presley on August 16th, 1977.
My Farewell To Elvis
was a heartfelt tribute with a selection of material that took Haggard into unexpected stylistic territory, with mixed results, but with its Jordanaires-style choral backing and obvious reverence for Presley's classic records, the album was a fitting tribute. It went to Number 6 on the Billboard country survey and Number 133 in pop.
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Haggard's next MCA album,
I'm Always On A Mountain When I Fall,
emerged in 1978. Its title song was one of three tracks that made the country Top Ten, but the album itself was his first release to fall short of that distinction in its corresponding market. Nevertheless, it contained some noteworthy moments, and Haggard was in fine voice. One of the Top Ten qualifiers was his composition "It's Been a Great Afternoon", a gleeful hangover reminiscence that must have been inspired by experience. "One rowdy afternoonooner got me up and around," he confesses. "I can't say it's bee a good mornin', but babe, it's been a great afternoon!"
One of the album's most perennially relevant songs, delivered with fitting conviction, was "The Immigrant", co-authored with Texas songwriter Dave Kirby. In it, Haggard asks a question that says all that needs to be said on the subject in this critic's not-so-humble opinion: "Is this a good neighbor, to take all his labor, then chase him back over the border 'til he's needed again?" Another album standout, a poignant marital crisis scenario called "Mama, I've Got To Go To Memphis", shows haggard's third and then-current wife, Leona Williams, to be a compelling songwriter in her own right.
During that same year of 1978, Haggard got a surprise offer from Texas-born record producer Snuff Garrett, who had made his mark in the late Fifties with Liberty Records by successfully adding string orchestration to records by everyone from
Buddy Knox
to the
Crickets
to the
Fleetwoods.
Over the years he had gained Haggard's deep respect, and at Clint Eastwood's suggestion, he offered Haggard a duet role for a song to be included in an Eastwood film called
Billy Bronco.
The movie, released in June 1980, did very well at the box office, and so did the accompanying soundtrack album, driven by the song, "Barroom Buddies", co-written and produced by Garrett. When the song was released as a single, it zoomed to Number 1 on the Billboard country survey and stayed near the top for thirteen weeks. Its success prompted the release of another soundtrack number from Haggard, "Misery and Gin", on a single which went to Number 3.
"Merle liked "Misery" so much he included it on
his thirty-first studio album—his sixth (and penultimate) one for MCA," Marc eliot
recounts.
It was basically a concept album devoted to country music's most stereotypical thematic cocktail: lost love and alcohol. Though Haggard's voice was at its appropriately plaintive best, most of the songs, including his hit "I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink", were unmemorably formulaic, but his masterful ballad "Leonard", which chronicled the rise and fall of his friend and mentor better known as
Tommy Collins,
was worth the whole record.
"At the label's direction," Marc Eliot
elaborates,
"the album, except for Garrett's "Misery and Gin," was produced by
Jimmy Bowen,
⠁ one-time performer who became a producer when Frank Sinatra offered him a job at his newly formed Reprise label. Bowen then moved to Nashville, where he produced for a number of country's top artists."
Although Eliot considers
Back TO The Barrooms
one of Haggard's best albums, I, hardcore traditionalist that I am, respectfully disagree. With Bowen at the helm, it constituted a radical departure from the classic Haggard sound, invoking a "progressive country" strategy with heavy drum and electric bass tracks as well as piano and alto saxophone styles emblematic of late-Seventies pop.
Apparently, as Eliot
tells
it, Haggard shared my opinion. "He was disappointed when he measured Bowen's work against the team that had brought him to fame," the author
relates,
"The more he thought about his Capitol years, the more he doubted the wisdom of his move to Nashville, where he felt like a stranger in a strange land. He longed for the peace, quiet, privacy, and expanse of the West Coast."
Merle Haggard's final MCA album was released in 1981: a gospel album called
Songs For The Mama That tried,
dedicated to his 79-year-old mother. "The entire album was beautiful work by any measure," Marc Eliot
comments,
"but it produced no singles and reached only No. 46 on Billboard's country album chart. With his pretty-boy face starting to crease and wrinkle, his hairline receding, his career in commercial decline, and his third marriage on the rocks, Merle decided he'd had enough. He walked off his steady job and announced that he was retiring."
"Only he didn't retire," Eliot
continues.
"Even if he'd wanted to, the hard truth was he couldn't afford it. He carried enormous overhead." There was the property he owned in California, including a houseboat, the touring and payroll expenses he had incurred, a $16 million debt claimed by the IRS, and alimony from previous marriages.
"The illusion that he was set for life and could retire and go fishing was just that," Eliot
⠎⠥⠍⠍⠜⠊⠵⠑⠎⠠
"an illusion he had somehow convinced himself was true. Perhaps even without the crushing debt he carried, he wouldn't have stopped. He still had that passionate desire, that bottomless-pit need to create new music and re-create himself through his songs."
Fortunately for Haggard, the old adage that it's darkest before the dawn proved gloriously true of American roots music in the early 1980's. "While the new boys and girls on the block were dominating the charts," Eliot
explains,
"an appreciation of the more classic styles of country music began to take hold in the big cities above the Mason-Dixon line. Every large northeastern metropolis had at least one significant country music club that booked established acts, usually to sold-out crowds."
One of the most prestigious of them was New York's Lone Star Café, where Haggard appeared on June 4th, 1980, drawing an overflow crowd and garnering a rave review in The New York Times. The club brought him back the following May, and the year after that, he played Carnegie Hall. With the weight of such evidence as this on his side, Merle Haggard could now say with the unsinkable Molly Brown, "I ain't down yet!"
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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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Find Pisgah's Roscoe Clawhammer 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 now featuring Pisgah Banjo Company's Roscoe model. Named for legendary Appalachian balladeer and clawhammer-style banjoist Roscoe Holcomb, this open-back instrument is, according to the Dusty Strings website, "Pisgah's most affordable offering." It "provides a plunky, dark, and mellow tonality that stands above anything else in this price category."
Dusty Strings Music Store and School
3406 Fremont Avenue North
Phone: 206/634-1662
Web: www.dustystrings.com
―――――――――――――――――—- Two Vintage Martins 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 well-preserved 1935 Martin 0-18 with hard-shell case and a 1944 Martin 0-18 in "mostly original condition,", according to the Emerald City website.
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
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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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