RIP Merle Haggard

[Ecurb]

Haggard wrote thousands of songs, and lots of them became classics. He's known for his anti-protest songs: Okie from Muskogee and Fightin' Side of Me (both of which are classics), but his golden baritone and song-writing talents made him on of the greats. Here's a link to 30 classics, from Rolling Stone:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/merle-haggard-30-essential-songs-20160406

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

I'm right there with you Ecurb, I spent last evening listening to "The Hag" with a bottle of cheap red wine.
"Kern River", "Sing Me Back Home", "Are The Good Times Really Over",..... whether his own or covers, he was a real talent.
Try his cover of Blaze Foleys "If I Could Only Fly"

[Ecurb]

I think my favorite is "Mama Tried". I like the Grateful Dead version, and the fact that Merle DID "turn twenty-one in (San Quentin) Prison" although, to the betterment of country music, he was not "doin' life without parole". The song epitomized Haggard's "Bakersfield Badass" style. And, of course, although my sympathies are with the other side of the battle, "Fightin" Side of Me" is funny, ironic and fired up.

[New Secret]

I wasn't into Merle Haggard that much but I remember when I was 18, riding a bus in the swarming Georgia heat, listening to the southern rock cassettes that the driver played quite loud. Merle Haggard was one of those tapes. RIP Merle.

[Sancho]

He was a short man.

RIP, Merle.

[Sancho]

I like Dead's version of "Mama Tried" too, E'. In fact I think they were doing it ironically. Merle did "anti-protest" music and The Grateful Dead did "protest music" or in this case "anti-anti-protest" music.

Yeah, baby!

I also like their version of Marty Robbin's "El Paso"

[stlukesguild]

What needs to be recognized is that the art and the artist are not always one and the same. This is as true of Merle Haggard as any novelist, poet, or painter. Haggard has made contradictory statements concerning "Okie from Muskogee" and "The Fightin' Side of Me", his two most well known political songs. In one interview he stated "I wrote it when I recently got out of the joint. I knew what it was like to lose my freedom, and I was getting really mad at these protesters. They didn't know anything more about the war in Vietnam than I did. I thought how my dad, who was from Oklahoma, would have felt. I felt I knew how those boys fighting in Vietnam felt." He suggested that these songs in some way were his attempt to give voice to what rural Middle-America might have made of the chaos of the Vietnam War Era: 'I wonder what dad would think about the youthful uprising that was occurring at the time, the Janis Joplins...I understood 'em, I got along with it, but what if he was to come alive at this moment? And I thought, what a way to describe the kind of people in America that are still sittin' in the center of the country sayin', 'What is goin' on on these campuses?'" In 2001 he suggested these songs were a "documentation of the uneducated that lived in America at the time".

His personal politics shifted over the years. He would later state: "I had different views in the '70s. As a human being, I've learned more. I have more culture now. I was dumb as a rock when I wrote 'Okie From Muskogee'. That's being honest with you at the moment, and a lot of things that I said then I sing with a different intention now. My views on marijuana have totally changed. I think we were brainwashed and I think anybody that doesn't know that needs to get up and read and look around, get their own information. It's a cooperative government project to make us think marijuana should be outlawed."

More recently he criticized George Bush and the invasion of Iraq and after meeting President Obama he stated:

“It was also nice to meet Obama and find him very different from the media makeout. It’s really almost criminal what they [the media] do with our President,” Haggard tells Rolling Stone. “There seems to be no shame or anything. They call him all kinds of names all day long, saying he’s doing certain things that he’s not. It’s just a big old political game that I don’t want to be part of. There are people spending their lives putting him down.”

“I’m sure some of it’s true and some of it’s not,” he continues. “I was very surprised to find the man very humble and he had a nice handshake. His wife was very cordial to the guests and especially me. They made a special effort to make me feel welcome. It was not at all the way the media described him to be.”

“He’s not conceited,” he adds. “He’s very humble about being the President of the United States, especially in comparison to some presidents we’ve had who come across like they don’t need anybody’s help. I think he knows he’s in over his head. Anybody with any sense who takes that job and thinks they can handle it must be an idiot.”

Just putting this out there to point out that Merle Haggard was a far more complex individual than suggested by one or two of his songs.

While I am an unabashed classical music aficionado I am also deeply enamored with any number of forms of folk/popular music... including Country and Bluegrass... and Merle haggard was one of the greatest Country singers/songwriters/performers.

RIP

[Ecurb]

"We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee" is a little ironic, considering that Haggard spent much of his life getting stoned with Willie Nelson. Haggard's two famous anti-protest songs were big hits, and deservedly so (I assume he wrote "Fightin Side of Me" because he wanted another big hit, after "Muskogee"). Perhaps there is a political line that can be drawn (Reifenstahl, maybe, could have made her Olympics movie and passed on the more overtly Nazi propaganda), but in general if someone can write a song as good as "Fightin' Side of Me" he should do it.

I attended a Native American Pow Wow recently, and ambivalence reigns, because there's bitterness and anti-American feeling in the Native community, but much of the Pow Wow was devoted to honoring the military, probably because so many Indians are and were soldiers (perhaps for economic and educational reasons). "I heard about some squirrly guy who says that he just don't believe n fightin" is a great line, capturing the red neck, honky tonk, macho attitude of the time. Of course fighting in Viet Nam was not quite so much fun as bar room brawls, but the song captures the notion that a little brawling can be a good time. It reminds me of a Frank O'Connor essay on drinking beer. O'Connor and an Irish friend are drinking with a group of English friends, and the friend turns to him and says, "I don't understand it! Five hours of heavy drinking, and not a cross word, or a punch thrown!"

By the way, luke, Rick Bartow died recently,as well (he's the native American artist I wrote about in a thread in which you particiapted). Here's an obituary. http://www.orartswatch.org/a-death-in-the-family-rick-bartow/

[Sancho]

Uh huh.

St.L.G., and guys like Andrew Carnegie and Leland Stanford mellowed towards the end as well.

[qimissung]

Merle and Willie:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CvdmxszsDM8