Country music giant Merle Haggard, who celebrated outlaws, underdogs and an abiding sense of USA national pride in such hits as Okie From Muskogee and Sing Me Back Home, has died aged 79 on his birthday.
Advertisement
It’s unclear what the cause of death was at this point.
Haggard, who had recently returned to tour despite repeated bouts with illness, died from complications of pneumonia at his home in northern California, a representative said.
Alongside Buck Owens, Haggard helped change the direction of country music in the 1960s, offering up the harder-edged “Bakersfield Sound” as a twangy alternative to the heavily produced and polished Nashville recordings of the day.
Check back for more information.
“The great thing about Merle Haggard was how he gave a voice to a whole group of people who felt like they didn’t have a voice”, Stevens says. In 1972, then-California governor Ronald Reagan granted him a full pardon.
I was able to see Haggard a couple of times during my life. “He is about as close to perfection in country music as we will probably ever have”.
“We’ve lost one of the greatest writers and singers of all time”.
He credited a 1958 performance at the prison by legend Johnny Cash – who later turned a concert at the jail into a celebrated album – with inspiring him to pursue music. Not just a singer, not just a songwriter, not just another famous performer.
“It really shakes the country world a little bit when legends like this pass away, because of the legacy they’ve left behind, and the inspiration they’ve been to many other singer songwriters as well”.
The Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame there is hosting a large music festival in June, and Haggard was set to headline it. In an interview in 2010, Merle Haggard discussed that song from 1969, saying, “America was at its peak and what the hell did these kids have to complain about?” Haggard’s father was a carpenter for a railroad, and the family lived in a converted boxcar.
Just two years later, “Okie From Muskogee” took a few lyrical jabs at the hippies and pot-smokers, while “The Fightin’ Side of Me” ran down antiwar protesters.
Other songs that weren’t released as singles, including “Today I Started Loving You Again” (perhaps the Haggard song most-covered by other artists) and “Irma Jackson”, about an interracial romance, display Mr. Haggard’s depth as an artist.
Advertisement
He also wrote “Crippled Soldiers and Me” to protest the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said burning the American flag was an expression of free speech and “That’s the News” to criticize media coverage of the war in Iraq. The rebellious young man spent time in juvenile facilities and reform schools over the next several years, but he also fell in love with music, and began learning to play guitar. Haggard was married five times.
