Gram Parsons, the father of psychedelic country rock, sang Haggard’s “Life in Prison” on The Byrds’ seminal “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” album and later recorded a “Sing Me Back Home” we could, appropriately, play to death (that ultimate Commie folky, Joan Baez, cut sides of both “Tried” and “Home” around the same time).
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See Haggard perform his hit “Sing Me Back Home” below.
“A hour ago he took his last breath surrounded by family and friends”.
I’m talking decades and decades of love for the man responsible for creating the favorite music of my life.
Country music legend Merle Haggard, has sadly passed away after suffering from Pneumonia, Gigwise reports citing TMZ. If there was a new Merle Haggard album, you knew it was going to be something good.
Married five times and the singer of many love ballads, Haggard became best known for outlaw country songs about run-ins with the law – a subject matter he knew first-hand.
“Merle was an American hero”, says Randall Kline, executive director of SFJazz, which presented Haggard’s final Bay Area show. The country music star had been suffering from double pneumonia, forcing him to cancel an upcoming tour with Willie Nelson. Along with fellow California country star Buck Owens, he was a founder of the twangy Bakersfield Sound.
“His passing is a loss for country music, but obviously is a loss for all the people who got to know him personally, too”, Earnest said. His heart was as tender as his love ballads, said Dolly Parton. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Merle’s family and friends. Hard luck, love gone wrong – his song were covered by everyone from The Everly Brothers to the Grateful Dead. It was during that stint he saw Johnny Cash play, and he returned to Bakersfield at age 22 in 1960 ready to write music.
That commitment to realism, no matter how painful the topic, has had an impact on many of today’s country artists. In 1957, he spent two years and nine months locked up in San Quentin State Prison in California.
Singer Brad Paisley thanked God for Haggard’s life and music.
The Bakersfield Californian notes that Haggard moved to Lake Shasta in the 1980s, but he started hanging around Bakersfield more after he had a street named after him: Merle Haggard Drive.
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“One of the secrets I guess you could say of merle haggard is he was brutally and unvarnished, truthful”.
