Merle Haggard dead at 79

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Merle Haggard dead at 79

April 7th, 2016

Awake Goy

In his 1968 song Mama Tried, Merle Haggard sang of turning 21 in prison. Haggard, who died Wednesday in California at age 79, had done just that, though not, as he sang in the song, “doing life without parole.”

Haggard’s youth of petty crime, financial insecurity and freight-car hopping eventually informed songs that spoke plainly but not predictably of social outcasts, blue-collar concerns and persistent restlessness.

AP PEOPLE-MERLE HAGGARD A FILE ENT USA DE Aside, perhaps, from Hank Williams, no other figure in country music affected the way songs would be written and how they would be sung as much as Haggard did. A 49-year recording career yielded 38 No. 1 country hits, a run exceeded only byConway Twitty and George Strait.

Haggard was born in Oildale, Calif., in 1937, the son of a pair of Dust Bowl refugees from Oklahoma. He spent his early years living in a house that his father, James Haggard, had fashioned from an abandoned refrigerated train car.

The elder Haggard died when Merle was 9, throwing his world into chaos. Two years later, he hopped his first railroad car, starting a series of encounters with police that culminated in a stretch of hard time.

Having botched a burglary — he and a friend tried to break into a restaurant while it was still open — Haggard spent two and a half years at San Quentin State Prisonbefore being paroled in 1960, at 23. In 1972, then-California governor Ronald Reagan granted him a full pardon.