The original outlaw and lonesome fugitive, when I think of Merle I often recall one of the truest quotes ever uttered about the man. Sitting at a bar in Nashville listening to one of the many hundreds of great bands that inhabit that town with pedal steels on stage and telecaster guitars fitted with custom inlays the lead singer introduced Merle as the man Johnny Cash pretended to be. While the crowd gasped in horror at the sacrilege I smiled knowing the back story of this epic songwriter, hellraiser and ex con. Then again the crowd maybe knew all that, maybe they don't take to kindly to Merle for he invented a new sound in country music, a sound that trumped said town's for arguably decades.
County music's sound before Merle was significantly different. Think of Elvis Presley's "Don't be Cruel", "Four Walls" by Jimmy Reeves or "I Fall to Pieces" from Patsy Cline. It was heavily produced, over engineered, utilized (I admit I do love it) a new tuning on the guitar in which wound EADG strings on a standardly tuned six-string guitar (EBGDAE)run an octave higher. It is a good sound but in the end gets tired and I reckon I wasn't the only one feeling that way.
Merle Haggard was born in Oildale, California next to another shithole town widely known as Bakersfield. Before readers get all spun up about that comment I suggest they spend a few weeks there. His parents moved from Oklahoma during the Great Depression and in their new land life wasn't any easier. Merle's father died when he was nine years old, from that tender age on he engaged in petty crimes, was interned in a juvenile detention center at thirteen and spent the remainder of his teens in and out of various centers and jails until he saw Lefty Frizzle in concert and decided to pursue music as a career. It didn't exactly take off and just seven years later Merle found himself robbing a Bakersfield bar and receiving a stretch at the famous San Quentin State Penitentiary.
Incarcerated Merle still kept his old ways, he ran a gamboling and brewing racket from his cell, while in solitary he met two men named Drunk Adam and Rabbit who engineered an escape, Rabbit would escape only to shoot a police officer and return to San Quentin for execution. It was the turning point in Merle's life. Also while in San Quentin he attended three of Johnny Cash's concerts the topic of which would later come up later on after Merle's country music fame in a conversation:
Haggard came up to Johnny and told him, "I certainly enjoyed your show at San Quentin." Cash said "Merle, I don't remember you bein' in that show." Merle Haggard said, "Johnny, I wasn't in that show, I was in the audience."
Upon his release Haggard left the dark side for good and began his country career in earnest posting thirty eight number one hits throughout his career and being famous for starting "The Bakersfield Sound" of country music which plays in direct contrast to the Nashville sound spoken of earlier. This stripped down, heavy guitar influence music would be the catalyst for the Outlaw Country Music movement played by men such as Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, David Allan Coe and Buck Owens. The British songs "Act Naturally" and "Far Away Eyes" by The Beatles and Stones respectively encompass the genre, Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers made their names on it.
Aside from all this history (I feel the post is becoming a bit too didactic) this song, which is actually a combination of two famous Merle songs, brings to mind the road, the freedom and the experience of a man who spent the early years of his life with no freedom at all, only the hell of prison life and the misery of watching days tick on with no end in sight. It is purely American in its openness and ideals, self reliance, not offering excuses or apologies. When I drive out west as I often do through the jerkwater towns, the vast expanse of the American continent there is nothing better than throwing on some Merle, opening the windows, lighting a Red and just enjoy being on the run, lonesome and while maybe not a fugitive from the law, trying to outrun that blackberry.
