Merle Haggard
The Life and Times of a Badass Legend From holding
his first guitar
to “cheap thrills and bad decisions,” see the legend
through the years
Reference: March 1, 2010
Most photographs and quotes courtesy of Merle Haggard ~ Others credited
in the RS article
Added photos by Bill Hillman
Merle's brother, Lowell, and his sister, Lillian, were
teenagers when his mother, Flossie, found out she was pregnant with Merle.
"She sort of was embarrassed about it", Haggard says. "The children were
nearly up and gone. They were going to move into this new little place.
And then I came along." Haggard was born on April 6th, 1937. "When he was
an infant, and I mean an infant Lillian once recalled, "Mother would turn
the radio on, and when he heard what was then called 'Western music' his
little feet would start keeping rhythm with the beat. We would change the
station, nothing would happen. Put it back, the feet start moving again."
*** Childhood photo of Merle Haggard in the early 1940s
*** Merle photographed in 1944 with his father, James, and his dog,
Jack
.
Haggard's early songs narrate the difficult circumstances
of his own life: The son of Dust Bowl migrants who fled from Oklahoma to
California's San Joaquin Valley, Haggard lost his father at age nine, hopped
his first train a year later, and spent his teenage years in and out of
juvenile institutions, military schools and, eventually, San Quentin.
.
Haggard is deeply nostalgic, and he often writes songs
about America in an idealized past, a time when hard work, honesty and
individualism defined the national character. These traits are the same
ones he ascribes to his father, James Haggard, a carpenter for the Santa
Fe railroad who died of a stroke when Merle was nine. "The only thing I
knew that my dad hated for sure was a liar," Haggard wrote in his second
autobiography, 1999's My House of Memories. "I don't remember
any sermons on the subject, but it was something I always knew. Everyone
knew his word was good. Ever since my early childhood, I have found more
importance in the trait of honesty than maybe most children."
*** Merle Haggard photographed circa 1950, holding his first Bronson
guitar
*** A later photo with his Fender Jazzmaster
.
When Haggard was 11, his brother, Lowell, gave him a used
Bronson guitar. "For a boy who was shy," Haggard wrote, "that guitar gave
me a new and exciting way of saying something." A few years later, Haggard
learned to perfectly replicate the pleading phrasing of Lefty Frizzell's
hillbilly tenor as heard on the hit "I Love You a Thousand Ways."
Lefty Frizzell photographed circa 1950
.
Haggard loved the 'brilliance and clarity' of Lefty Frizzell's
music, and he studied Frizzell's effortless onstage charisma, which came
less naturally to Haggard. "For three or four years I didn't sing anything
but Lefty Frizzell songs," he wrote, "and then because Lefty was a fan
of Jimmie Rodgers I learned to imitate him too."
When Haggard was 14, he and a friend bought tickets to
see Lefty Frizzell perform at the Rainbow Gardens in Bakersfield. They
got so drunk on Burgie beer before the show that they passed out on the
front lawn and missed the first set. Two years later, when Frizzell returned
to Bakersfield, Haggard snuck backstage. Someone told Frizzell that Haggard
could impersonate him, so Frizzell gave him an audition. Frizzell was so
bowled over he refused to go on unless Haggard performed first. Haggard
sang two Jimmie Rodgers songs and Hank Williams's "You Win Again," and
decided then and there that he wanted to be a professional country singer.
"It's like the guy who catches his first fish," Haggard says. "I was really
the one who was hooked."
Fuzzy Owen, Merle Haggard, and Lewis Talley in the early 1960s
Like Johnny Cash, who made some of his greatest music
later in his life, Haggard was also in the midst of a late-period resurgence
few would have expected a dozen years ago, when he was broke and playing
casinos and county fairs. But while Cash handed over the reins of his career
to producer Rick Rubin, Haggard refuses to cede control to anyone. He still
has the same manager he started with in 1961, Fuzzy Owen, and he still
runs his business in what could be described as an impulsive, haphazard
manner.
Haggard and Cash meeting and performing on television in the 1970s.
,
Haggard ran into Johnny Cash in the men's room before
a TV appearance in Chicago in 1963. As they stood at the urinal, Cash asked
if they'd met before. Haggard said no, but that he was in the audience
at San Quentin in 1959: "I told him, 'You came in there, left, and my life
changed.'"
"Johnny Cash once told me, 'Hag, you're the guy people
think I am,'" Haggard says. He spent nearly half of his first 21 years
"running away or behind bars," he says. "I would've become a lifetime criminal
if music hadn't saved my ass."
*** Records from the California Youth Authority from 1952
*** Haggard in the studio in the 1960s
.
By Haggard's estimate, he was locked up 17 times, in places
like the California Youth Authority, the Fred C. Nelles School for Boys
and the Preston School of Industry, one of the oldest and most infamous
reform schools in the country. The institutions were brutal: He was beaten
with a rake, made to run miles in boots that didn't fit and brutalized
by older inmates. Haggard took pleasure in outwitting the sadistic guards,
and he found a way to escape from every single place he was locked up.
Asked what motivated him, he shrugs. "I don't like to be told what to do."
In 1966, Haggard had his first Number One song with Liz
and Casey Anderson's "The Fugitive." The song was about a TV show popular
at the time, but it hinted at Haggard"s story: "I raised a lot of Cain
back in my younger days/While Mama used to pray my crops would fail/Now
I'm a hunted fugitive with just two ways/Outrun the law or spend my life
in jail." Though he sang about outlaws, Haggard was terrified to let
people know about his own criminal past. "The last thing in the world I
wanted to do," he says, "was walk up like David Allan Coe and say, 'Hey,
I've been to prison, look at me.'"
***Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys photographed in October of 1945
in Fresno, California.
***Merle's Tribute Album to Bob Wills
Bob Wills relocated from Texas to California after World
War II, and his live radio broadcasts from Bakersfield's Beardsley Ballroom
made him a hero to transplanted Southerners. From the first time he heard
Wills, Haggard wrote in his 1981 autobiography, Sing Me Back Home, "that
beautiful fiddle… was piercing little holes right through my head."
*** The Strangers
*** Merle playing the fiddle in the 1970s
Haggard modeled his own band, the Strangers, after the
hillbilly-jazz sound of Bob Wills's Texas Playboys. He hired several of
their members before and after Wills died in 1975.
The strangers are the longest-running, most exciting band
in country music, a wiry, daredevil outfit that specializes in a swinging
hybrid of country and jazz. Haggard formed the Strangers in 1965. Three
of its members: drummer Biff Adam, steel-guitar player Norm Hamlet and
horn man Don Markham have been in the group for more than 35 years.
One of Haggard's proudest achievements is his 1970 album
A
Tribute to the Best Damn Fiddle Player in the World (Or, My Salute to Bob
Wills). Haggard spent four months intensively learning to play
fiddle, practicing Wills's solos all night on the tour bus. "He'd be listening
over and over to those tapes," says Haggard's drummer, Biff Adam. "Sometimes
we'd have to go back in the bunks and cover up our heads."
*** In 1972, Hag was granted an official pardon by California
governor Ronald Reagan.
*** Haggard performing at Pat Nixon’s birthday party on March 17,
1973
In 1969 "Okie from Muskogee" became Haggard's biggest
hit and earned him entertainer of the year from the Country Music Association.
Haggard was invited to play Pat Nixon's birthday party at the White House,
which he struggled through with a raging hangover.
Merle and his buddy Willie Nelson recorded Pancho and
Lefty, a laid-back album about boozing, chasing girls and skipping
out on responsibilities to go fishing with a hint of the fallout to come.
"We were living pretty hard in that time period," says Nelson. The album's
finest track, a cover of Townes Van Zandt's "Pancho and Lefty," was cut
after four in the morning. Haggard had already gone to bed, Nelson says,
but they needed him for the final verse. "We went over to the condo, woke
up ol' Merle and said, 'It's your turn.'"
*** Hag and Willie's Pancho and Lefty Album
*** Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard performing at the Rosemont Theater
in Chicago on March 25, 2007.
"When Cash died," Haggard says, "I think a lot of faces
turned to look at me and looked at Willie. We sort of moved up a notch."
Merle Haggard with his wife Theresa in 1998 and later.
Haggard met his wife, Theresa, when her mother persuaded
her to come see Haggard perform, even though she was more of a ZZ Top fan.
After the show, Theresa met Haggard's guitarist, Clint Strong, and the
two went back to Strong's room. Haggard asked Strong to go to the bus and
get a guitar. "He said, 'I'll take her up to the room, and we'll meet you
up there,'" Theresa says. When Strong returned with the guitar, Haggard
wouldn't let him in. "There's bangin' on the door, and it's Clint," Theresa
says. "And Merle says, 'Get the fuck out of here! She's my woman now. You
don't know how to treat a woman. Get the hell out of here, or I'm going
to fire your ass.' I went on a month tour with him, and we were pretty
much together."
*** Merle with his daughter Janesa at their home in August of 2009.
*** Merle Haggard and his son Benion tune their guitars before a
gig in 2009.
Theresa didn't believe she could have kids, so when she
got pregnant in 1989 she says, "It was a blessing." They named their daughter
Jenessa, the name came to Haggard in a dream, and moved off the houseboat
to the ranch full time. "We got worried the baby might fall overboard,"
Theresa says. "So Merle fixed up a cabin at the end of the property, and
we moved in after he brought me home from the hospital."
Three years later, Theresa gave birth to Benion, named
after Benny Binion, the colorful, criminal owner of the Horseshoe Casino
in Las Vegas, whom Haggard says was like a father to him. The same day
Benion was born, Haggard was served with papers at the hospital claiming
he owed creditors $14 million. "Once again, I was paying a high price for
cheap thrills and bad decisions," he wrote in My House of Memories.
"And I was dunned at one of the most memorable moments in my life."
Merle Haggard left his legacy in three sets of talented hands after
he passed away.
His three sons, Marty, Noel, and Ben are all country singers like
their father,
and have been paying tribute to him since his death by playing his
many hit songs.
Merle Haggard at the White House for the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors
