Merle Haggard — Music Videos

About

Merle Haggard was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist closely associated with the Bakersfield sound. His music joined the rhythmic edge of electric country with an unusually varied approach to storytelling. He could write about work, family, imprisonment, drinking or romantic loss while keeping the people in the songs complicated and recognizably human. His voice supplied an important part of that effect, balancing clarity and authority with a feeling that the narrator had lived through what he described.

Sound and recordings

Mama Tried, released in 1968, turns a short account of failure and family obligation into a sharply focused country song. Okie from Muskogee followed in 1969 and became one of his best-known recordings. Heard alongside the wider catalogue, those songs reveal only part of his range: Haggard also recorded tender ballads, restless travel songs, playful numbers and music shaped by his interest in earlier country and Western swing.

Listening guide

The musicians around him, including his longtime band the Strangers, helped give those recordings their combination of drive and flexibility. Guitar, steel guitar, bass and drums leave room for the words while maintaining an active conversation underneath them. Haggard’s catalogue rewards listening beyond any single public image or familiar hit. Mama Tried is an especially direct introduction to the concise storytelling, instrumental assurance and emotional ambiguity that run through much of his work.