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You are here: Home / Music / Merle Haggard RIP

Merle Haggard RIP

by DougJ|  April 6, 201610:18 pm| 34 Comments

This post is in: Music

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Dead at 79. One of the first fun things I did when I moved to Athens, Georgia after grad school was go to a Merle Haggard birthday tribute show. My friend who took me there told me Muskogee was Muscogee County, Georgia and that the song was making fun of the place.

Always loved Tonight he Bottle Let Me Down.

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34Comments

  1. 1.

    Corner Stone

    April 6, 2016 at 10:21 pm

    Bleep, Blop, Bloop.

  2. 2.

    dexwood

    April 6, 2016 at 10:22 pm

    Merle, like each and all of us, had his flaws. He made the world a bit better nevertheless.

  3. 3.

    Keith P.

    April 6, 2016 at 10:24 pm

    Also, Joe Cocker RIP. He could really belt it out.

  4. 4.

    eemom

    April 6, 2016 at 10:25 pm

    I haz a sad too. Daddy Frank the Guitar Man was my favorite.

  5. 5.

    Miss Bianca

    April 6, 2016 at 10:29 pm

    @Keith P.: Damn it, man…I *knew* Joe Cocker, and that meme still cracked me up. I must be one sick freak…

    And yeah, “Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down” is definitely up there as a candidate for Best. Merle Song.Ever

  6. 6.

    cmorenc

    April 6, 2016 at 10:31 pm

    Dang – my wife and I have tickets to what was to have been a double-header concert by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard in Cary, NC on May 22nd. Haggard is the one great hard-core traditional country artist I had never seen live in concert, and now I’ll have to wait to (hopefully) hear him sing in the Heavenly choir someday. RIP Merle. Here’s one of his best songs, “Today I started loving you again”, performed by Willie Nelson and Sheryl Crow, with Merle sitting in the audience quietly singing along, quite visibly moved by their mesmerizingly beautiful rendition of his song.

  7. 7.

    dexwood

    April 6, 2016 at 10:32 pm

    @Keith P.:
    Again. Damn, he must be part cat.

  8. 8.

    Keith P.

    April 6, 2016 at 10:34 pm

    @Miss Bianca: I thought Merle died several years ago, but was mixing him up with Waylon Jennings.

  9. 9.

    Miss Bianca

    April 6, 2016 at 10:37 pm

    @Keith P.: OK, now you’re just messing with me, aren’t you? ; )

  10. 10.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    April 6, 2016 at 10:56 pm

    @Keith P.: LOL.

    And on his birthday, no less. he was one of the old time greats.I’m guessing Omnes and I might share a favorite cover Merle Haggard did.

  11. 11.

    Ten Bears

    April 6, 2016 at 10:59 pm

    Must have missed that last lyric: “In Muskogee Oklahoma USA.” But yeah, he was making fun.

  12. 12.

    Omnes Omnibus

    April 6, 2016 at 11:00 pm

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): We very well may, but it is escaping me now.

  13. 13.

    SiubhanDuinne

    April 6, 2016 at 11:02 pm

    My friend who took me there told me Muskogee was Muscogee County, Georgia and that the song was making fun of the place.

    Earlier today, I heard a plummy-voiced BBC newsreader refer to the song “Okie From Muskojee.”

  14. 14.

    Miss Bianca

    April 6, 2016 at 11:02 pm

    @cmorenc: Is that a response song to “He Stopped Loving Her Today”?

  15. 15.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    April 6, 2016 at 11:12 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: Damn them kind Mexicans anyway.

  16. 16.

    Omnes Omnibus

    April 6, 2016 at 11:16 pm

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Remembered Willie, but forgot it was a duet.

    ETA: Kindness.

  17. 17.

    David VanHooser

    April 6, 2016 at 11:18 pm

    Hey, I lived in Athens 1978-90. As for Merle, I liked the good things he said about Obama after meeting him at the Kennedy Center Honors & how he complained about the non-stop attacks on “our President”.

  18. 18.

    cgordon

    April 6, 2016 at 11:23 pm

    At the honkytonk I spend way too much time in, it’s almost a requirement to play a Merle Haggard song every set.

  19. 19.

    Omnes Omnibus

    April 6, 2016 at 11:27 pm

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): This is the best cover of that song I’ve heard. Not surprising.

  20. 20.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    April 6, 2016 at 11:31 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: Not surpising, but you need to hear this if you haven’t.

    And Steve Earle’s interview about “getting heckled by my hero” is well worth a watch.

  21. 21.

    Omnes Omnibus

    April 6, 2016 at 11:34 pm

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Story behind “Pancho and Lefty.”

  22. 22.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    April 6, 2016 at 11:46 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’ve always loved that, and I recently read that Daniel married a medical student from France and moved there with her; there’s a picture of him, TVZ and Guy and Susanna Clark on their front porch, which is what provoked the inquiry and explanation. Damned if I know where I saw that.
    If you’ve never watched the earlier & bigger than the ACL memorial where Guy Clark opens with “I booked this gig 35 years ago,” that’s worth a search.

  23. 23.

    Amir Khalid

    April 6, 2016 at 11:52 pm

    For me, the Merle Haggard song is If We Make It Through December.

  24. 24.

    mvr

    April 6, 2016 at 11:53 pm

    Glad Doug! recognized this. A complicated man who wrote good songs and sang them with conviction. Not always on the right side of everything, but he sure kept my AM radio on the country part of the dial in the ealry 80s (along with George Jones, Rosanne Cash, and a few others, even while some folks were making me wonder whether that was the part of dial to be on.)

  25. 25.

    dww44

    April 7, 2016 at 12:04 am

    My friend who took me there told me Muskogee was Muscogee County, Georgia and that the song was making fun of the place.

    Native Georgian here. The Muscogee were a Southeastern Indian tribe, part of the Creek Nation, who were forced to cede their lands to Georgia and to the U.S.in the 1820’s and in the 1830’s were forced to relocate to Indian Territory in Oklahoma where they reside today. The Muscogee, aka Muskogee, went with them.

  26. 26.

    mental.masala

    April 7, 2016 at 12:35 am

    I have a few favorite Merle Haggard songs – he was a wizard with language, using clever turns of a phrase to convey sorrow or darkness. One of my favorites is a cover of “Sing Me Back Home” by Richard Shindell on his Reunion Hill album, an unlisted extra song tacked on to the end of the last track. Beautiful backing vocals from Teresa Williams or Lucy Kaplansky, a steel guitar solo, some tinkling piano.

    Given Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee” and other jingoistic songs, I find it a little funny that one of the Grateful Dead’s standards was “Mama Tried.”

  27. 27.

    JaneE

    April 7, 2016 at 12:40 am

    It was about an Okie from Muskogee Oklahoma. Back in the dust bowl days Okie was someone from Oklahoma, a derogatory for whites equivalent to the N-word. Just as blacks would sometimes use the N-word as a familiar greeting or honorific, native Oklahomans embraced Okie.

    My parents were Okies from Muskogee, back at the beginning of the depression, before they moved west in the early 30’s. I can remember my grandmother visiting in the early 60’s and calling a woman she thought might be a friend she had lost touch with. Grandma’s first words were “do you know who this is?” And then she burst out laughing. The woman had replied “I don’t know the voice, but I know it’s an Okie”. The town Muskogee was named after the Indian tribe. Muskogee, OK also has a regional office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs with lots of old documents concerning the Indian rolls.

  28. 28.

    fedwithhypocrisy

    April 7, 2016 at 12:51 am

    I saw Merle twice at Cheyenne Frontier Days through the years–fantastic. Thanks, Hip Hop and Omnes, for bringing in Steve, Guy & Susanna, and Townes. My favorite:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMxOMSy8hJo

  29. 29.

    MikeBoyScout

    April 7, 2016 at 12:52 am

    Can’t say I’ve ever been a “country music” fan, but Merle Haggard has been a staple of my musical diet all my life. Damn

  30. 30.

    SectionH

    April 7, 2016 at 1:47 am

    @SiubhanDuinne: Thank you, I needed that!

  31. 31.

    SectionH

    April 7, 2016 at 1:57 am

    Most of what I know about country music I owe to my first husband, and that’s a srsly redeeming feature about the guy. I’d have missed a whole lotta great stuff otherwise.

    Peace, Merle.

  32. 32.

    The Golux

    April 7, 2016 at 7:43 am

    @Omnes Omnibus: I love Steve Earle, and that’s a great performance, but the version I like best is Delbert’s.

  33. 33.

    Brendancalling

    April 7, 2016 at 11:31 am

    A working man can’t get nowhere today. ..

  34. 34.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    April 7, 2016 at 11:44 am

    My grandmother was a Merle Haggard fan, so I heard his music as a kiddo, along with lots of the others when country music was “country and western” as oposed to the pop “country music” is today. The C&W music is now “Americana.”

    @The Golux: I’d forgotten that one (she says with shame) and you can hear the Texas in Delbert’s voice, which is among the reasons it’s so powerful.

    I’m a big Steve Earle fan, yet I still believe every Townes lover should hear the Jason Isbell version .

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