Haggard, Merle (1937-2016), was an important American country music composer and singer. Haggard recorded about 40 number-one songs, many of them dealing with working-class and rebellious themes. He composed hundreds of songs, many of them country music standards. More than 400 versions of Haggard’s “Today I Started Loving You Again” (1968) have been recorded. His compositions blend influences of folk music, jazz, and the blues.
Merle Ronald Haggard was born on April 6, 1937, in Bakersfield, California. His parents were migrant workers from Oklahoma. Haggard quit school in the eighth grade and spent much of his youth as a drifter. He served several sentences in reformatories and in prison. In 1960, Haggard started singing in Bakersfield nightclubs. He made his first recording in 1962 and made his first successful record, “Sing a Sad Song,” in 1963. Some of Haggard’s early songs reflect his troubled early life, notably “Branded Man” and “Sing Me Back Home” (both 1967).
Haggard formed his own band, the Strangers, in 1965. He recorded many duets with Bonnie Owens, who was his wife from 1964 to 1978. In 1966, Haggard recorded his first number-one country hit, “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive” (also known as “The Fugitive”). His best-known song is probably “Okie from Muskogee” (1969). His other hits include “Mama Tried” (1968), “Hungry Eyes” (1969), “The Fightin’ Side of Me” (1970), “If We Make It Through December” (1973), “It’s All in the Movies” (1975), “I’m Always on a Mountain When I Fall” (1978), “Bar Room Buddies” (a duet with Clint Eastwood, 1980), “Big City” (1981), and “Reasons to Quit” (a duet with Willie Nelson, 1983).
In 1972, Governor Ronald Reagan of California granted Haggard a full pardon, removing all record of his youthful criminal convictions. Haggard wrote the autobiographies Sing Me Back Home (1981) and My House of Memories (1999, with Tom Carter). Haggard was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1994. He became a Kennedy Center Honoree in 2010. Haggard died on April 6, 2016.
