![]() It’s one thing to record a tribute album to one of the greats of country music’s past. Recording Tribute Albums to Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills I was there two years and nine months.”ĥ. When I walked out on the grounds of San Quentin, I was scared. I escaped 17 different times, so they sent me there because I was an escape risk. They just couldn’t hold me anywhere else. “I was just 19 at the time, and I’d already been in a lot of jails. But apparently he became pretty adept at giving the local jailers the slip, and that’s why he eventually ended up at San Quentin. More than likely most of his crimes were quite petty hooliganism stuff, and were bred out of growing up and not having a father to keep him in line, and not having any money and resorting to stealing for his daily bread. His criminal record over the years has been a source of much debate about just how hardened the young Merle was. As impossible as that sounds, this is what Merle Haggard claims. When he walked away, everyone in that place had become a Johnny Cash fan.” He was a mean mother from the South who was there because he loved us. “He chewed gum, looked arrogant and flipped the bird to the guards he did everything the prisoners wanted to do. “He had the right attitude,” Merle recalls of Johnny Cash’s appearance. Rabbit eventually did escape, killed a cop, and ending back at San Quentin on Death Row. At the time, Haggard was conspiring with his cell mate “Rabbit” on an escape plan, but Merle’s fellow cell mates convinced him he had a brighter future in country music. Merle ended up only serving two years of his sentence though, in part because the Johnny Cash concert changed his life. After a few other run-ins with the law, being arrested for the first time at age 11, and after having participated in multiple of jailbreaks (see below), Merle Haggard got sentenced to 15 years for burglary in 1957 to the notorious California lockup. His first ever was New Years Day 1958 at San Quentin in California, and a 20-year-old Merle Haggard was in the audience. Johnny Cash’s most famous prison appearances were in 19 at the Folsom State Prison and San Quentin Prison, but these concerts weren’t the first time Johnny Cash played at a correctional institution. Watching Johnny Cash Play at San Quentin Prison Let it go down in history that you’re the dumbest son-of-a-bitch I’ve ever met.”ģ. “Who do you think you are? You’re the son-of-a-bitch that sat at that desk over there and fired Johnny Cash. Well, I’m about five times short of telling you to go to hell.” “That’s about the third time you’ve told me that.” Haggard said, “It’s more like five times. Blackburn mouthed off to Merle about it, and Merle lost it. Blackburn hated the song, and apparently went out of his way to tell Merle as much at every opportunity he had. ![]() But if it was up to CBS Records executive Rick Blackburn, the song would have never been recorded at all. In 1985 Merle released the song “Kern River” and it reached #10 on the country charts. ![]() Telling Off A CBS Records Executive for Firing Johnny Cash The Haggard’s eventually purchased the land around the boxcar, and expanded it to include two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a breakfast nook.Ģ. Merle Haggard was born in that boxcar on April 6, 1937. Merle’s father got a job working for the Santa Fe Railroad as a carpenter, and soon went to work converting a boxcar parked on a piece of land in Oildale, CA, just outside of Bakersfield that eventually became the family’s homestead. James Francis and Flossie Mae Haggard moved from Oklahoma during The Depression after their barn burned down in 1934, and settled in an apartment in Bakersfield with Merle’s two older siblings Lowell and Lillian. Being Born In A Boxcar Merle’s boxcar home after his father slowly converted it into a house. Here’s 10 moments that make Merle Haggard one of country music’s most preeminent badasses.ġ. But when it comes to influencing country music itself, few this side of Hank Williams can say they’ve left a bigger footprint. His legacy is sometimes overshadowed by his peers like Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash, whose influence has spread much farther than country’s borders. ![]() Of all the country music greats, Merle’s story might be the most symbolic of the American experience: from growing up in California as the son of Okie parents during The Depression, to spending time in prison, to becoming a rags to riches story. ![]()
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