Someday We’ll Look Back cover

Someday We’ll Look Back

Merle Haggard and the Strangers

Album · 1971

Someday We’ll Look Back (Capitol ST-835) is Merle Haggard and the Strangers’ thirteenth studio album. It came out on 9 August 1971 and reached number four on the Billboard country albums chart. The tracks were cut at Capitol’s studio at 1750 North Vine Street in Hollywood over about two years, and the musicians changed from session to session. “California Cotton Fields” dates from 8 April 1969, with Roy Nichols, Lewis Talley, James Burton and Norm Hamlet among the players. The April and May 1971 sessions, which produced “Carolyn,” “Big Time Annie’s Square” and the title song, used Nichols, Hamlet, Bobby Wayne, Al Bruneau, Dennis Hromek on bass, Biff Adam on drums, Johnny Gimble on fiddle and Hargus Robbins on piano, with Glen Hardin on piano and Willard Price on bass at the May session.

“Carolyn,” written by Haggard’s friend Tommy Collins, was the album’s number-one single, recorded on 13 April 1971; it spent three weeks at the top of the country chart. Collins later recalled that Haggard doubted it was country enough, and that Lewis Talley, whom Collins calls the co-producer, told him it was a hit. The title song, recorded on 12 May 1971, peaked at number two. Haggard also returned to the working poor in “One Row at a Time,” “California Cotton Fields” and his own “Tulare Dust.”

Tracklist

  1. 1 Someday We'll Look Back 2:31
  2. 2 Train Of Life 2:42
  3. 3 One Sweet Hello 2:47
  4. 4 One Row At A Time 3:06
  5. 5 Big Time Annie's Square 2:34
  6. 6 I'd Rather Be Gone 2:35
  7. 7 California Cotton Fields Source Recording Dallas Frazier, Earl Montgomery · key A · 92 bpm 2:47
  8. 8 Carolyn 2:33
  9. 9 Tulare Dust 1:47
  10. 10 Huntsville 3:06
  11. 11 The Only Trouble With Me 3:11

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