Merle Haggard
Classic Country
Outlaw Country
Merle Haggard was one of the most influential figures in American country music, a singer, songwriter and bandleader whose spare, plainspoken style helped define the Bakersfield sound and shaped generations of country, rock and Americana artists. Across five decades he logged 38 number-one hits on the U.S. country chart and wrote a catalog—“Mama Tried,” “Okie from Muskogee,” “Sing Me Back Home”—that reads like a working-class autobiography of Depression-era migrants, prison, and hard-won redemption.
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- Born Merle Ronald Haggard on April 6, 1937, in Oildale, near Bakersfield, California, to Flossie and James Haggard, Dust Bowl migrants who had left Checotah, Oklahoma; the family lived in a converted railroad boxcar, an image Haggard would return to throughout his songwriting.
- His father’s death in 1946, when Merle was nine, sent him into a restless adolescence of runaways and petty crime; a robbery conviction landed him in San Quentin State Prison in 1958, where a Johnny Cash performance crystallized his ambition to make music. He was released in 1960, and California governor Ronald Reagan granted him a full pardon in 1972.
- Working the Bakersfield honky-tonk circuit, he cut his first sides for Fuzzy Owen’s Tally label, breaking through with “Sing a Sad Song” (1963) and the top-ten “(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers” (1965), which drew him to a Capitol Records contract that same year.
- He named his longtime backing band the Strangers after that hit; anchored by lead guitarist Roy Nichols and steel guitarist Norm Hamlet, with then-wife Bonnie Owens on harmony vocals, the group became one of the most admired road bands in country music.
- “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive” became his first number-one country single in early 1967, launching a remarkable run of Capitol hits including “Sing Me Back Home” (1967), “Branded Man” (1967) and “The Legend of Bonnie and Clyde” (1968).
- “Mama Tried” (1968), a tribute to the mother who raised him, and the semi-autobiographical album Mama Tried cemented his “poet of the common man” reputation, while “Hungry Eyes” (1969) sketched the migrant labor camps of his childhood.
- “Okie from Muskogee” (1969) became his signature and most debated song—embraced by some as a patriotic anthem, read by others as satire—and its follow-up “The Fightin’ Side of Me” (1970) topped the chart amid the Vietnam-era culture wars.
- In 1970 he was named Entertainer of the Year by both the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music, the peak of his commercial dominance.
- The recession-era ballad “If We Make It Through December” (1973) crossed to the pop chart and remains one of his most enduring recordings, capturing the economic anxiety of working families.
- After leaving Capitol he recorded for MCA (from 1977) and Epic (from 1981), extending his hit streak with “Ramblin’ Fever,” “Big City” (1981) and the George Jones duet “Yesterday’s Wine.”
- His 1983 album with Willie Nelson yielded the number-one title track “Pancho & Lefty,” one of the most beloved country duets of its era and later a Grammy Hall of Fame recording.
- He won the Grammy for Best Country Vocal Performance, Male for the number-one single “That’s the Way Love Goes,” honored at the 1985 ceremony, and took a second Grammy for the collaborative track “Same Old Train” (1998).
- Honors accumulated across his later years: induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (1977), the Country Music Hall of Fame (1994) and the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame (1997), plus a BMI Icon Award and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (both 2006) and a Kennedy Center Honor (2010).
- Married five times—including to Bonnie Owens and singer Leona Williams—he kept touring and recording into his final years, with sons Ben and Noel Haggard joining the Strangers, who continued behind him with steel man Norm Hamlet.
- Haggard died of pneumonia on April 6, 2016—his 79th birthday—at his ranch in Palo Cedro, Shasta County, California, leaving a body of work regarded as foundational to modern country and a touchstone for the outlaw and Americana movements that followed.
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The Peer Sessions2002
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Back to the Barrooms1980
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Ramblin’ Fever1977
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Merle HaggardPlayed on recordings with Merle Haggard
