The Best Of Merle Haggard

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Capitol Nashville/EMI Music Catalog Marketing continues its "Year Of Hag" catalog campaign with the September 12 release of Hag: The Best Of Merle Haggard. The new career and label-spanning CD collects Haggard's top hits and favorites from the vaults of Capitol, MCA, Epic, Anti-, and Compendia, including 14 Country #1s and duets with Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Toby Keith. Ken Nelson, now 96, Haggard's longtime Capitol Records producer and a Country Music Hall Of Fame inductee, contributes new liner notes to the package, and 23 of the CD's 26 tracks were written or co-written by Haggard.

Capitol Nashville/EMI's in-depth Merle Haggard catalog retrospective was launched on February 21 with the release of ten original albums Haggard recorded for Capitol between 1965 and 1971, all digitally remastered and paired chronologically on five CDs with a bevy of rare and previously unreleased bonus tracks. The single-disc packages present the cream of Haggard's crop of 38 Capitol LPs, with new liner notes penned by music scribes Chris Morris, Chet Flippo, Holly George-Warren, Joel Selvin and Geoffrey Himes. Four albums, Hag, Someday We'll Look Back, Pride In What I Am, and The Legend Of Bonnie & Clyde, made their CD debut, coupled with Strangers, Swinging Doors and the Bottle Let Me Down, I'm a Lonesome Fugitive, Branded Man, Mama Tried, and Sing Me Back Home. Continuing the "Year Of Hag" campaign, spiritual and songwriter-themed packages are planned for release in 2007.

Merle Haggard made his chart debut in 1963 with "Sing a Sad Song" and has enjoyed the longest span of any artist on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart. In addition to 38 #1 Country hits, Merle Haggard has charted scores of Top 10 singles. He's won just about every music award imaginable, both as a performer and as a songwriter, including NARAS' Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award this year. Haggard was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1994. His body of work easily places him beside Hank Williams as one of the most influential artists in country music, but Haggard's impact on modern music reaches well beyond the genre line.

Producer Don Was, who has worked with Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and Bonnie Raitt, told Newsweek in 1996, "He'll tell you he's a country singer, but to me the essence of rock and roll is a cry for freedom and rebellion. And I don't know anyone who embodies it better. Every aspect of his life is a refusal to submit."

Merle Ronald Haggard was born in 1937 outside Bakersfield, California. His parents had moved the family there after their farm in Oklahoma burned down, and his father found work as a carpenter for the Santa Fe Railroad. The family lived in an old boxcar that they converted into a home. Though struggling to make a meager living, they had a sturdy shelter and food was always on the table. Haggard's father died of a stroke when Merle was nine years old, a devastating event for the young boy. With his world turned upside down, Haggard turned rebellious. He hopped a freight train when he was just ten, making it to Fresno before being picked up by the authorities. For the next few years, he would find himself in reform schools, sometimes making an escape, only to get thrown back in again.

The angel on Haggard's shoulder during these troubled times was his love and talent for music. Starting out as a fan of Bob Wills, Haggard eventually found his musical idol in Lefty Frizzell, and worked up a pretty impressive copy of his singing style. "For three or four years I didn't sing anything but Lefty Frizzell songs, " Merle told Music City News. "And then, because Lefty was a fan of Jimmie Rodgers, I learned to imitate him too." Haggard got the chance to see Lefty perform in person when he was 14. "He was dressed in white -- heroes usually are, " Merle said.

Haggard was already starting to make small amounts of money here and there by playing music, but it wasn't enough to keep him out of trouble. In and out of jail throughout his teen years for small crimes, he found himself doing serious time in San Quentin at the age of 20. "Going to prison has one of a few effects, " he told Salon in 2004. "It can make you worse, or it can make you understand and appreciate freedom. I learned to appreciate freedom when I didn't have any."

Haggard was released from prison in 1960. After making an impression working in local clubs, he joined Las Vegas star Wynn Stewart's band in 1962 on bass. When he got a chance to record his own single, Haggard chose the Stewart composition, "Sing A Sad Song." It came out on the small Tally Records label in 1964 and made it into the Top 20. His follow-up singles didn't do quite as well, until "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers" went into the Top 10 and brought him to the attention of Capitol Records. He proved himself a hitmaker with three Top 10 singles in 1967, including his first #1, "I'm A Lonesome Fugitive."

Johnny Cash encouraged him to address his problems directly in verse. "I was bull-headed about my career. I didn't want to talk about being in prison, " Haggard recalls, "but Cash said I should talk about it. That way the tabloids wouldn't be able to. I said I didn't want to do that and he said, 'It's just owning up to it.'" When Cash introduced him on his variety show, he said, "Here's a man who writes about his own life and has had a life to write about."

The true grit of Merle Haggard is expressed in many of the hits he's recorded, from "Sing Me Back Home, " another #1 in 1967, to "Mama Tried, " which topped the chart in 1968, an apology of sorts to Haggard's religious and hardworking mother. Hag's tender side is further revealed in "I Started Loving You Again" and "You Still Have a Place In My Heart" from 1968's The Legend Of Bonnie & Clyde, and "I Just Want To Look At You One More Time" from 1969's Pride In What I Am.

With the Vietnam War serving as a lightning rod for opposing views, the United States was politically divided. "Working Man Blues, " issued in 1969, delivered a clear message of solidarity to the blue-collar country audience. That sociological stance was solidified with Haggard's most popular song, "Okie From Muskogee." He says the song started as a joke, but it also drew a clear line between "us" and "them." Haggard spoke for the Americans who didn't smoke marijuana, didn't burn their draft cards, didn't grow their hair long and shaggy and were "proud to wave Old Glory down at the courthouse." In the ensuing years, Richard Nixon invited him to sing at the White House, Ronald Reagan, then Governor of California, gave him an unconditional pardon for his past criminal offenses, and George Wallace asked him for an endorsement -- which Haggard turned down.

Merle Haggard is not only a part of Capitol's rich history, he also plays a vital role in its present. He continues to reap accolades for new albums and performances, including 2005 and 2006 touring with Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones, and his most recent Capitol Nashville album, Chicago Wind. The 2005 CD has won critical praise from all corners of the media, with People declaring in its 4-star review, "Haggard is as close to Nashvillle royalty as it gets." Many of Haggard's bristly anthems have proven to be timeless torches for a new generation of outlaws. Toby Keith has embraced Hag's "Fightin' Side Of Me" as a modern-day war cry, often performing the fiery song in concert.

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