Inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1994, they said about him:
“Merle Haggard stands, with the arguable exception of Hank William, as the single most influential singer-songwriter in country music history.”
Upon his death, The New York Times agreed: “In Mr. Haggard’s case the sound defined a body of work as indelibly as that of any country singer since Hank Williams.”
Rolling Stone said Haggard: “composed and performed one of the greatest repertoires in country music, capturing the American condition with his stories of the poor, the lost, the working class, heartbroken and hard-living.”
And also at that time, The Tennessean called Haggard “the working man’s poet, an architect of the Bakersfield Sound and a fiercely independent artist who influenced country music like few others.”
Needless to say, much has been written about the importance of the singer-songwriter. But If nothing had ever been reported about Haggard and we only had his music, we would still know the man, his loves, his pains, his demons and his life.
https://merlehaggard.com/pages/biography
Merle Haggard - New San Antionio Rose (Live)
1 comment:
Brilliant! Back when I was much younger at school, we never cared much for this style, and used to get fed up with Jim Reeves's songs getting in the way of The Beatles and the Rolling Stones! But now...
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