Merle Ronald Haggard (April 6, 1937 – April 6, 2016) was a country music singer, songwriter, guitarist, and fiddler from the United States.
What is Merle Haggard’s most famous song?
Haggard was born near the end of the Great Depression in Oildale, California. His boyhood was traumatic after his father’s death, and he was arrested multiple times.
After being released from prison in 1960, Haggard went to work for his brother’s firm digging ditches. He heard Wynn Stewart’s “Sing a Sad Song” in 1962 and asked to record it. He got his first national top-10 success with “(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers” the following year.
Merle Haggard released “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive” with The Strangers in 1967, also penned by Liz Anderson, and earned his first number-one song.
Between 1965 and 1970, Bonnie Owens released six solo albums, mostly noted for her background harmonies on Merle Haggard songs like “Sing Me Back Home” and “Branded Man.” In 1965, she received the Academy of Country Music’s first award for a Female Vocalist.
During the 1960s, Haggard had multiple number-one songs, including “Mama Tried,” “The Legend of Bonnie and Clyde,” and “Sing Me Back Home.” In 1969, he released the tribute album Same Train, Different Time: A Tribute to Jimmie Rodgers.
“Sing Me Back Home” and “Mama Tried” were covered by the Everly Brothers on their 1968 country-rock album Roots. The artists who performed or recorded Merle Haggard’s songs were Byrds, Joan Baez, Dean Martin, and the Grateful Dead.
He rose to prominence with songs about the working class that occasionally had lyrics that ran counter to the anti-Vietnam War sentiments of some popular music at the time. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, he scored 38 number-one hits on the country charts in the United States, with several of them also reaching the Billboard all-genre singles list. Throughout the 2000s, Haggard continued to create popular albums.
Many honors and awards have been bestowed upon him for his music, including a Kennedy Center Honor (2010), a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2006), a BMI Icon Award (2006), and induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (1977), Country Music Hall of Fame (1994), and Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame (1994). (1997)
