Merle Ronald Haggard (April 6, 1937 – April 6, 2016) was a country music singer, songwriter, guitarist, and fiddler from the United States.
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. He managed to turn his life around after being released from San Quentin State Prison in 1960 and begin a successful country music career.
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). He died on April 6, 2016, his 79th birthday, at his ranch in Shasta County, California, after succumbing to double pneumonia.
Who is Merle Haggard’s family?
Flossie Mae ( Harp; 1902-1984) and James Francis Haggard were Haggard’s parents (1899–1946). During the Great Depression, the family relocated from Checotah, Oklahoma, to California when their barn burned down in 1934.
Haggard’s father died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1946. The loss had a profound impact on Haggard, who was nine at the time, and it remained a defining event in his life for the rest of his life. Haggard’s mother worked as a bookkeeper to support the family. When Merle was 12, his older brother Lowell gave him his guitar.
Haggard taught himself to play it by listening to records by Bob Wills, Lefty Frizzell, and Hank Williams. During the day, when his mother was at work, Haggard began to get into mischief. She put him in a juvenile detention center for the weekend in an attempt to address his behavior, but he did not improve. He actually deteriorated.
Haggard was married five times, the first time to Leona Hobbs, who he married from 1956 to 1964. Dana, Marty, Kelli, and Noel were their four children.
In 1965, shortly after divorcing Hobbs, he married singer Bonnie Owens, the ex-wife of Buck Owens. Haggard thanked her for helping him break into the country music industry.
She also assisted in the care of Haggard’s children from his first marriage and served as maid of honor in Haggard’s third marriage. Haggard and Owens separated in 1978, but they remained close friends since Owens continued to be his backup vocalist until her death in 2006.
Tresa Destefani, a prominent Bakersfield businesswoman, proposed to him in 1975. They ended their engagement in 1976 but remained good friends.
Haggard married Leona Williams in 1978. They divorced in 1983. Haggard married Debbie Parret in 1985; they divorced in 1991. On September 11, 1993, he married his fifth wife, Theresa Ann Lane. Jenessa and Ben were their two children.
