I think there’s a kind of 'indie' type person who likes country music because they feel like it’s ironic and therefore it’s cool. That’s how I feel about the way Jack White likes Loretta Lynne, which is probably doing him a huge disservice but there you go.
And to those people, songs like “You’re The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly” are a reason to love country. It's quaint and funny.
Amongst all those records “Fighting Side Of Me” is one of the most confusing. It’s a redneck anthem, issued during Vietnam but it doesn’t feel like one. Even with the line “if you’re running down my country man, you’re walking on the fighting side of me”.
And it’s by someone who seems like a redneck, especially if you’ve ever heard his Okie from Muskogee. “We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee, and we don’t get our trips on LSD”. But Merle Haggard never seemed like he was a redneck, even when he was wearing the nudie suits.
He felt like a working man, singing songs for working men about stuff working men cared about. And he felt honest and had a great back story including being caught up in one of the stupider robberies ever and jailed. He wrote & sung great songs like “Silver Wings”, “Swinging Doors”, “Branded Man” , “I think I’ll just stay here and drink”, “The Bottle Let Me Down”, “Today I Started loving You Again”, “Life In Prison” and “Sing me back home”. In fact a lot of very great songs. Too many to count. And cool people covered them like Gram Parsons, The Blasters, The Byrds and Elvis Costello. People who weren’t redneck at all.
And he covered songs by cool people such as Blaze Foley and Townes van Zandt (and lots by Bob Wills, who he really liked)... So we got “Pancho & Lefty” and “If I Only Could Fly” which was good too.
I don’t think he was a redneck. I think he was a working man who said what he thought and didn’t care which party it upset. He wasn’t ironic at all and cool didn’t matter to him which is what made him so great.
His last pop hit was the absolutely amazing working man’s blues of “If We Make It Through December”
Which will make me cry every time I hear it from now on.
RIP Merle. Sing back home now.
-TH
