Unlike the other columnists here at No Depression, so far my articles haven’t been restrained to a particular topic. Lee writes about music from around the world, Ted is the bluegrass man, and Raina shares about the stages she has performed […]
By 1969, as this second completist six-disc box of his Capitol recordings begins, Merle Haggard was well-established as a smooth purveyor of working man’s blues, from “Mama Tried” to “Sing Me Back Home”. During the span of this extraordinary collection, […]
What we have here, in 60 tracks on three CDs, is the first career-spanning retrospective of Merle Haggard’s hits and near hits, all the way back to “Sing A Sad Song” and “Swinging Doors” at the beginning, and, across labels, […]
It would be more than a little foolish to attempt a nutshell summation of a body of work as knotty and varied as Merle Haggard’s. But why let that stop us? In “Too Many Bridges To Cross Over”, the closing […]
Reviewers have been quick to mention the apparent contradiction of the “Okie From Muskogee” scribe including two undisguised Bush bashes on his latest release. Never mind that Merle Haggard has often characterized “Okie” as a “joke” and only released “Where’s […]
Pop songs and pop vocalizing have been busy influencing what we call country music for precisely as long as country music has been around. From Charlie Poole recording for Columbia because that’s where his hero Al Jolson worked, to Milton […]
Thirty-three years have passed since Merle Haggard’s first album-length homage, a two-LP salute to Jimmie Rodgers. His now-legendary Bob Wills tribute appeared a year later. Both were magical, time-machine-like productions that introduced many listeners to both artists and to Haggard’s […]
In a 1996 feature in The Austin Chronicle, Merle Haggard told interviewer Tim Stegall, “I’ll play the game now. I’ll do everything I’m supposed to do, and see if that’s what it is.” He was speaking of Nashville, and his was […]
Merle Haggard’s tributes to Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills are well-known to contemporary fans, but few know that in 1971 Haggard recorded another one, an album he called “a sort of tribute to an old friend of mine, who is […]
After two tribute albums, a TNN documentary, consistently great television appearances and recharged concert performances, the stage was set for Merle Haggard to deliver something as undeniably vital and eventful as Johnny Cash’s American Recordings. Haggard’s new album, 1996, isn’t […]
