Complementing the ten new original tunes on Like Never Before is a glorious duet with Willie Nelson of Woody Guthrie’s “Philadelphia Lawyer”. It’s a cowboy song, not a political number, but still a revealing choice.
“It’s hard to find songs for two men to sing together,” he begins. “And it was a Woody Guthrie tune, and it was written the year I was born, and it was given to Rose Maddox, who recorded it, I think, first (or next after Woody, at least). And it had a long history of being a song that had been around me that I’d never cut, and Willie has never cut it, and that’s sorta odd because between the two of us we’ve cut the Bible, you know?”
(Bonnie Owens sang the song on Haggard’s 1970 live album, The Fighting Side Of Me; Nelson cut a version on the 1988 Folkways tribute, A Vision Shared, but no matter.)
Haggard’s rationale gives a hint of the deep, passionate, probing nature of his musical curiosity. A question about the relative obscurity of western swing pioneer Milton Brown brings a cackle of delight. “I’m glad [Brown’s music isn’t often recorded] because I’m fixin’ to record a bunch of it. I’ve got a tape in my truck as we speak of Milton’s stuff, and I just told a couple of people in my staff to find everything they could find on him. I’m going to do a study like I’ve never done before, and it’s just the most enjoyable study I’ve ever got into.”
There it is. Far more than “Okie” and even fame, it’s the music that still speaks to Haggard. Just watch him close his eyes onstage when the band hits it right. “Some artists — I won’t mention any names — wouldn’t tell you who they admired, if their life depended on it,” he says. “There’s something arrogant about that I don’t like; I like people that are not too big to talk about who they like.”
Another question, suggesting he phrased a bit like Maurice Chevalier on “I Hate To See It Go”, elicits a more revealing correction. “You know, I have a problem with that,” he says. “I have a habit, and we are characters of habit. I’ve always enjoyed impersonations, and when I tell stories, I fall in and out of characters. When I sing songs, sometimes certain characters will just jump and appear at the moment. That’s my attempt at Satch. It just sounded like Louis Armstrong ought to be [singing] ‘He’s just like you.’ I don’t know if we ever meant that to be the final vocal, but it came off good. That’s probably a little bit of Louis Armstrong trying to come out there. He was probably sitting there in the studio and tickled me on the neck or something.”
Though he is not writing songs at the clip he once did, Haggard seems to have entered into a newly fertile stage, and to be moving forward with fresh urgency. He has become a man with abundant plans for his future.
“We have a swing album we’re keeping as a release if we don’t have a new Merle Haggard record, which we may have,” he says. “I write sporadically, and it’ll probably be something that I haven’t cut yet. I kept a couple songs back that was maybe current-event related to September 11. For example, I have a song called ‘Flight 93’ that’s going to be on the next album. And I have a song, it’s about feelings on Iraq and where we’re at — why don’t we take a look around and recognize some of the problems in California and Oregon?”
But his response to news of the death of his old friend, Johnny Cash, which arrived in the midst of a battery of interviews for his new album, is most telling. “I think when the next Bible’s written he’ll be something like Moses,” Haggard says.
“I didn’t want to face it anymore than anybody else did. I did around twenty interviews that morning, and when I got loose I just went out in the studio and I didn’t want to sing anything except Johnny Cash songs. And I thought, you know, I don’t want to forget something here, so me and my wife recorded a really good track on ‘Jackson’. I don’t know, I might do a really extensive album to Johnny Cash.”
Andy McLenon is a Nashville-based record executive, music collector, and pop-culture connoisseur. Grant Alden is co-editor of No Depression. They don’t much agree on politics, but do agree on Merle Haggard’s genius.
