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Merle Haggard, the Grammy Award-winning singer whose autobiographical prison songs and populist political anthems, notably Mama Tried and Okie From Muskogee, made him one of country music's most formidable and celebrated entertainers, has died in Palo Cedro, California.
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It was his 79th birthday.
The cause was complications from pneumonia, his manager, Frank Mull, said.
Haggard was widely regarded as one of the most moving singers in the country genre. New York Times music critic Joe Pareles said of a 1993 concert performance, "Dignity, pain and a sense of loss come through his singing in subtleties: a stretched syllable, a suddenly broadened vibrato, a dip to a deep baritone note, a bluesy downward slide."
Along with singers Buck Owens and Wynn Stewart, Haggard typified country music's "Bakersfield sound" of the 1960s. The California city, home to many who fled the dust bowls of the 1930s and worked in its oil fields, was a thriving centre of country music. Whereas Nashville producers pressured their singers to adopt to a "countrypolitan" style with choirs and string sections, Bakersfield built its reputation on a grittier sound and twangy guitars.
Haggard was best known for his 1969 song Okie From Muskogee, which protested the counterculture of the time with such lines as "We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee/We don't take our trips on LSD" and "We don't burn our draft cards down at the courthouse".
The song won him an audience at the Nixon White House in 1973. Haggard later said that he did not intend the song as a political anthem; in fact, he acknowledged his own drug use by stating that he often smoked marijuana before going out on stage.
- Washington Post
