I went on to facebook Wednesday after work and that’s how I found out that Merle Haggard had died. My friend Armando Garcia had posted about seven videos playing pieces of his songs and reading the news of his demise. It hit me hard. It surprised me, really, that it affected me the way it did. I mean it ain’t like I knew him personally. I never saw him in concert, other than on the tube. Probably the closest I ever came to him was the night at the great 48 at the doubletree in Bakersfield when he was staying at the hotel at the same time as all of us bluegrassers and he walked through a jam in the narthex, stopped long enough to complement the pickers, and disappeared into his room. Of course, everybody, at that point wanted to take the jam outside of his door and pick, hoping that he’d grab a guitar and join them or something, which, of course, didn’t happen.
And I’m not surprised it was Armando who posted the news or that he posted all those videos. You see, there’s this contingent of old country fans hiding out in the bushes of the bluegrass crowd who play Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs and Ralph Stanley, but really come alive with Hank Williams, George Jones, Webb Pierce and the Hag…and Armando is one of them.
Most of us hang out around Terry and Jeanie Ramos’s R.V. at the campouts and festivals, and I tell you…we’d reserve an empty chair for Merle if we thought there was a penny slot machines chance that he’d wander through the grounds.
There’s Chef Mike, and Chuck and Jeanie Polling, and Jim Johnston and Vic Yeakle and Diana Donally, and Frank Brewer, and Jeanie Ramos, and Dave Rietz, Ernie Hunt and a half a dozen others and when we can sneak away from the crowd, ‘there’s a steel guitar, and a honky-tonk piano, and maybe an electric guitar. And Chef Mike is singing “Silver Wings”, and Vic’s ripping through “workin’ man blues” and Frank is singing “Okie from Muskogee” and maybe I’m singing “Kern River” and we could do that Haggard stuff all night long.
We knew his health was failing. He lived hard and wore the scars, but all those years the songs kept coming and time did not affect the quality. Thirty eight number one songs. A list of precious jewels. Emotional tour de forces of songs of the heart, raw and unadorned.
Songs like:
Walking on the fighting side of me
Mama tried
Somewhere between
Okie from Muskogee
Today I started loving you again (Recorded by everybody who ever lived.)
I think I’ll just stay here and drink
Branded man (Recorded by many Bluegrassers)
Big City
Silver Wings (If you don’t like this song, check your pulse.)
But even with all of this, my favorite Merle C.D. was one of his lesser known Merle Haggard Award winning gospel hits. With my favorite song “Lord don’t give up on me.” Brings a tear to my eye every time I hear it.
In Merle’s later years he sort of drifted into bluegrass, and put out a couple of fine works, using some bluegrass luminaries to back him up, but he never lost that Bakersfield feeling, that music that can only have been formed by men with calloused working hands covered with the residue of the dust bowl. Hard living, hard times….
His music touched my life.
