The Truth Behind Merle Haggard's Time In Prison

Over the course of his life, people tried to define Merle Haggard's sound in many different ways, from classic country, to the Bakersfield sound, to Outlaw Country. But whatever niche you try to put Haggard in, odds are that he would break out of it eventually.

After all, he spent his whole life escaping from the boxes people put him in - often literally.

Haggard's youth sounds like something out of a country song, which makes sense considering many of his hits were inspired by the realities of his hardscrabble life.

His family moved to California during the Great Depression and lived in a converted boxcar. When Haggard was a child, his father died, and he began acting out. By 13, he was serving his first stint in a juvenile detention center - but it was far from his last. In and out of detention facilities, he ran away from home, hopping a freight train and traveling the country before returning to California, ony to face more jail time. He kept getting arrested - and kept escaping from prison, one after the other.

In 1957, though, he pushed his luck too far. Now 18, he was sent to a real prison for adult offenders: San Quentin Prison, a maximum security penal institution not far from San Francisco. And with his reputation as an escape artist, they weren't taking any chances with Haggard.

And he was determined to escape from San Quentin as well. But a meeting with a death row inmate helped scare him straight, especially after Haggard's cellmate — whom he had planned to escape with — busted out of the prison only to be dragged back in irons for execution after shooting a cop during the jailbreak. Suddenly, escaping didn't seem like such a good idea.

But there was another escape available to Haggard: music. After 18 months in San Quentin, he was finally allowed some measure of freedom inside the jail, and began playing music with other inmates. Then came an incident that changed his life: in 1959, Johnny Cash visited San Quentin for his first prison concert. Though his 1969 visit would become one of his most famous performances, that first prison concert at San Quentin was just as legendary, for in the crowd was Haggard, who was inspired by Cash to take up country music as a career and life vocation.

Haggard said in his autobiography,

"He had the right attitude. He chewed gum, looked arrogant and flipped the bird to the guards — he did everything the prisoners wanted to do. He was a mean mother from the South who was there because he loved us. When he walked away, everyone in that place had become a Johnny Cash fan."

Haggard, who had learned to play guitar as a youth after his brother gave him a six string as a gift, soon joined the prison's country music band, and started to hone his songwriting and performing skills.

In 1960, Haggard was paroled after serving two years of his sentence. He quickly got a record deal and his career took off. Haggard was one of the pioneers of what they called the Bakersfield Sound, a version of country music that was more honkey-tonk and rock inspired than the slick, overproduced music coming out of Nashville at the time. The country legend went on to score 38 #1 hits on the Billboard country charts, many of which crossed over into the mainstream. And in the 1970's, his insistence on working outside of the Nashville establishment made him an important voice in the Outlaw Country movement.

And as for his prison record, after many years of keeping it a secret, Haggard eventually revealed it to the world in 1969 on the Johnny Cash Show, supported by his idol. Three years later, the then-governor of California, Ronald Reagan, gave Haggard a full unconditional pardon. Haggard went on to become a Kennedy Center honoree, won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and was inducted into both the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Country Music Hall of Fame. Bob Dylan called him, quote, "herculean,' while Willie Nelson said he was, quote, "one of the best." Sadly, after a bout with double pneumonia, Haggard died on his 79th birthday, April 6, 2016.

#MerleHaggard #CountryMusic

Read Full Article: https://www.grunge.com/193922/the-truth-behind-merle-haggards-time-in-prison/