R.I.P. Merle Haggard

Back in the mid-90s, there was a hazy stretch when I rode around in a van with a punky/folkie/rockish band called The Rugburns as they toured through them midwest. At some point during their '96 campaign, they started covering Okie From Muskogee, that shit-kicking Merle Haggard classic that was fun as hell to sing long before America's political tectonic plates split off into jagged chunks of blue and red. Though I knew Merle as an old school country legend, I'd never paid much attention to his music, but that song spoke to me as powerfully as any heavy rock song on my mix tapes. It was like Hank Williams with a swaggering, come-say-it-to-my-face, punk rock defiance and it led me to the ruinous, bourbon-soaked back alleys of outlaw country. With Merle CDs on repeat, I kicked open the gates of old school country and found a sumptuous trove of black-hearted ballads, bottle-breaking rockers and the kind of bleak, heart-spearing lyricism that Kurt Cobain had repackaged only five years earlier. I lived in metal, grunge and Britpop, but I always came back to Merle.Merle Haggard came up in the 60s, when his brand of jangly, foot-stomping country was as fashionable as bird shit on a wedding day tuxedo. But like all great rockstars, Merle had no fucks to give, at least as far as trends went; he did as he pleased and with equal doses of innate talent, rugged charisma and inexorable ambition, he would go on to sell millions of records. But nothing was ever handed to Merle. He lost is father when he was only 9 years old — a bludgeoning emotional setback that left the young boy rudderless and untamed, with petty crime and general, all-around mayhem emerging as his preferred youthful pursuits. The law caught up with his bullshit and just like that, the teenager from Bakersfield was locked up in San Quentin, where he'd spend many of his formative years. Even then his abiding love of country legend Lefty Frizell had inspired an unquenchable thirst for learning guitar and for writing the kind of songs that transfixed even the most hardened men in prison. After Johnny Cash played one of his famous shows at San Quentin, Merle decided to give music a go upon his release, and that's exactly what he did, eventually joining Buck Owens as one of the pioneers of the Bakersfield sound — one of rock 'n' roll's most important movements, which would eventually evolve into the countrified rock stylings of Neil Young, The Byrds, Gram Parsons and later artists like the Eagles and Tom Petty. Merle passed away this week and while country music mourns the passing of an icon, it's no stretch to say that rock and roll bears the sad loss as well.If you've never turned on to Merle, treat yourself to this playlist of some of my personal faves. https://open.spotify.com/user/joed_sandiego/playlist/5b2e8RnrKgUyusS7rJFevX