Excerpt
SUMMARY: Merle Haggard rose to country music stardom singing about what he knew best: poverty, prison and heartache. He died Wednesday on his 79th birthday. William Brangham looks back at the singer's life.
MERLE HAGGARD, Musician: I guess I will just always be the old country singer, you know, the guy that sings about all the things that happen.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): Merle Haggard rose to country music stardom singing about what he knew best, poverty, prison, heartache. Born near Bakersfield, California, Haggard was raised in a converted railway car, the only home his parents could afford.
He was 9 when his father died, and before long, he turned to petty crime and landed in San Quentin Prison, where he saw Johnny Cash play.
DON CUSIC, Belmont University: Merle Haggard lived outside the Law and got thrown into prison for it.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Don Cusic is a historian of country music at Belmont University in Nashville.
DON CUSIC: If ever there was a poster boy for prison reform and prison rehabilitation, Merle Haggard would be exhibit A.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Haggard turned to writing his own music after his release in 1960, and eventually scored hits with “The Legend of Bonnie & Clyde” and “Sing Me Back Home,” which was an ode to his time in San Quentin.
VINCE GILL, Musician: Merle would find prison stories. He would find a single parent, a single father in holding things together, fight inside of me sticking up for our country. Just — he was unabashed about telling the truth.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That came through most famously in Haggard's 1969 hit “Okie From Muskogee,” which became a kind of conservative anthem at the height of the Vietnam War.
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