Blue-collar bard

The country singer-songwriter Merle Haggard died on April 6, 79 years to the day after his birth. In doing so, he joined Shakespeare and the painter Raphael, April-born artists who also died on their birthdays.

Only time will tell whether Haggard’s albums (67 studio, nine live, 100-plus compilations) or his 71 Top 10 singles (38 of them No. 1s) will earn him a commensurate place in history. What’s indisputable: His rugged visage clearly deserves a place on country music’s Mount Rushmore.

The output of any musician as prolific as Haggard will have its ups and downs, and Haggard’s was no exception. But “inconsistent” gets nearer the mark than “uneven.” Whether boldly stating plain truths or snuggling up to mawkish corn, Haggard seldom deployed his limber, baritone voice with anything less than loving care. A more even vocal instrument America won’t likely produce.

America meant a lot to Haggard, especially its freedoms, which he appreciated more than most if only because he’d done time in jail. And despite his love-hate relationship with his Vietnam War–era counter-counterculture classics “Okie from Muskogee” and “The Fightin’ Side of Me,” he never completely disavowed them or the blue-collar folks for whom they were meant to speak.

He spoke for them with particular eloquence on his 1977 album A Workin’ Man Can’t Get Nowhere Today. Released by Capitol Records after Haggard had departed for MCA and made up of previously unreleased material, it somehow not only cohered but also struck a chord among a demographic that had just begun to understand the precariousness of its position in the nascent multicultural paradigm. “I ain’t black and I ain’t yella,” Haggard sang in “I’m a White Boy,” “just a white boy lookin’ for a place to do my thing.”

Another aspect of America that meant a lot to Haggard—his five marriages and his battles (and truces) with alcohol and drugs notwithstanding—was its Christian heritage. On the evidence of 1971’s live The Land of Many Churches, the first of his four gospel albums, it seems that Haggard asked Jesus Christ to be his personal Lord and Savior at least once.

When his fellow country great George Jones passed away in 2013, many mourned. Haggard’s passing, however, feels like even more of a loss if only because, up until late 2015, when he began canceling concerts due to poor health, Haggard seemed as if he still had a few, and maybe quite a few, productive years left in him. Certainly Django & Jimmie, the album with Willie Nelson that he released last June, gave no indication of his nearness to death’s door.

Neither did the joint interview that he did with the up-and-coming country singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson for the April-May 2016 issue of Garden & Gun magazine. “I’m a fan,” Haggard said of Simpson. “I want to see what he comes up with.”

Simpson’s new album, A Sailor’s Guide to the Earth (Atlantic), hit the streets six days after Haggard died. But, given Haggard’s respect for declarations of independence, he’d have liked it.

What the 37-year-old Simpson declares independence from includes country music’s instrumentation (horns, synthesizers, and bagpipes lurch the album toward heavy soul) and its source material (“In Bloom” comes courtesy of Nirvana).

What Simpson remains bound to includes country music’s family-centered subject matter (in nearly every song he addresses his soon-to-be-2-year-old son) and country music’s voice. Try as he might, he can’t help singing in an accent that Merle Haggard fans will recognize straightaway.