News & Updates — Merle Haggard

Country music icon, outlaw poet and one of the greatest songwriters in American music history, Merle Haggard passed away on his 79th birthday, a premonition that he shared with his family. "The Bottle Let Me Down", "Branded Man", "Mama Tried", "Working Man Blues", "High On A Hilltop", "Silver Wings", "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers"...so many great tunes. And his politics veered left sometime in the last 20 years, even recording an anti-war song about the Iraq war. One of my personal favorite songwriters. "Sing me back home..." Sure, some harsh folks can get on my case about liking a...

Some may say it's not "cool" to like honky music but those hipster blowhards may be missing out on the godfather of country swing. This fiddlin' bandleader Bob Wills helped set the template for jazzy licks in hillbilly music and his bands burned up dances of up to 10,000 people a night around Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, the West Coast and the South. He originally came from a musical family in Texas and played mostly with young black musicians before hoboing and train-hopping. He married, became a barber and hit the stage as a comic/musician and cut his first records...

Well punkers, here is some glorious Sex Pistols footage from The Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas, January 10, 1978. No riots. Merle Haggard would roll into the venue just nine days later. A YouTube gem: