The Merle Haggard round-up: NYT. LAT. WP. A/V Club. South Texas Pistolero.
I feel like a musical interlude.
Not too long ago, some jerk commented that “Mama Tried” was a great song. There’s just something about his delivery and inflection on that line, “I turned 21 in prison doing life without parole…” that gets me in the gut every time.
I love this song, too, even if “our fighting men have fought and died to keep” is kind of a clunky lyric.
For someone who was sterotyped as being politically right-wing, “Rainbow Stew” is a surprisingly progressive song: “…and the gasoline car is gone”, “…world-wide war is over and done and the dream of peace comes true”, “when a president goes through the White House door and does what he says he’ll do…”
Listening to this song now, it’s kind of surprising how much of it Haggard lived to see, or came close to seeing: the air is a lot cleaner now than it was in 1981, we may see the end of the gas-powered auto soon, and Haggard basically did live to see the end of “world-wide war” (at least for a few years).
I hope he’s eating rainbow stew with a silver spoon and drinking free Bubble-Up somewhere in heaven.