{"id":14469,"date":"2016-04-07T09:26:53","date_gmt":"2016-04-07T14:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=14469"},"modified":"2016-04-07T09:26:53","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T14:26:53","slug":"obit-watch-april-7-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=14469","title":{"rendered":"Obit watch: April 7, 2016."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Merle Haggard round-up: <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/04\/07\/arts\/music\/merle-haggard-country-musics-outlaw-hero-dies-at-79.html?ref=todayspaper\" target=\"_blank\">NYT<\/a><\/strong>. <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/obituaries\/la-me-merle-haggard-dies-79-20160406-story.html\" target=\"_blank\">LAT<\/a><\/strong>. <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/entertainment\/music\/merle-haggard-revered-country-singer-of-common-man-anthems-dies-at-79\/2016\/04\/06\/39647f2c-fc1e-11e5-80e4-c381214de1a3_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">WP<\/a><\/strong>. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/article\/rip-merle-haggard-country-music-legend-234892\" target=\"_blank\">A\/V Club<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/thesouthtexaspistolero.wordpress.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">South Texas Pistolero<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I feel like a musical interlude.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/loT_pYzi3Vw?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Not too long ago, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=14420\" target=\"_blank\">some jerk commented that &#8220;Mama Tried&#8221; was a great song<\/a>. There&#8217;s just something about his delivery and inflection on that line, &#8220;I turned 21 in prison doing life without parole&#8230;&#8221; that gets me in the gut every time.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uIxBmyRQlwQ?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p>I love this song, too, even if &#8220;our fighting men have fought and died to keep&#8221; is kind of a clunky lyric.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/v7evcVYsvFA?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p>For someone who was sterotyped as being politically right-wing, &#8220;Rainbow Stew&#8221; is a surprisingly progressive song: &#8220;&#8230;and the gasoline car is gone&#8221;, &#8220;&#8230;world-wide war is over and done and the dream of peace comes true&#8221;, &#8220;when a president goes through the White House door and does what he says he&#8217;ll do&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Listening to this song now, it&#8217;s kind of surprising how much of it Haggard lived to see, or came close to seeing: the air is a <strong>lot<\/strong> 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 &#8220;world-wide war&#8221; (at least for a few years).<\/p>\n<p>I hope he&#8217;s eating rainbow stew with a silver spoon and drinking free Bubble-Up somewhere in heaven.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Merle Haggard round-up: NYT. LAT. WP. A\/V Club. South Texas Pistolero. I feel like a musical interlude.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-obits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14470,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14469\/revisions\/14470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}