Early morning
goodbye:
so sweet that boy,
so perfect my wife.
I’m off to
Nashville:
city bus to
airport bus
to airport plane,
KLM Flight #1050.
East to
Amsterdam.
West then to
Hotlanta.
North to Nashville.
My father, my brother, my nephews
picking me up
eighteen hours
from now.
Listening to
Willie, to Merle.
Talking to my
wife and my boy
just before
boarding.
A sigh
on the way to
the gate
leaves me no
better off.
Oh, just a wee
little
bottle of wine
colored red
gone straight
to me head.
Feelin’ fine
now,
going down
into Amsterdam.
Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson
Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard had long careers as country music singers and songwriters. In 1983 they released a joint album, "Pancho and Lefty," that featured a single by the same name written by Townes van Zandt. It wasn't really a duet, however, since Haggard only sang one verse. Nelson had called him up at 3AM to record it, Haggard went to the studio and did a single take of his part, and then went back to bed. They recorded a second album together, "Seashores of Old Mexico," in 1987 and "Walking the Line" with George Jones the same year. In 2007 they jointly recorded "Last of a Breed" with Ray Price. Finally, in 2015, they released "Django & Jimmie," which became Haggard's first no. 1 album and his last before he died on his 79th birtday in 2016 after touring with Nelson. The following spring Nelson released his 61st studio album, "God's Problem Child," which featured a wry, autobiographical "Still Not Dead" and closed with Gary Nicholson's tribute to Haggard, "He Won't Ever Be Gone."
ReplyDeleteGot the news this morning
It would be a tough day
Someone's so much larger than life
Can't believe he could pass away
When it comes to country music he's the world
And it wouldn't be all it is without Merle
And He won't ever be gone
His songs live on
A fugutive and a brand new man
Mama tried to understand
Left us a lifetime of songs
And He won't ever be gone
We were friends right from the start
And we shared some high times
I would sing some songs he wrote
And he would sing a few of my own
Music made us brothers 'til the end
Not a day goes by that I don't miss him
And He won't ever be gone
His songs live on
Ramblin' fever and the way I am
Blue collar blues for the working man
We'll be singin it back home from now on
And He won't ever be gone
And He won't ever be gone
His songs live on
A fugutive and a brand new man
Mama tried to understand
Left us a lifetime of songs
And He won't ever be gone
We'll be singin it back home from now on
And He won't ever be gone
Nelson was born in 1933 in Abbott, Texas, but his mother left soon after he was born and his father remarried and moved away, leaving Willie to be raised by his grandparents. He started playing the guitar when he was 6 and wrote his first song at 7; by the time he was 9 he belonged to the local Bohemian Polka band and was working full-time as a professional from the age of 13. Haggard was born in Bakersfield, California, in 1937, in a boxcar his father had remodeled. His father died when Haggard was 8, and his mother had to work away from home. At 12 he began playing guitar but also turning to criminal activities. In 1950, he was sent to a juvenile detention center for shoplifting (that year Nelson joined the air force but only served a few months due to back problems). At 14 he ran away to Texas, hitchhiking and riding freight trains, but when he returned to California he was arrested for robbery but released when the real perpetrators were caught. But he continued to engage in illegalities and was again sent to the juvenile detention center, from which he escaped. In Modesto, California, he made his debut as a performer, paid $5.00 and free beer. When he returned to Bakersfield in 1951 he was arrested for truancy and petty larceny and sent back to the juvenile detention center, escaped again, and he sent to a high-security installation,the Preston School of Industry ("Preston Castle") for 15 months and then sent back after beating a boy during a burglary attempt. After his release he came to the attention of country singer Lefty Frizzell and began playing in nightclubs before landing a spot on a Bakersfield TV show in 1956. Meanwhile, Nelson attended Baylor University as an Agriculture major for two years while working as a disc jockey; he used the equipment at his radio station to record his first single, but he could not find anyone who wished to release it. In a failed attempt to hitchhike to Portland, Oregon, he had to sleep in a ditch before boarding a freight train that took him as far as Eugene, where a truck driver gave him the $10 fare he needed to complete his journey. Discouraged with his lack of success in the music industry he returned to Texas, sold Bibles and vacuum cleaners door-to-door, and became a sales manager for the Encyclopedia Americana.
ReplyDeleteIn 1957 Haggard tried to rob a Bakersfield roadhouse, tried to escape from jail, and was transferred to San Quentin Prison in 1958. While in prison he learned that his wife was expectant with another man's child and plotted to escape but was talked out of the attempt; his partner did break out but shot a policeman and was given a death sentence. Still in prison, Haggard was caught running a gambling and brewing racket and was sent to solitary confinement for a week, where he encountered Caryl Chessman, another Bakersfield resident who had spent time in Preston for auto theft before serving time in various California prisons; in 1948 he was given a death sentence on robbery, kidnapping, and rape charges. The executions of the two men in 1960 inspired Haggard to earn a high school equivalency diploma before his release that year. Meanwhile, Nelson had signed with D Records and moved to Houston, where he wrote songs like "Funny How Time Slips Away," "Hello Walls," "Pretty Paper," and "Crazy," which became big hits for other artists. In 1960 he moved to Nashville, Tennessee. In 1962 his decade-long marriage ended after bouts of violence (in one instance his wife sewed him up in a bed sheet before beating him with a broomstick). That year his duet with his soon-to-be second wife, Shirley Collie, became his first charting single, and his album "...And Then I Wrote," featured his own versions of the early hit songs he had written for others. (His marriage to Collie ended in 1971 when she found a bill from the maternity ward of a Houston hospital charged to Nelson and Connie Koepke for the birth of their daughter; Koepke and Nelson married the same year, staying together until 1988). In 1962, Tally Records released 200 copies of Haggard's first single; but in 1964 he had a minor hit with Wynn Stewart's "Sing a Sad Song," and in 1965 his recording of "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers" became a top-ten record. That was the year Nelson was invited to join the Grand Ole Opry. In 1966, Haggard recorded "I'm a Lonesome Fugitive," his first number-one single, and his album "Branded Man" established him as an artistically and commercially successful performer, with 38 number-one singles. Nelson's career was slower to take off, though he managed to cop a number of top-25 singles from 1966 to 1969, and most of his songwriting royalties went into unprofitable tours . After again temporarily abandoning the music industry, he returned in 1973 with "Shotgun Willie" and then firmly cemented his permanent place as a popular performer with his "Red Headed Stranger" album (1975). In the 1970s both performers were labeled as "outlaws" due to their rejection of Nashville recording norms. Both went through numerous wives (Nelson had four, Haggard three) and public scandals; Haggard was plagued by alcohol and cocaine problems, while Nelson, beginning in 1974, was repeatedly arrested on marijuana charges, and in 1990 his assets were seized by the Internal Revenue Service, which claimed that he owed US$32 million, and he was forced to auction off his possessions (many of them were bought by his friends, who donated or rented them back to him for a nominal fee); he finally settled with the government in 1993.
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