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American Music Series
Merle Haggard: The Running Kind
Merle Haggard has enjoyed artistic and professional triumphs few can match. He's charted more than a hundred country hits, including thirty-eight number ones. He's released dozens of studio albums and another half dozen or more live ones, performed upwards of ten thousand concerts, been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and seen his songs performed by artists as diverse as Lynryd Skynyrd, Elvis Costello, Tammy Wynette, Willie Nelson, the Grateful Dead, and Bob Dylan. In 2011 he was feted as a Kennedy Center Honoree. But until now, no one has taken an in-depth look at his career and body of work.
In Merle Haggard: The Running Kind, David Cantwell takes us on a revelatory journey through Haggard's music and the life and times out of which it came. Covering the entire breadth of his career, Cantwell focuses especially on the 1960s and 1970s, when Haggard created some of his best-known and most influential music, which helped invent the America we live in today. Listening closely to a masterpiece-crowded catalogue (including songs such as "Okie from Muskogee," "Sing Me Back Home," "Mama Tried," "Working Man Blues," "Kern River," "White Line Fever," "Today I Started Loving You Again," and "If We Make It through December," among many more), Cantwell explores the fascinating contradictions--most of all, the desire for freedom in the face of limits set by the world or self-imposed--that define not only Haggard's music and public persona but the very heart of American culture.
In Merle Haggard: The Running Kind, David Cantwell takes us on a revelatory journey through Haggard's music and the life and times out of which it came. Covering the entire breadth of his career, Cantwell focuses especially on the 1960s and 1970s, when Haggard created some of his best-known and most influential music, which helped invent the America we live in today. Listening closely to a masterpiece-crowded catalogue (including songs such as "Okie from Muskogee," "Sing Me Back Home," "Mama Tried," "Working Man Blues," "Kern River," "White Line Fever," "Today I Started Loving You Again," and "If We Make It through December," among many more), Cantwell explores the fascinating contradictions--most of all, the desire for freedom in the face of limits set by the world or self-imposed--that define not only Haggard's music and public persona but the very heart of American culture.
294 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
October 8, 2013
This is the sort of critical book I wish we found more often - it's not a biography, though it has biographical details. It's a thoughtful examination of the music itself, and it's place in American life. Cantwell has clearly listened closely to everything Haggard has ever sung, and his ability is impressive to get past the surface of these songs and into the nuances and contradictions of them. He'll make you want to hear records you don't know, make you want to hear ones you do know in a new way, and make you want to try to understand all the music you like as deeply as he does that of Haggard. He has the best analysis of the very concept of Christmas music I've yet read, too. Lots to say about class and race and the political relationships of country music and its fans. Some really good stuff about the reasons Johnny Cash had that huge rediscovery in the 90s while Haggard did not. Cantwell's writing is breezy, wickedly funny at times, sharp as a tack, and capable of distilling big thoughts down into the pithiest of essences. I really, really recommend this to anybody who likes to think music means more than just something to pass the time.
January 15, 2019
I liked the way he weaved a little history and geography through the lyrics and songs of Merle Haggard. Fun read if you’re a Merle fan.
May 28, 2022
Quite simply, I wish every musician I liked had a book this sharp, extensive, and highly entertaining, Cantwell is a master of close listening - he understands the ways a James Burton guitar lick can emphasize the meaning of a song, or the way Haggard's voice fits in between the hot approach of a George Jones and the cool approach of a Willie Nelson.
Haggard released more than 80 albums during his lifetime, which ended only a few years after the original book was published. Cantwell has heard them all, in depth, and can place each song he discusses in the context of Haggard's career, in its place in American and country music culture, in its role as an influence or its carrying on of a tradition, and as a unique and timeless work of art. Merle Haggard was a complex artist, and Cantwell deals with all of his facets, good and bad. loved this book when it first came out, and the fact that there is more of it now only makes it better.
Haggard released more than 80 albums during his lifetime, which ended only a few years after the original book was published. Cantwell has heard them all, in depth, and can place each song he discusses in the context of Haggard's career, in its place in American and country music culture, in its role as an influence or its carrying on of a tradition, and as a unique and timeless work of art. Merle Haggard was a complex artist, and Cantwell deals with all of his facets, good and bad. loved this book when it first came out, and the fact that there is more of it now only makes it better.
December 3, 2013
Haggard has always been a touchstone of my life. On the day my parents brought me home from the hospital in August of 1971, my father propped me up on the couch and sang me every Merle Haggard song he knew, which is to say, all of them. He said that I needed to get used to them, as I would be hearing them a lot. From that time on, Hag's music has been one of the ways my father and I relate to one another; it was one channel of communication that was always open for us even when teen angst and working man's blues closed many of them at various times through the years.
This is a thoughtful and witty look at the Music and the Man. Cantwell's insightful examination of the songs, historical events, and biographical details of Haggard's career made me think about his work in a new way, and sent me running to my record and CD collection to hear them all again.
This is a thoughtful and witty look at the Music and the Man. Cantwell's insightful examination of the songs, historical events, and biographical details of Haggard's career made me think about his work in a new way, and sent me running to my record and CD collection to hear them all again.
August 31, 2014
Much more than a great book about a country music legend or a working class icon, The Running Kind is, first and foremost, a book about a musician and his artistic choices. When those artistic choices are being made by Merle Haggard, they are choices that define the hardest questions at the heart of the American identity. When those choices are being written about by David Cantwell, they are a series of revelations, like the sort of all night discussion that has you waving off the sunrise. Cantwell writes about music the way he hears it--closely, intimately, with a delight in the small things that make all the difference. If you love music, you don't just want this conversation, you need it.
February 22, 2026
It’s very easy, perhaps too easy, to denigrate both country music and the music of one’s parents. Both of these constructs are redolent of tradition, conservatism and perhaps authority, and in some cases can be forced on the younger generation with the inevitable conflict. In Australian parlance they are both ‘daggy’ musical attitudes…you shouldn’t really like country because it is all about Americans who love their trucks, dogs, booze and women (in that order), and you shouldn’t like what your mum and dad appreciate because…well, they are old and stuff. So when it comes to the music of Merle Haggard Ive got the double bunger burden of dealing with an artist and his work that are definitive examples of country and (in the case of my dad) a parents fave. How does one find a way to mediate these cultural histories whilst finding a way to enjoy the music, and also develop some deeper critical, cultural and historical appreciation for both?
David Cantwell’s Merle Haggard: The Running Kind provides an elegant, informative, well-articulated and highly effective model as to how to solve this quandary. Yes, I have come to like quite a bit of country music, and I have both resolved my previous antipathy to Haggard’s work both on the grounds of my father loving it and it being the epitome of country. However, this book took my slightly grudging approval to downright enthusiasm, and in the process unlocked some seriously intriguing and significant readings of the man and his music. This is a very good book indeed.
One of the first and most important thematic strands that Cantwell establishes is that, through both his personal history and his music, Haggard stands as a key voice in knowing and understanding American cultural and racial politics in the Twentieth Century. From the exploration of the Okie experience, through expressions of ‘white pride’ and the exploitation of country music as a cultural representation of Nixon era politics, Cantwell gets deep in the weeds and comes out with some great insights. Take for example what he says about the way in which Haggard’s family exemplified the discrimination felt by those economic refugees who migrated to California as part of the ‘Okie’ movement:
“When Merle’s parents left Oklahoma in 1935, they were but drops in a flood of white working-class families who at that moment were being swept out of the southwest and toward work in the oil, fruit, and cotton fields of the Pacific Coast. They hungered for Something Better, but would have settled for Things They Really Needed. Frequently they got neither, because “another class of people put [them] somewhere just below.”
That Haggard’s music referenced this diaspora in terms not dissimilar to Steinbeck’s The Grape of Wrath is both well presented and substantiated effectively by the author, and he makes great effort to expand this thesis. He speaks to how Haggard’s music and personal life doesn’t just reflect the domestic migration of those moving to California, it also speaks to how the construct of ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ are integral to understanding the music, and more broadly, the US.
Cantwell offers more nuanced and detailed examinations of the political aspects of Haggard’s life and music when he considers two of the artist’s most iconic songs, ‘Okie from Muskogee’ and ‘The Fightin’ Side of Me’. In the former song’s case the author does well to capture the possible ambiguity of Haggards attitude to the politics of the song when he recounts the following exchange:
“Was that damn song meant to be sung with your tongue in your cheek or with your hand over your heart?”
“Yes.”
This ambivalence is furthered by the author’s consideration of how the song was supposedly conceived, and how Haggard’s personal life and attitudes (including a penchant for enjoying drugs and non-monogamous relationships) undermine the conservative values espoused in the song. Cantwell also notes that the provincial prejudice of ‘Okie from Muskogee’ is a powerful element that can’t be ignored, and in fact is an elemental factor in its appeal to those who value such biases:
“We like living right and being free,” after all, is a parody of patriotic provincialism if ever there was one. In small towns like Muskogee, the song tells us, being free is equated with a version of conformity called living right. Anyone who disobeys the rules of right living, or who dares challenge the authority of those who declare and enforce the rules, is not exercising freedom but threatening its existence. Haggard, who had spent so much of his life fleeing just such “civilizing” attitudes, would’ve appreciated the irony, could’ve conceived the line as a joke: If you’re coerced to live by your neighbor’s definition of “free,” then “free” is one thing you ain’t. What the hippies do in the song, meanwhile, is just what hippies do. Hippie behaviour is so obviously wrong, so plainly not living right, that jokes at its expense are neither needed nor attempted.”
Cantwell is less willing to offer Haggard the benefit of the doubt when it comes to ‘The Fightin’ Side of Me’. The author makes it quite clear that there are problematic aspects of the song that confirm the singer’s prejudice and right-wing idolatry:
“Let this song that I’m singin’ be a warnin’,” Merle growls. “When you’re runnin’ down my country, hoss, you’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me.”
This was less than two months after the infamous Altamont Free Concert and only three months before Kent State. It was a year after some redneck shotgunned that hippie Captain America at the end of Easy Rider, and a year before San Francisco’s Dirty Harry snarled, “Do [you] feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?” at a black bank robber. “I read about some squirrelly guy who claims that he just don’t believe in fightin’,” Merle sneers, disbelieving. That “claim” is priceless, as subtly sharp in its way as, barely half a year after the Stonewall riots, that “squirrelly guy” is bullying.”
When one considers Haggard’s links to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan it must be said that whilst the man might have had some ambivalence personally and even professionally when it came to his reputation as an arch-conservative for ‘the silent majority’, his music became integral to the representation of such political values and forces. This is also bound up with the inherent racism of his pride in being a white working man:
“That line in “Workin’ Man Blues” where Merle boasts he’s never been on welfare was a not-so-coded attack on poor black Americans who did receive public assistance and, in stereotype, preferred it to getting a job. But Haggard’s pride in keeping his nose in close proximity to the grindstone was also self-defense. White people, real white people, the song suggests, work whether they would prefer to or not, and they do so without the privileged middle-class expectation that it will provide personal fulfillment in excess of cash payment. Merle in Look, 1968: “If you like your job, you’re not doing it right.”
One final note as to how Cantwell speaks to the political aspects of Haggard and his music is the rather surprising juxtaposition of the country artist’s work with Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Goin’ On?’. In an audacious yet highly effective comparison of the two singers’ efforts in the early 1970s he writes:
“Those connections are all fair enough, but when I listen to Hag these days what leaps out at me is how it seems to be in deliberate conversation with What’s Going On, Marvin Gaye’s album from the same year. It wasn’t deliberate—again, the time line’s wrong; Haggard’s album came out the month before Gaye’s—but the themes the albums address seem like family to one another, at times almost eerily. Hag begins with a mother weeping for a dead son in Vietnam, Gaye’s album with “Mother, mother, there’s too many of you cryin’.” Merle sings, “his hair’s a little longer than we’re used to” and Gaye snaps back, “Who are they to judge us simply ’cause our hair is long?” Both albums, too, are to some degree frightened to the point of fatalism about where America stands in 1971. Marvin inquires despairingly, “Who is willing to try to save a world that’s destined to die?” Merle warns that “like the mighty Roman Empire, this world is doomed to fall.” Both suggest that Jesus is our best bet.”
There is a lot to like about the other more prosaic aspects of Haggard’s life and music in Merle Haggard: The Running Kind, including reflections on his personal life and key influences such as Buck Owens and Lefty Frizzell ( “Merle Haggard wore his carefully guarded outsider status like a scab. Buck Owens wanted to belong.”), the peaks and troughs of his music career, his interactions with other artists such as Bob Wills, Willie Nelson, Tommy Collins and George Jones, and how he was received by other artists. That the Byrds and Grateful Dead covered Haggard was a bit of a surprise to read, and as for Haggard’s failed pursuit of Dolly Parton, well that was definitely news to me.
Each analysis of Haggard’s recordings is insightful and detailed, and one can come away from reading Cantwell’s text with a more informed understanding of what Haggard did for country music. At times the author derives some complex thoughts and meaning from the songs and albums in Haggard’s corpus, but he is also willing to point out the inconsistencies and simple truths behind the music:
“Among the songs most closely associated with Haggard today, “Mama Tried” is hands down his most purely autobiographical. Even the song’s one well-known fiction—Merle wasn’t doing “life without parole”—is every bit as much a concession to artistic demands as an embrace of artistic license. “Instead of life in prison I was doing one-to-fifteen years,” he once told the Knoxville News-Sentinel. “I just couldn’t get that to rhyme.”
All up, Merle Haggard: The Running Kind is a very good book that does a superb job of exploring and deconstructing the music and life of a country music icon, contextualising his career within a wider American cultural, racial and political experience. Cantwell makes considered and informative arguments about the man and his work, whilst writing with charm and intelligence. The end of the text embodies this, where he speaks to how he had just seen Haggard perform live in concert a few years before his death in 2016:
“It was dark by then, and as Merle finished his song, I caught sight of the prisoners’ silhouettes above the stage. I remember watching them up there on their scaffolding and how the ends of their lit cigarettes dimmed and glowed and dimmed like stars.”
The imagery of the prisoners and their cigarettes slowly dying out is utterly emblematic of Merle Haggard as a man, but also a paradoxical celebration of his musical legacy. If you love intelligent books about country music and how culture and politics and personal lives are intertwined then this is the volume for you.
David Cantwell’s Merle Haggard: The Running Kind provides an elegant, informative, well-articulated and highly effective model as to how to solve this quandary. Yes, I have come to like quite a bit of country music, and I have both resolved my previous antipathy to Haggard’s work both on the grounds of my father loving it and it being the epitome of country. However, this book took my slightly grudging approval to downright enthusiasm, and in the process unlocked some seriously intriguing and significant readings of the man and his music. This is a very good book indeed.
One of the first and most important thematic strands that Cantwell establishes is that, through both his personal history and his music, Haggard stands as a key voice in knowing and understanding American cultural and racial politics in the Twentieth Century. From the exploration of the Okie experience, through expressions of ‘white pride’ and the exploitation of country music as a cultural representation of Nixon era politics, Cantwell gets deep in the weeds and comes out with some great insights. Take for example what he says about the way in which Haggard’s family exemplified the discrimination felt by those economic refugees who migrated to California as part of the ‘Okie’ movement:
“When Merle’s parents left Oklahoma in 1935, they were but drops in a flood of white working-class families who at that moment were being swept out of the southwest and toward work in the oil, fruit, and cotton fields of the Pacific Coast. They hungered for Something Better, but would have settled for Things They Really Needed. Frequently they got neither, because “another class of people put [them] somewhere just below.”
That Haggard’s music referenced this diaspora in terms not dissimilar to Steinbeck’s The Grape of Wrath is both well presented and substantiated effectively by the author, and he makes great effort to expand this thesis. He speaks to how Haggard’s music and personal life doesn’t just reflect the domestic migration of those moving to California, it also speaks to how the construct of ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ are integral to understanding the music, and more broadly, the US.
Cantwell offers more nuanced and detailed examinations of the political aspects of Haggard’s life and music when he considers two of the artist’s most iconic songs, ‘Okie from Muskogee’ and ‘The Fightin’ Side of Me’. In the former song’s case the author does well to capture the possible ambiguity of Haggards attitude to the politics of the song when he recounts the following exchange:
“Was that damn song meant to be sung with your tongue in your cheek or with your hand over your heart?”
“Yes.”
This ambivalence is furthered by the author’s consideration of how the song was supposedly conceived, and how Haggard’s personal life and attitudes (including a penchant for enjoying drugs and non-monogamous relationships) undermine the conservative values espoused in the song. Cantwell also notes that the provincial prejudice of ‘Okie from Muskogee’ is a powerful element that can’t be ignored, and in fact is an elemental factor in its appeal to those who value such biases:
“We like living right and being free,” after all, is a parody of patriotic provincialism if ever there was one. In small towns like Muskogee, the song tells us, being free is equated with a version of conformity called living right. Anyone who disobeys the rules of right living, or who dares challenge the authority of those who declare and enforce the rules, is not exercising freedom but threatening its existence. Haggard, who had spent so much of his life fleeing just such “civilizing” attitudes, would’ve appreciated the irony, could’ve conceived the line as a joke: If you’re coerced to live by your neighbor’s definition of “free,” then “free” is one thing you ain’t. What the hippies do in the song, meanwhile, is just what hippies do. Hippie behaviour is so obviously wrong, so plainly not living right, that jokes at its expense are neither needed nor attempted.”
Cantwell is less willing to offer Haggard the benefit of the doubt when it comes to ‘The Fightin’ Side of Me’. The author makes it quite clear that there are problematic aspects of the song that confirm the singer’s prejudice and right-wing idolatry:
“Let this song that I’m singin’ be a warnin’,” Merle growls. “When you’re runnin’ down my country, hoss, you’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me.”
This was less than two months after the infamous Altamont Free Concert and only three months before Kent State. It was a year after some redneck shotgunned that hippie Captain America at the end of Easy Rider, and a year before San Francisco’s Dirty Harry snarled, “Do [you] feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?” at a black bank robber. “I read about some squirrelly guy who claims that he just don’t believe in fightin’,” Merle sneers, disbelieving. That “claim” is priceless, as subtly sharp in its way as, barely half a year after the Stonewall riots, that “squirrelly guy” is bullying.”
When one considers Haggard’s links to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan it must be said that whilst the man might have had some ambivalence personally and even professionally when it came to his reputation as an arch-conservative for ‘the silent majority’, his music became integral to the representation of such political values and forces. This is also bound up with the inherent racism of his pride in being a white working man:
“That line in “Workin’ Man Blues” where Merle boasts he’s never been on welfare was a not-so-coded attack on poor black Americans who did receive public assistance and, in stereotype, preferred it to getting a job. But Haggard’s pride in keeping his nose in close proximity to the grindstone was also self-defense. White people, real white people, the song suggests, work whether they would prefer to or not, and they do so without the privileged middle-class expectation that it will provide personal fulfillment in excess of cash payment. Merle in Look, 1968: “If you like your job, you’re not doing it right.”
One final note as to how Cantwell speaks to the political aspects of Haggard and his music is the rather surprising juxtaposition of the country artist’s work with Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Goin’ On?’. In an audacious yet highly effective comparison of the two singers’ efforts in the early 1970s he writes:
“Those connections are all fair enough, but when I listen to Hag these days what leaps out at me is how it seems to be in deliberate conversation with What’s Going On, Marvin Gaye’s album from the same year. It wasn’t deliberate—again, the time line’s wrong; Haggard’s album came out the month before Gaye’s—but the themes the albums address seem like family to one another, at times almost eerily. Hag begins with a mother weeping for a dead son in Vietnam, Gaye’s album with “Mother, mother, there’s too many of you cryin’.” Merle sings, “his hair’s a little longer than we’re used to” and Gaye snaps back, “Who are they to judge us simply ’cause our hair is long?” Both albums, too, are to some degree frightened to the point of fatalism about where America stands in 1971. Marvin inquires despairingly, “Who is willing to try to save a world that’s destined to die?” Merle warns that “like the mighty Roman Empire, this world is doomed to fall.” Both suggest that Jesus is our best bet.”
There is a lot to like about the other more prosaic aspects of Haggard’s life and music in Merle Haggard: The Running Kind, including reflections on his personal life and key influences such as Buck Owens and Lefty Frizzell ( “Merle Haggard wore his carefully guarded outsider status like a scab. Buck Owens wanted to belong.”), the peaks and troughs of his music career, his interactions with other artists such as Bob Wills, Willie Nelson, Tommy Collins and George Jones, and how he was received by other artists. That the Byrds and Grateful Dead covered Haggard was a bit of a surprise to read, and as for Haggard’s failed pursuit of Dolly Parton, well that was definitely news to me.
Each analysis of Haggard’s recordings is insightful and detailed, and one can come away from reading Cantwell’s text with a more informed understanding of what Haggard did for country music. At times the author derives some complex thoughts and meaning from the songs and albums in Haggard’s corpus, but he is also willing to point out the inconsistencies and simple truths behind the music:
“Among the songs most closely associated with Haggard today, “Mama Tried” is hands down his most purely autobiographical. Even the song’s one well-known fiction—Merle wasn’t doing “life without parole”—is every bit as much a concession to artistic demands as an embrace of artistic license. “Instead of life in prison I was doing one-to-fifteen years,” he once told the Knoxville News-Sentinel. “I just couldn’t get that to rhyme.”
All up, Merle Haggard: The Running Kind is a very good book that does a superb job of exploring and deconstructing the music and life of a country music icon, contextualising his career within a wider American cultural, racial and political experience. Cantwell makes considered and informative arguments about the man and his work, whilst writing with charm and intelligence. The end of the text embodies this, where he speaks to how he had just seen Haggard perform live in concert a few years before his death in 2016:
“It was dark by then, and as Merle finished his song, I caught sight of the prisoners’ silhouettes above the stage. I remember watching them up there on their scaffolding and how the ends of their lit cigarettes dimmed and glowed and dimmed like stars.”
The imagery of the prisoners and their cigarettes slowly dying out is utterly emblematic of Merle Haggard as a man, but also a paradoxical celebration of his musical legacy. If you love intelligent books about country music and how culture and politics and personal lives are intertwined then this is the volume for you.
May 1, 2016
Merle Haggard was difficult. He never quite squared with popular notions of what was tasteful, musically or politically, which might explain why I heard so little of him even as I grew up in the country-inundated suburbs of Texas and Oklahoma (we were a Garth Brooks family through and through; and, as liberals, more inclined to dig the progressive classic sounds of Willie and Cash). But "difficult" often makes for good music, and it definitely makes for good reading in Cantwell's intelligent, sensitive, and witty book. I don't know if I'm entirely convinced that Haggard belongs in the esteemed company, in terms of artistic achievement and historical significance, of James Brown (as Cantwell suggests) (I just see one too many songs about disdaining people on welfare for my liking), but I definitely wanna get more Hag records now. As Cantwell notes early on, his book is not a biography, it's criticism. The writer shows you the man on several occasions (we get the requisite chapters on Haggard's prison time, and a few wonderfully concise paragraphs on his relationships with his many wives), but his primary goal is to show you the artist. Like any good critic, Cantwell wants to complicate Haggard. Against the cliche that Haggard was an "authentic" voice who wrote exclusively about personal concerns, Cantwell demonstrates how often Haggard toyed with his own life story in verse, and how frequently he re-interprets the visions of other songwriters. Cantwell does not celebrate the implied hatred in many of Hag's lyrics, but he doesn't dodge the issue, either: in a move straight out of Jefferson Davies' wonderful "Stayin Alive," he writes about how Haggard captured the zeitgeist of the white working class in a way that bounced between the poles of ironic distance and passionate involvement (in this way, Haggard ought to be championed the way the similarly un-P.C. voices of hip-hop have been). Best of all, Cantwell digs deep into Haggard's songs: his chapter-long close reads of tracks both hits ("Mama Tried" is not a song about Mama... it's a song about having no regrets, sorry ma) and misses ("Me and the Crippled Soldiers"... ouch) are revelatory; they'd make Dave Marsh proud. The focus is the music here, and Cantwell writes about music very, very well. I'd love to find his "Heartaches by the Number" soon. And I'd love to get some more Merle Haggard. Cuz I already have every Prince album, fools.
April 29, 2021
This novel biography (the story of the life and cultural/historical significance of Merle Haggard) is a good complement to the 2 autobiographies/memoirs written by Merle Haggard (the first, ok; the second, 1/2 great). The two autobiographies, which were written about 20 years apart, are surprisingly evocative and well-written about Haggard's upbringing and wayward, delinquent (i.e., criminal) ways, but lacking in any attempt to provide insight into his artistry or into his career as an artist (which is different from the artist's career, which could be satisfied by recounting what happened when and where). It's telling that Haggard wrote 2 autobiographies at all: it's like he wanted to set the record straight (the second book is much funnier and has more intense reflections on criminality and life in the penal system), but the very fact that there is even a second one at all determines the failure and shortcoming 'a priori'. In Cantwell's biography-as-exegesis, there's more emphasis on Haggard's early songs and albums, and like in most biographies or works of criticism, the enthusiasm and words peter out with the late career (exception: Beethoven?). The biographer injects elements from his own personal journey of discovering and growing up (and old) with the career and music of Merle Haggard, and his deep familiarity and reverence for the music is evident as he parses meaning and greater, overlooked significance from the golden nuggets buried in Haggard's mid-career.
Above all, it's great to read about the music as the thoughts evoke more vivid impressions, and even prompt the reader to explore songs that might have been overlooked. Merle Haggard is great: he's the greatest country singer after Hank Williams, a songwriter of sensitive poetry and bold imagination, a well-rounded MUSICIANS (Haggard defaulted as a lead vocalist begrudgingly because he realized that he could not play the guitar as well as he wanted to, to rival his heroes), and a passionate music historian who create groundbreaking and artistically supreme tribute albums to his heroes and favorite music (Bob Wills, Jimmie Rodgers, Elvis, gospel music, jazz inflected blues, songs about trains and fast automobiles), and this novel biography rises to the challenge of doing justice to what the music can well do on its own.
Above all, it's great to read about the music as the thoughts evoke more vivid impressions, and even prompt the reader to explore songs that might have been overlooked. Merle Haggard is great: he's the greatest country singer after Hank Williams, a songwriter of sensitive poetry and bold imagination, a well-rounded MUSICIANS (Haggard defaulted as a lead vocalist begrudgingly because he realized that he could not play the guitar as well as he wanted to, to rival his heroes), and a passionate music historian who create groundbreaking and artistically supreme tribute albums to his heroes and favorite music (Bob Wills, Jimmie Rodgers, Elvis, gospel music, jazz inflected blues, songs about trains and fast automobiles), and this novel biography rises to the challenge of doing justice to what the music can well do on its own.
January 7, 2025
I really enjoyed this book. Not so much a biography of Haggard as it is an analysis of his music within the context of the time it was recorded, Cantwell does a great job of mixing biographical anecdotes and analysis of Haggard's music. The focus is mostly on Haggard's career during the 1960s and 1970s, his most creative and successful period.
I would give this 5 stars other than there are some long portions of this book that are rather dry, especially during the first quarter of the book. Once Cantwell starts analyzing Haggard's music and giving us a look at his life as a country music star the book is fantastic however.
I would give this 5 stars other than there are some long portions of this book that are rather dry, especially during the first quarter of the book. Once Cantwell starts analyzing Haggard's music and giving us a look at his life as a country music star the book is fantastic however.
January 12, 2014
I was really blown away with this book and how it got to me in personal ways even though I didn't know much about Merle Haggard before reading. I think David Cantwell beautifully writes about music and artists in a way that makes their story a part of everyone.
June 20, 2023
My kind of music biography. We don’t have to sit through a long drawn out family history before ever getting to the music and music career that brought us to the book.
Cantwell steps through key musical moments and songs chronologically and brings in enough related history and a bit of conjecture to explain what was going on in Haggard’s life at the time. He brings in insights from interviews at the time to add key info but it’s the focus on the songs and what they are saying that take center stage here.
Cantwell steps through key musical moments and songs chronologically and brings in enough related history and a bit of conjecture to explain what was going on in Haggard’s life at the time. He brings in insights from interviews at the time to add key info but it’s the focus on the songs and what they are saying that take center stage here.
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February 8, 2024Great book about Merle Haggard. It's not a strict biography, though Cantwell does proceed chronologically through Haggard's life, using critical analysis of Haggard's songs (and broader cultural importance) as a means of discussing his story. It's very well-written, readable, and insightful. Cantwell is a clear Hag fan, his enthusiasm shining through on every page. Like any good critic, he's able to describe what makes a song great in a way that makes you want to listen to it and hear what he's saying. Cantwell's insights made me appreciate and understand Hag even more.
April 1, 2018
It's not easy to write well about music, but David Cantwell has done it superbly here for Merle Haggard. Cantwell immerses himself in Haggard's lyrics and this enriches the book, keeping it authentic and grounded in Haggard's life. After reading the first few chapters I couldn't resist seeking out Merle's early albums 'I'm A Lonesome Fugitive' and 'Branded Man', which still sound superb today.
September 19, 2017
Everything you want to know about Merle Haggard !
December 30, 2025
Well-sourced and engaging, book didn't skip around too much in laying out Haggard's career, which certainly took a lot of turns.
April 2, 2014
This is an absolutely riveting critical discussion of one of the greatest American singers and songwriters. David Cantwell brings his encyclopedic knowledge and deep love of country music to bear on Merle Haggard's entire career, with just enough biographical details and sociopolitical analysis to provide context. He explores all of the complexities and contradictions of Haggard's populist vision and romantic heart, but what really stands out is his unparalleled ability to write about how the music sounds in a way that crackles and bursts off the pages. Whether you're a Haggard fanatic or a neophyte—or somewhere in between—this is consistently compelling, and often quite funny (though usually darkly so, just like Hag himself). What's more, the prose is as light on its feet as it is substantive. One hell of an accomplishment from one of the best music writers working today.
October 30, 2022
A country music legend, Merle Haggard was always a bit contradictory, if you believe his actual views had anything to do with his music. David Cantwell's books analyzes Haggard's career through his music. It's not a biography -- no one-on-one interviews with the subject -- but rather an attempt to explain the songs and chronicle his amazing success in the music industry. It's an interesting approach, and I think it falls short a little but for country music fans, or just Merle Haggard fans, it's a quick and interesting read.
March 30, 2014
I cried at the end of this book, which was not really what I was expecting from music criticism. But it's a really beautiful book and Cantwell is, as ever, such a lovely writer and the ending, with Haggard just destined/cursed/blessed to be Haggard all the way, just hit me right in the feelings.
April 22, 2014
This was an awesome book that went over Merle Haggard's career, talking about his music. It only brought in biography where it had bearing on his music. He had a very good assessment of the highs and lows and the cultural currents that affected Merle.
March 11, 2014
Every bit as good as I expected it to be - a model for how to write about country music.
October 24, 2016
Merle deserves this scrutiny, but, dammit, also deserves footnotes.
This is more career criticism than biography. Still, it's about great stuff, and well written.
Recommended, with caveats.
This is more career criticism than biography. Still, it's about great stuff, and well written.
Recommended, with caveats.
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