April 06: Merle Haggard was born in 1937 Happy Birthday

“By the time you get close to the answers, it’s nearly all over.”
– Merle Haggard

The first time we met is a favorite memory of mine.
They say time changes all it pertains to
But your memory is stronger than time.
I guess everything does change except what you choose to recall.

Wikipedia:
Merle Ronald Haggard (born April 6, 1937) is an American country music song writer, singer, guitarist, fiddler, and instrumentalist. Along with Buck Owens, Haggard and his band The Strangers helped create the Bakersfield sound, which is characterized by the unique twang of Fender Telecaster and the unique mix with the traditional country steel guitar sound, new vocal harmony styles in which the words are minimal, and a rough edge not heard on the more polished Nashville Sound recordings of the same era.

My Favorite Memory:


By the 1970s, Haggard was aligned with the growing outlaw country movement, and has continued to release successful albums through the 1990s and into the 2000s.

Haggard’s guitar playing and voice gives his country a hard-edged, blues-like style in many cuts.

Merle Haggard is one of country music’s most versatile artists. His compositions ranges wide: ballads , autobiographical reflections, political commentaries and funny drinking songs. Easy dance songs and more serious stuff.

But first of all it’s the voice, man! That voice!

Todays album is the great , Big City. It’s Merle Haggard’s masterpiece and one of my all-time favorite country records:

Big City, both the cut and the album, revisits the seemingly eternal themes in Haggard’s best work — the plight of the honest, decent working man amid the squalor, complication, and contradiction of urban life. Besides the title cut, there are bona fide Haggard classics here — and some that aren’t but should be.
(Allmusic)

Other 6 April:

• From elvis-history-blog.com:
  CRYING IN THE CHAPEL (recorded: Oct. 31, 1960 / single released: April 6, 1965)Gordon Stoker of the Jordanaires recalls that everyone in the studio was tired at the end of an all-night recording session on Halloween morning in 1960, when Elvis said, “Let’s try ‘Crying in the Chapel.’” Complications over publishing rights caused the hymn to be left off Elvis’s “His Hand in Mine” gospel album later that year. Nearly five years later, RCA dusted off “Crying in the Chapel” and released it as a single. Elvis’s soulful recording spent 7 weeks in the Hot 100’s top 10, an amazing accomplishment for a gospel record. It didn’t lead to a Presley revival, though. Several years would pass before Elvis had another hit. Still, in the wasteland of Elvis’s mid-sixties records, “Crying in the Chapel” was a reminder of his past devotion to gospel music, which would be renewed with “How Great Thou Art” two years later. Read more about “Crying in the Chapel”

 

• Virginia Wynette Pugh, known professionally as Tammy Wynette, (May 5, 1942 – April 6, 1998) was an American country music singer-songwriter and one of the genre’s best-known artists and biggest-selling female vocalists.She was known as the First Lady of Country Music, and her best-known song, “Stand by Your Man”, was one of the biggest selling hit singles by a woman in the history of the country music genre. Many of Tammy Wynette’s hits dealt with classic themes of loneliness, divorce and the difficulties of male-female relationships. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, she dominated the country charts, scoring 17 number one hits. Along with Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, she defined the role of female country vocalists in the 1970s.

– Hallgeir

Sources: Wikipedia, Allmusic, Country Music Hall of Fame