It has been a cruel season of loss in the music community, felt most recently with the departure of Merle Haggard, the titan of American song who passed away last Wednesday on the occasion of his 79th ...

Before “Okie From Muskogee” became his signature song and before “If We Make It Through December” became his biggest crossover hit, Merle Haggard’s best-known song was the one where he came clean ...

Merle Haggard had a rough start in this world. First of all, he was born during the final years of the Great Depression, and soon after, his father died when Haggard was around nine years old. As a ...

NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Haggard's biographer Marc Eliot about his book: The Hag. Haggard spent his early years going from family tragedy to odd jobs to broken marriages to petty crime to prison.

Merle Haggard, the working man’s poet, an architect of the Bakersfield Sound and a fiercely independent artist who influenced country music like few others, died Wednesday in California, surrounded by ...

It has been a cruel season of loss in the music community, felt most recently with the departure of Merle Haggard, the titan of American song who passed away last Wednesday on the occasion of his 79th ...