Simple, American, working-man pride. That's the organizing theme of Hag: The Best of Merle Haggard, which features a generous 26-song tracklist spanning nearly 40 years. Haggard is proud to be an American, and to disagree is to provoke him. He's proud to be a square who doesn't buy into hippie immorality. On "I Take a Lot of Pride in Who I Am", which could have served as the title for this compilation, he sings in the voice of a down-and-out drifter who stands tall despite his poverty and would never consider taking welfare hand-outs. On "Branded Man", he's an ex-con who has paid his dues to society but can't shake the stigma of prison. This pride, so forcefully conveyed in all these songs, must have been attractive to Haggard's audiences in the late 1960s and early 70s-- average Americans who scorned the counterculture for its destructiveness, but felt abandoned by the larger pop culture. He was proud to fill that gap, to maintain strong American morals even as the rest of the country went to hell. Maybe pride was easy: "Okie from Muskogee" made him the most popular country singer in the nation in 1969, and "The Fightin' Side of Me" cemented that status.
Ironically, while that pride helps give the music its rugged virility, it may have cost him fans over the years and deflated his legacy. Haggard doesn't have the stature he should: He's less conflicted than Johnny Cash, less contemplative than Willie Nelson, lacking their broad popularity outside the confines of country music. Partly this is because his two most popular songs are "Okie" and "Fightin' Side", whose political and cultural tangles overshadow his actual music. These provocative tunes have lost none of their divisiveness, thanks in part to Toby Keith's recent exploitive cover of "Fightin'", but also because Haggard's negative generalizations about hippies (they don't like "living right and being free") are identical to current generalizations about liberals. But even in his underdog status Haggard seems to take a certain pride: His last few albums on smaller labels have been wily and inspired, and current Nashville acts like Keith and Gretchen Wilson have introduced him to a younger audience.
This misperception about Haggard's politics made Capitol Nashville's reissues of Haggard's first eight albums earlier this year seem revelatory, and Hag is strategically timed and sequenced to take advantage of this renewed interest. The compilation focuses primarily on his early career, when he released a string of albums that are as solid and exciting as anything country music has ever produced. Most of these tracks predate the mid-1970s, when his popularity was at a peak. There are only three from the 1980s, none from the 90s, and too few from recent releases like If I Could Only Fly and Chicago Wind, which weren't comebacks so much as reminders that he was still around and relevant.
Hag also features three duets from other artists' albums, the inclusion of which seems a little suspicious, as if the producers are using bigger names to sell Haggard. He only sings a few bars of "Pancho and Lefty", which is really a showcase for Willie Nelson, and "I'm Leaving Now", from Johnny Cash's Solitary Man, is a playful tune that probably wouldn't make an American Recordings best-of. But "She Ain't Hooked on Me No More", from Keith's Honkytonk University, showcases Haggard in a better light, with his acolyte in obvious awe. Thank God they didn't include "Politically Uncorrect", his awful duet with Wilson.
As an introduction to Haggard's music-- or even to the Bakersfield sound that he helped popularize-- Hag may be unparalleled. Born in Bakersfield to transplanted Oklahomans, Haggard was at heart a California artist, reared on 1940s and 50s country and influenced by Bob Wills, Tex Ritter, and Spade Cooley. You can hear their influence-- especially Wills'-- in songs like "Living with the Shades Pulled Down", on which Haggard calls out his band members to solo, adopting a falsetto much like his hero's. It's an original tune, but it could very easily be a Wills cover.
Some of Haggard's songs might paint him as politically reactionary, but musically he was anything but. His style was rough-edged and electric, at odds with the Opry's conservatism, and despite his love for his influences, he sought to build on those traditions, not preserve them. Listen to the way his electric guitar licks against the lyrics on "Mama Tried" and "I'm Bringing Home Good News". Or the way he evokes a poignant, class-specific heartache on "Hungry Eyes" and "If We Make It through December". Listen to those intricate horn charts on "I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink" and the randy "Old Man from the Mountain" or the somber piano that breezes through "Silver Wings". Like those who settled his home state half a century before he was born, Haggard was a pioneer, but his accomplishments have been so absorbed by the country mainstream and overwhelmed by Haggard's own divisive politics that they're taken for granted. Hag is another big step toward correcting that sad state of affairs.
