Share this book
Focusing on the most prolific decades in the career of this complex, often contradictory artist, David Cantwell explores the life, times, and enduring impact of Merle Haggard’s singularly American music.
"My favorite is David Cantwell’s book Merle Haggard—The Running Kind.”
—Greil Marcus
Series: American Music Series
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.
Contents
Introduction: "Silver Wings," Kansas City, Missouri, September 14, 2001
- "Hungry Eyes," 1969
- The Roots of His Raising
- Mama Tried," 1968
- Toward the Bad He Kept on Turnin'
- He Loves Them So: A Playlist of Early Influences
- "Leonard," 1981
- The Bakersfield Sound and Fury
- Someone Told His Story in a Song
- "I Started Loving You Again," 1968
- The Legend of Bonnie and Him
- "Sing Me Back Home," 1967
- He's Living in the Good Old Days
- He Likes Living Right and Being Free
- "Irma Jackson," 1969
- His Fightin' Side
- He'd Rather Be Gone
- "It's Not Love (But It's Not Bad)," 1972
- He Wishes He Was Santa Claus
- He Takes a Lot of Pride in What He Is (Hint: He's a White Boy)
- "A Working Man Can't Get Nowhere Today," 1977
- His Country Girl with Hot Pants On
- He's Always on a Mountain When He Falls
- "Rainbow Stew," 1981
- He Wishes a Buck Was Still Silver (Not Really) and Likes the Taste of Yesterday's Wine (Really)
- "Kern River," 1985
- He's Going Where the Lonely Go
- "Me and Crippled Soldiers," 1990
- The Hag versus the Man in Black
- If He Could Only Fly: Merle Haggard in the Twenty-first Century
Cuba, Missouri, July 15, 2010
Selected Discography
Acknowledgments
“An incisive, critical analysis of one of the most complicated and misunderstood artists in country music...Both the Haggard fanatic and the casual country music fan will find their appreciation enriched.”
Kirkus Reviews
“He recounts the high times when the Hag could seemingly do no wrong, as well as his lost decade of the 1990s, when the hot country radio format pushed the old man aside in favor of guys with hats and gals named Shania. Also of interest is a short chapter where Cantwell compares and contrasts the lives and careers of Hag and his contemporary Johnny Cash. 'Merle Haggard: The Running Kind” gives this singular country artist his due and treats fans to a deep and appreciative trek through his songs.”
Hannibal Courier-Post
“The Running Kind is one of those critical/biographical works that you will want to read again, so prepare yourself to succumb to its charms. It’s worth it.”
PopMatters
“My favorite is David Cantwell’s book Merle Haggard—The Running Kind.”
“Since ‘Okie from Muskogee’ was released in 1969 and made Haggard a lightning rod, he’s been perhaps the most-written-about artist in country music history. Yet all that writing has been in periodicals. . . . Now here is a book that takes a serious look at Haggard’s place in American culture and art, and that is no small thing. . . . This book is long overdue and will hopefully open up a dialogue on an artist who provides plenty of fodder.”
John Morthland, music writer and former editor at Rolling Stone, Creem, and Country Music
