Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 81

Record label: Capitol

Produced: Ken Nelson

Recorded: Nashville; August 1–3, November 16 and December 16, 1966

Released: March 1967

Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: Merle Haggard (v, g); James Burton (g, dobro); Glen Campbell (bv, g); Lewis Talley (g); Shorty Mullins (g); Billy Mize (g, bv); Jerry Ward (b); Bonnie Owens (bv); Glenn D Hardin (p); Ralph Mooney (ps); James Beck Gordon (d)

Track listing: I’m A Lonesome Fugitive (S/US); All Of Me Belongs To You; House Of Memories; Life In Prison; Whatever Happened To Me; Drink Up And Be Somebody; Someone Told My Story (S/US); If You Want To Be My Woman; Mary’s Mine; Skid Row; My Rough And Rowdy Ways; Mixed Up Mess Of A Heart

Running time: 31.16

Current CD: CAP447942 adds: Branded Man album

Further listening: Branded Man (1967)

Further reading: My House Of Memories: (Merle Haggard, 1999); www.merlehaggard.com

Download: iTunes

Many country singers sang about a fantasy. Not Flossie Haggard’s boy, who began running away from home when a young teen and who knew divorce, alcohol, railroads, even life behind bars. When people asked why he got himself into so much trouble, he’d tell them he just wanted to experience the kind of life he heard about in Jimmie Rodgers songs. Haggard was a New Traditionalist 20 years ahead of his time – and he sang about the classic country topics with authority and a tender, understanding grace.

Although he had had some success on his friend Fuzzy Owens’s small Talley Records, it seemed like every song he released would be covered by a more established singer who would get the bigger hit. Fortunately, Capitol’s country producer and A&R man Ken Nelson saw the pattern and called Owen in 1965, saying, ‘Why don’t y’all cut out this baloney and get up here and let’s take care of this thing.’ Which they did, signing to the label. Three albums later, Haggard’s popularity was rising but he had still not made his mark in the eyes of the country music public. On the advice of a local agent he travelled to Liz Anderson’s house to hear some songs she had written. Sitting down at a battered old pump organ, she performed the song that would become this album’s title track.

Haggard was stunned as he listened. He felt the song defined him perfectly, outlining a persona he could quite comfortably colour in. His version of her song made Number 1 in the country singles charts – one of three hit singles he scored in 1966. Meanwhile, as demand for an album increased, Haggard set to writing (or, more precisely, dictating, or scribbling on used paper bags) some of the best material of his career – including classic honky-tonk lament Drink Up And Be Somebody and the haunting Life In Prison, later covered by Gram Parsons on The Byrds’ Sweetheart Of The Rodeo – augmenting them with a cover of Jimmie Rodgers’s My Rough And Rowdy Ways. Haggard would go on to have better-selling albums but he would never again be quite as raw and authentic.