Haggard Story Behind the Writing of Today I Started Loving You Again
The death of country music legend Merle Haggard is inspiration to revisit some of the creative person'southward insight into the world, via his ain words. In this 2004 contour in The Times, Haggard opened up most his fourth dimension in prison, the wisdom passed down to him by Johnny Cash and how "the best songs feel like they've ever been hither." Here'due south former staff writer Robert Hilburn's article, originally published June 20, 2004.
Merle Haggard, the country music star who actually did turn 21 in prison, but similar it says in one of his songs, figures information technology cost the IRS nigh $100,000 the day an agent came to his ranch near here to try to effigy out what goes into writing a hit.
Haggard'southward revenue enhancement render was apparently kicked out by the computer for too many business organisation deductions and the agent wanted the songwriter to show him how the 200-acre spread in the mountains helped him do his piece of work.
During a walk around the grounds, Haggard explained how a creek inspired ane vocal, a flower bed led to some other and a bulldog bound-started a third.
"Finally, this swain looks at me and says, 'Why, Mr. Haggard, everything you do is a write-off,' and he started pointing out other things I should take declared," the songwriter says, laughing then hard his whole trunk shakes.
"What he saw was that writing for me is an impulse. I don't sit down with a pencil and paper and try to come up with songs. I look for songs in the world around me."
That world runs through Haggard's songs.
Mind to his "White Line Fever" and you can picture beingness on the bus with him nighttime after night, watching the highway lines whorl past, or listen to "Tulare Dust" and you can relive with him the longing a boy in the San Joaquin Valley had for the glamour of the large city. So mind to the gritty "Big City" and y'all understand why he retreated to the calm countryside.
In his early on album comprehend photos, Haggard had the rugged good looks and charisma of a immature Johnny Cash. Now he's 67, and lines cross his face like stretches of barbed wire, and there is a story behind each of them. Restlessness and habitation, lust and devotion, heartache and good times, protestation and patriotism -- all accept etched his life, and his songs.
Country music tends to exist so sentimental and homespun information technology's like shooting fish in a barrel to stumble into self-parody, but Haggard has brought a freshness to the themes that places him aslope Hank Williams and Willie Nelson as 1 of the greatest country music writers.
Merle Haggard performances
Merle Haggard performs 'Okie From Muskogee'
Merle Haggard performs 'The Canteen Allow Me Downward'
Merle Haggard performs 'Mama Tried'
Merle Haggard performing 'That's The Way Life Goes'
Merle Haggard performing 'Today I Started Loving You Again'
Merle Haggard performing 'New San Antionio Rose'
"In that location are lots of people who have written hits, but near songs don't stick with us because you lot know and I know and the songwriter knows he'southward just telling us nearly something that never really happened. But and then you lot listen to Hank Williams' 'I Can't Help It (If I'm Withal in Love With You),' and everybody knows this ol' boy had his heart stepped on more a few times. That's what I've ever wanted people to experience when they hear my songs."
Haggard estimates he has written 10,000 songs, only finds only a fraction of them worth recording. Well-nigh of the great ones didn't starting time flowing until he got a tip from ane of his musical heroes, Johnny Cash.
He first saw Cash when the Man in Blackness played San Quentin prison in the late '50s while Haggard was a prisoner in that location. Years afterward, when Haggard started turning out country hits himself, he met Cash and mentioned he had seen him at San Quentin.
"John looked at me and said, 'That'south funny, Merle, because I don't remember you being on the show,'" Haggard says with a grin.
"So, I told him, 'I wasn't on the evidence. I was in the audience.' "
They had a good laugh, but Haggard says Cash gave him communication that changed his life.
The young singer told Cash his greatest fear was that some tabloid would reveal his prison groundwork and kill his career. Write a vocal nigh those days yourself, Cash told him, and fans will honey your honesty.
That led to "Mama Tried," which spent four weeks at No. one on the land charts in 1968 and remains a signature vocal. It's a salute to his mother and a lament about how he, as a restless teenager, refused to follow her communication.
Similar so many Haggard songs, it tells its story so just that it's difficult to see the craft involved.
--
And I turned 21 in prison doing life without parole.
No one could steer me right but Mama tried, Mama tried.
Mama tried to raise me meliorate, but her pleading, I denied.
That leaves only me to blame 'crusade Mama tried.
--
Every line in the song is true except "life without parole."
"I approximate I was just trying to brand it all a bit more dramatic," Haggard says over a late lunch of blackness-eyed peas with his married woman and two children.
"But there was a bit of truth to it. When they sent me to prison, they sent me to maximum security. On my papers, they wrote 'incorrigible.' I didn't know if I would e'er become out. That'due south a feeling you lot never forget, and then it came to me when I was writing the song."
When young songwriters today inquire for advice, Haggard passes forth Greenbacks's suggestion to write from experience.
"The most important affair in a song is simplicity," Haggard tells them. "You've got to recollect songs are meant to exist sung. You are not writing poetry. The best songs feel like they've always been here."
Haggard didn't come up into this world with many advantages, but his background gave him a head first when it came to writing country songs. He knew what it was like to struggle.
His Grit Bowl-era parents, James and Flossie Haggard, drove to California from Oklahoma in 1935 with all their possessions in a bootleg trailer attached to the back of a battered 1926 Chevy.
During his early years, Haggard lived in a converted refrigerator car aslope the Santa Fe Railway tracks in Oildale, a weed patch well-nigh Bakersfield. His father, who worked as a carpenter for the railroad, died when Merle was 9, and his mother took a job as a bookkeeper for a meat-packing firm. Non wanting to be a burden, a teenage Haggard ran away from home. He hopped freights, picked hay and got into lots of trouble.
By 17, Merle had spent 2 years in reform schoolhouse. Three years later he and a friend were arrested during an attempted burglary in which they were so "juiced upwardly" they didn't realize the buffet was yet open the night they tried to suspension in the dorsum door. He aggravated things past fleeing the jail, though he maintains he was encouraged past guards to think he was complimentary to get.
The approximate sentenced him to San Quentin for a maximum of 15 years. He began to realize that he was going to spend his unabridged life backside bars if he didn't modify his ways. And when he saw how the inmates went wild for Johnny Cash at that fabulous prison concert, he began to remember how he'd daydreamed of a music career.
Learning to duck trouble, Haggard was paroled afterwards three years (later on pardoned by and so-Gov. Ronald Reagan) and began following upwards on those dreams.
As a child, Haggard had been exposed to a lot of music, from Bing Crosby to Hank Williams. He later barbarous nether the spell of the rock 'n' roll of Elvis Presley, the country dejection of Jimmie Rodgers, the western swing of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys and, well-nigh important, Lefty Frizzell, one of the well-nigh influential of all country music singers. Haggard taught himself to play guitar on an instrument handed down by an older brother and became so skilful subsequently his prison days, he got jobs in Bakersfield and Las Vegas clubs. Singing was the side by side step. Fifty-fifty as a teenager, when he sang songs he'd heard on the radio, adults complimented him, suggesting he sounded "simply like the record."
Once he started singing in clubs, he realized the best way to distinguish himself was to write his own material. And he says the years of playing guitar helped him greatly in doing that.
"I'd recommend anyone who wants to write songs to learn to play an instrument because if you only know three chords, you tin can but write a vocal with three chords and that'due south fine, just if you lot want to compete with the Willie Nelsons and the Hoagy Carmichaels, y'all're going to have to know more than iii chords. The more chords you know the more than choices yous take when you start to write melodies."
Writing came naturally to young Haggard, who recalls teachers scolding him in grade schoolhouse because he'd frequently just gaze out the window during class. Ane wrote on his study carte, "If he would pay attending in class and not look out the window, he might practise well in schoolhouse." But he wasn't just woolgathering, he says. "I was thinking about songs."
Haggard says the melodies often arrive forth with the words. The central is finding something -- an emotion, a scene, a memory -- that triggers the period.
"When immature musicians ask for songwriting hints, I know it must frustrate them when I tell them, 'The songs but come to me, at any fourth dimension and any place,' " he says. (He in one case wrote a song in the 150 yards it took to walk from the limousine to the back of the stage.)
Every step in a Haggard song feels like one he has taken himself, and he recalls the story backside each vocal the manner most of the states remember first dates.
Memories and hope
For someone who has spent thousands of nights on stages around the world, perchance information technology's natural to live on a ranch so far off the interstate that y'all pass five "no trespassing" signs and several cattle guards before arriving at the unmarked driveway.
Haggard has sold tens of millions of records, but there is little almost his modest ranch firm or its furnishings to suggest he handled his coin well. As his 2 autobiographies outline, his life has been filled with gambling, drugs, breakups and bankruptcy.
Like then many other country veterans, he has been plagued for years past the ache of pretty much being put out to pasture by commercial radio, fifty-fifty though he continues to do absorbing piece of work. His last Top 10 country unmarried was 15 years agone.
There is an air of melancholy in the air every bit Haggard sits in a chair in his den and stares at the TV, which is tuned most of the day to CNN. The two things that brighten Haggard's mood are his family (he and his fifth married woman, Theresa, have two school-age children, Jenessa and Ben) and songwriting.
Sifting through a stack of his hit lyrics that's been handed to him, he downplays the idea in that location is science or even art involved in writing. Equally he talks about private songs, still, you come across the principles that guide him.
He nods as he thumbs through the pages -- looking casually at the words to lots of his No. 1 hits, including "Workin' Human Blues," "Branded Homo" and "I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am." He stops at "Swinging Doors," his kickoff large success as a writer.
With its mix of rowdy, honky-tonk music and sentimental lyrics, 1966's "Swinging Doors" defines barroom loneliness.
--
This old fume-filled bar is something I'm not used to.
Just I gave up my home to run across yous satisfied.
And I just called to allow you know where I'll be living.
It's not much, but I feel welcome here inside.
--
"That's the manner a lot of writers start out. You are concerned about getting enough money for your family unit, so you try to figure out what people are going to like. You should never actually forget that someone is going to be listening to a vocal, only you somewhen start looking beyond just your audience to find something that also speaks to you."
He picks upwardly another slice of paper. Information technology'southward "Firm of Memories," a slow, haunting carol likewise written in the mid-'60s but not one of his biggest hits.
"Now, here's a song I still like," he says. "It feels a little more me. To me, every word fits in the song. Nothing is in there only for evidence. That'due south one of the virtually important lessons a writer tin can learn. Y'all can't fall in beloved with a $l discussion or what you think is a clever rhyme and try to squeeze it into a song if information technology doesn't work."
Dearest rekindled
--
Today, I started loving you over again.
I'grand correct back where I've really always been.
I got over you merely long enough
To allow my heartache mend.
And so today I started loving you again.
--"I Started Loving You Over again," 1968
--
The odd thing about this carol is that information technology was never a hit single for Haggard, simply an album track. Even so it has been recorded by more than 400 artists, including Willie Nelson and Buddy Jewel, final yr'southward winner in the country version of "American Idol."
The tune is considered a archetype country ballad, a song with such a ring of authenticity and truth that it makes listeners feel information technology's their own story.
Here'south how it came near.
At one signal in the belatedly '60s, Haggard had spent 3 months on tour, a young land star who was and so hot that he'd end upwards with 65 consecutive Top x singles.
He was and so drained he lost track of everything around him -- even his married woman at the time, Bonnie Owens, a singer with his band. All of his energy went into getting to the next town and through the side by side show.
Back in California on the outset twenty-four hours of a week's break, a tired Haggard looked at his married woman and felt a warmth he had lost along the route. "It's like today I started loving you again," he told her tenderly.
Owens, who knew a good song championship when she heard it, urged him to write the thought downwards. Certain enough, Haggard, recalling the line a few days later, wrote "I Started Loving You Again" in x minutes on hotel stationery.
Songs spilling out
--
If nosotros make it through December
Everything's gonna be all correct I know.
It'south the coldest time of wintertime
And I shiver when I see the fallin' snow.
-- "If We Arrive Through December," 1973
--
In that location was a lot of economic hardship in the country in the early '70s, but Haggard didn't think of writing a song almost it until he sat downwardly with Roy Nichols during a coffee break at a recording session.
Nichols was the pb guitarist in Haggard'south band, the Strangers, and he had just gotten married for the 6th time. "So I merely kinda turned to him and said, 'Roy, what'southward the chances of this being the real bargain for you?' and he said, 'If nosotros arrive through December, I call back nosotros'll be all right.' "
Haggard was intrigued by the answer and asked his friend to explicate.
"He looked at me and said something like, 'Merle, you've got to remember, you've kind of made it big time and y'all forget how difficult it is effectually Dec for the average guy making a paycheck. Information technology'south a tough month with Christmas and all.'
"And I got to thinking even while he was talking about the gas wars going on back and so and the troubles with the machine industry and the problems in the land, and I too idea back to when I had a young girl and no chore and it was hard to find ane because I had this criminal record. And I started writing the song, only it never would have happened without Roy'southward remarks."
The ballad, written with the softness of a prayer, spent four weeks at No. 1 on the land charts and even crossed over to the pop Top xxx.
"Large Urban center," another evocative Haggard tune from the early on '80s, also grew out of a casual chat.
Haggard was in Los Angeles recording a new anthology. He already had 22 tracks down when he went out to the bout bus to pick upwardly something. His longtime driver, Dean Holloway, was in a funk.
"I asked him what was wrong and he said, 'I hate this,' and I idea he was talking virtually the bus, but he was talking about the boondocks.
"In trying to make him experience better, I said, 'You merely gave me an idea for a song. Let's write a vocal called "Big City," ' and that'south what we did. I really wrote 99% of it, but I gave him half the royalties considering he inspired information technology. And he deserved it because he unleashed all that free energy in me. It takes a lot of energy to write a vocal, I don't know why. Merely you lot tin't be lazy and be a songwriter."
The song, the title of i of Haggard'southward most popular albums, was one of his 38 No. 1 hits -- more than pals Cash and Nelson combined. Information technology's a midtempo tune, propelled by a loping land shuffle.
Haggard frowns, however, when he looks at the song's lyrics on the paper in front of him.
"I'll go over lines before I record a song, only I don't do a lot of editing," he says. "I'1000 lucky, I guess, but the songs pretty much come up out the mode I want them to be. But in that location's something in 'Big City' that I know I got wrong."
He points to the opening lines:
--
I'm tired of this dirty old urban center,
Entirely too much work and never plenty play.
And I'yard tired of these dingy old sidewalks
Think I'll walk off my steady chore today.
--
"That is the manner I wrote it, just information technology shouldn't have been 'play,' it should have been 'pay.' 'Play' works as a rhyme, simply 'pay' is a more substantial image, and that'due south how I sing it now. I like 'Big City,' simply I always sing 'pay,' never 'play.' "
Courting controversy
--
I'k proud to be an Okie from Muskogee,
A place where even squares tin can have a ball.
We still wave Quondam Glory down at the courthouse,
And white lightnin's still the biggest thrill of all.
"Okie From Muskogee," 1969
--
Thirty-five years later on he wrote what is probably his best-known song, Haggard however has trouble explaining his feelings about information technology.
In some interviews, he has said he wrote it for his begetter. "Dad was proud of existence an Okie. That'south where 'Okie From Muskogee' came from. He was the guy in the song." In others, even so, Haggard has maintained that it was merely a joke that he came up with i dark while riding the omnibus through Oklahoma.
Haggard continues to sing the hit, which is so infectious that it was easy to embrace even if the commentary seemed farthermost. He was invited by the Nixons to sing information technology at the White Firm (which he did) and invited by the liberal-leaning Smothers Brothers to sing it on their TV show (which he did).
Haggard still seems so mistrustful of authorisation that it'south like shooting fish in a barrel to imagine the mental attitude reaches back to the sadistic treatment he says he regularly encountered in youth authorization camps and prison.
Simply for all his wariness, Haggard is fiercely proud of the country and its troops overseas.
His "That's the News" early on last year was the most compelling of the many songs about the Iraq war. Long before criticism of the war became widespread, Haggard chided the authorities and the media for declaring that the war was over when American soldiers were nonetheless dying in Iraq.
"Sometimes you've got to trust what y'all write, even if you don't fully know what information technology's almost," Haggard says, going back to the "Okie" song. "Even though I talk about subject matter being important, the most important thing is feeling ... a feeling of truth.
"That's why I recorded information technology. I knew I was writing something controversial, that it was going to kill a lot of the leftist fans I had going. Just I felt something truthful in there. It was a confusing time, and I think I was just asking some questions near where we were going. It was more that than trying to be some redneck statement."
Habitation fires beckon
From the highest point on Haggard's hillside property, yous can come across Lake Shasta, where he has spent hundreds of hours fishing, and it's just a curt stroll from the house to ane of the many ponds and creeks. He doesn't hunt on the property, so deer and other animals come from miles around for sanctuary.
"Anytime soon, I'chiliad going to make a decision and break away and merely spend all my fourth dimension with my family," Haggard says, as he heads downward a path to a picnic table a few hundred feet from the house. It'southward sunset and his family is waiting with dinner. "Just that doesn't hateful I'll ever end writing. The dandy thing is I can practice that correct hither."
Even if the state music globe doesn't seem to be waiting for new Haggard songs the way it once did, he is nevertheless driven to express himself.
"It gets harder the longer you write to discover something fresh to say. When you lot finish a song, you don't just ask yourself if you similar it but if it is something you haven't said before.
"The matter that keeps you going is that you think your adjacent vocal may exist your 'Stardust.' People ask me how are you going to meridian 'Mama Tried' or 'Business firm of Memories'? Well, that's the challenge, isn't it?"
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Five songs for the ages
You could brand many meridian v lists of Haggard's best, one each for his restless youth songs, his heartbreak songs, his love, road and even commentary songs. Hither'due south one from each category.
1."Mama Tried" 1968. This is ane of the greatest country songs ever written, another installment in Haggard'due south memorable series of ofttimes complex and contradictory tales of the working man's blues. It's a tribute to his mother's by and large fruitless struggle to steer him right.
two."House of Memories" 1966. When Haggard sings, "My house is a prison, where memories environs me / At that place'south no place to hibernate where your retention won't find me," it'due south all the more haunting when you recall the painful years he spent in prison and reform school. This heartbreaking ballad, with a tune every bit mournful as its imagery, is about as nighttime as pop gets.
3."I Started Loving You Again" 1968. What makes the adept times and so sweet in this gentle ballad about renewed love is the retention of the bad times: "What a fool I was to recollect I could get past / With but these few million tears I've cried / I should have known the worst was nevertheless to come / And that crying fourth dimension for me had merely begun."
4."White Line Fever" 1969. With a melody that echoes the gentle hum of tires on the road, this midtempo tune begins: "White line fever, a sickness born downwards deep within my soul / White line fever, the years keep flyin' past like the highline poles."
5."That's the News" 2003. Backed by an understated melody, Haggard chides both the Bush administration and the media for accepting the "mission accomplished" claim in Iraq: "Politicians do all the talking: soldiers pay the ante / Suddenly the war is over, that's the news."
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Ways to sample the classics
Hither are some of the best Haggard retrospectives, along with a recent album that demonstrates his continued excellence.
1."20 Greatest Hits" Capitol. If you are new to Haggard and desire to sample his piece of work, this CD contains most of the early classics, including "Mama Tried" and "Sing Me Dorsum Home."
2."40 No. i Hits" Capitol. This is for the more than committed Haggard fan, a two-disc set that focuses on the early Capitol hits but also reaches into his after Epic and MCA catalogs for such jewels every bit "I Think I'll Just Stay Hither and Drink."
3."Down Every Road" Capitol. This boxed gear up is for the Haggard loyalist. At that place are 100 songs spread over four discs, and just about every one is memorable in some way. Haggard is arguably the most influential country singer of his generation, modernizing Lefty Frizzell'southward mode of stretching words or phrases to add a distinctive character.
4."Haggard Like Never Before" Hag.
In this 2003 CD, he's playful (the title tune), provocative ("That's the News"), heartbroken ("I Dreamed Yous Didn't Love Me"), and withal finds time for a marvelous version of Woody Guthrie'south "Philadelphia Lawyer."
Source: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-merle-haggard-20040620-story.html
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