Haggard is a great American artist, full stop. The details of his personal life are interesting, I think, only because of the songs he wrote and sang, and the records he made. I’m a critic, not a ...

A raw, unfiltered portrait of working-class America at Christmastime—one that still resonates just as deeply half a century ...

Merle Haggard was one of the greatest country singer/songwriters to walk the earth. He was also one of the only (reformed) criminals in the Outlaw Country movement. Haggard also helped to bring the ...

Twenty years ago, the country legend talked with Variety's chief music critic about what drove him to write the anti-Bush/anti-Iraq-war song, now being revived as the Republican VP candidate's walk-up ...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Merle Haggard didn’t just write great country songs, he lived them. His real life experiences of poverty as the son of Oklahoma migrants, an early stint in prison and a life ...

If you look up ten lists or playlists of country Christmas songs, you’ll likely find Merle Haggard’s 1973 No. 1 hit “If We Make It Through December” in at least five of them. In my opinion, it’s out ...

Nelson reinterprets “Okie from Muskogee,” and some of Haggard’s other biggest hits, on the new 11-track LP, Workin’ Man: ...

...it was a wonderful period in America. America was like the music: the music reflects the kind of people we were then. And the music was much more--I think--sophisticated than it is now. It was much ...

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 ...

Prior to his death in April of 2016, Merle Haggard accumulated a massive stockpile of unreleased songs -- 300 or 400 of them, according to an interview from the spring of 2015. One of those songs came ...