You might consider changing the name of your Substack from 'Word and Song' to 'Runs the Gamut.' What a delightful choice this morning, the Hagg! Great song, great singer, great story. My mind does boggle to imagine Joan Baez singing this one....😊 Not that she couldn't. But my heart wants this song to have that voice. All thumbs up!👍
And well they should. A song with universal application transcends genres. A mental hobby of mine is 'What-ifs.'. What if professional football players and professional jockeys traded jobs. What if Merle Haggard had sung Judy Collins' 'Both Sides Now.....'
And for all I know, he did! Thanks again for this dose of joy.
That intro is part of another great Merle Haggard song, Tulare Dust. Haggard’s parents moved from Oklahoma to California during the Great Depression. Here are the lyrics to the entire song. If you listen to it, along with the Mama’s Hungry Eyes, you get a real feel for the story of Haggard’s family and the many others just like them.
Tulare dust in a farm boy's nose
Wondering where the freight train goes
Standin' in the field by the railroad track
Cursin' this strap on my cotton sack
I can see mom and dad with shoulders low
Both of 'em pickin' on a double row
They do it for a livin' because they must
That's life like it is in the Tulare dust
The California sun was something new
That when we arrived in '42
And I can still remember how my daddy cussed
The tumbleweeds here in the Tulare dust
The valley fever was a comin' fate
To the farmworkers here in the Golden State
And I miss Oklahoma but I'll stay
If I must and help make a livin' in the Tulare dust
Thank you for that information. It fits beautifully, and does indeed tell more of the family story, and there was real hardship for so many in those years. My parents were children of the Great Depression, so I grew up hearing about it. My mother born in 1934, was the 9th child and youngest daughter in a family of 13 children. Poverty doesn't begin tell their story.
awesome choice for this week's song, even though i personally would pick either Swinging Doors or Misery and Gin as Hag's signature song and many would pick Okie From Muskogee. the man was a singular talent - and he respected Bob Wills (who is still the king!) - and so the repose of his soul is remembered in my daily prayers.
Denver, I had to exercise a bit of poetic license to give my essay a focus. "Okie" is probably the song that most people associate with Haggard, but it wasn't a fit for our word. And also he later recanted the message of that song. But he was a very great talent, and he wrote about the misery he knew from hard experience. And may God rest his soul.
I don't know that Haggard so much recanted "Okie from Muskogee" as later feeling pigeon-holed by it and growing weary of talking about it. Over the years he gave many different versions of why he wrote it and what it meant or didn't mean. (He also later started smoking marijuana!). It appears, though, that he wrote it as a lark, not to make a "statement," and was surprised at the reaction it received, both pro and con. He was genuinely disgusted at the time at the counter-culture's rejection of the American heritage and basic virtues, and most especially its sneering contempt of the working class--his own people. "Okie" is not a pro-Vietnam War song, but a light-hearted celebration and defense of middle-America, specifically his own family and their experience. That love and loyalty (pietas) for his people and heritage, with all their virtues and flaws, their joys and sorrows, is really what informs all his music, including his criticism of the Iraq War in songs like "America First" and "Where's All the Freedom?"
Thank you to you and Tony for your celebration of word and song.
I read an interview in which he said of himself that he was "dumb as a rock" when he wrote "Okie," and I think yes, he had made a turn-around because he was also later on a defender of marijuana. I liked "Okie," but I was a kid when it came out. And in 1968 the world was upside down in an unprecedented way. LOTS of ordinary people were confused and feeling attacked for being ordinary Americans. I think like anyone would, he probably got more-than a little tired of the song after doing it for so long! But what I read was a "recant." Maybe he was also tired of being asked about it in terms of a political statement and not as you say as a rather light-hearted defense of an out-of-fashion way of life. It's obvious that he was a great talent both as a writer and musician and singer -- but he didn't want to be pegged as a politician!
That may be what was behind his later unease with the song: it seems he had a life-long aversion to being co-opted for anyone else' agenda, political or otherwise.
Good one! Thanks, Debra. And now I shall be playing Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash by way of Pandora as I go about my Saturday chores. Keeping you and yours in my prayers, always. Our Word and Song family is so dear to me. Blest be the ties that bind.
Anne, thank you for loving my songs. I finished this one at 3 am. It had to rattle around in my head for some days. And it's been a few tough weeks at our house. We so appreciate the prayers.
In Johnny Cash's excellent autobiography, he describes in detail the physically painful, hot and humiliating work of picking cotton. The experience of rural white poverty was widespread during the depression and becomes one of the central recurring themes in Country and Western. Cash says that by the 60s there was a real divide in Nashville between those who had experienced that life and those who only pretended. Hag's authenticity was hard-earned.
Right all around you are. Yesterday would have been my own mother's 90th birthday. She was the 9th child and youngest daughter in a family of 13 children, and she grew up in grinding poverty in rural NJ. One day I hope to write about that. Life was hard, and the authentic stories resonated with people who had lived through the hardship of it.
The one I read was "Cash: The Autobiography." Johnny's native intelligence really shines through despite his almost complete lack of education. I was trying to get a handle on his idiosyncratic Christianity: his faith is deeply felt but not organized by consistent practice. I think this explains how the theology expressed in his music can be so good in some songs and so bad in others.
It was new to my husband, too. But we are all rediscovering the good things together here! I always loved this song. And this week I found out what went into the writing of it.
Greetings from Thurles, Ireland.
You might consider changing the name of your Substack from 'Word and Song' to 'Runs the Gamut.' What a delightful choice this morning, the Hagg! Great song, great singer, great story. My mind does boggle to imagine Joan Baez singing this one....😊 Not that she couldn't. But my heart wants this song to have that voice. All thumbs up!👍
I put Joan Baez in there because it was so odd to think about, haha! But folk singers like the song, evidently!
And well they should. A song with universal application transcends genres. A mental hobby of mine is 'What-ifs.'. What if professional football players and professional jockeys traded jobs. What if Merle Haggard had sung Judy Collins' 'Both Sides Now.....'
And for all I know, he did! Thanks again for this dose of joy.
Hahaaa!
That intro is part of another great Merle Haggard song, Tulare Dust. Haggard’s parents moved from Oklahoma to California during the Great Depression. Here are the lyrics to the entire song. If you listen to it, along with the Mama’s Hungry Eyes, you get a real feel for the story of Haggard’s family and the many others just like them.
Tulare dust in a farm boy's nose
Wondering where the freight train goes
Standin' in the field by the railroad track
Cursin' this strap on my cotton sack
I can see mom and dad with shoulders low
Both of 'em pickin' on a double row
They do it for a livin' because they must
That's life like it is in the Tulare dust
The California sun was something new
That when we arrived in '42
And I can still remember how my daddy cussed
The tumbleweeds here in the Tulare dust
The valley fever was a comin' fate
To the farmworkers here in the Golden State
And I miss Oklahoma but I'll stay
If I must and help make a livin' in the Tulare dust
The Tulare dust in a farm boy's nose
Wondering where the freight train goes
Standin' in the field by the railroad track
Cursin' this strap on my cotton sack
Thank you for that information. It fits beautifully, and does indeed tell more of the family story, and there was real hardship for so many in those years. My parents were children of the Great Depression, so I grew up hearing about it. My mother born in 1934, was the 9th child and youngest daughter in a family of 13 children. Poverty doesn't begin tell their story.
awesome choice for this week's song, even though i personally would pick either Swinging Doors or Misery and Gin as Hag's signature song and many would pick Okie From Muskogee. the man was a singular talent - and he respected Bob Wills (who is still the king!) - and so the repose of his soul is remembered in my daily prayers.
Denver, I had to exercise a bit of poetic license to give my essay a focus. "Okie" is probably the song that most people associate with Haggard, but it wasn't a fit for our word. And also he later recanted the message of that song. But he was a very great talent, and he wrote about the misery he knew from hard experience. And may God rest his soul.
I don't know that Haggard so much recanted "Okie from Muskogee" as later feeling pigeon-holed by it and growing weary of talking about it. Over the years he gave many different versions of why he wrote it and what it meant or didn't mean. (He also later started smoking marijuana!). It appears, though, that he wrote it as a lark, not to make a "statement," and was surprised at the reaction it received, both pro and con. He was genuinely disgusted at the time at the counter-culture's rejection of the American heritage and basic virtues, and most especially its sneering contempt of the working class--his own people. "Okie" is not a pro-Vietnam War song, but a light-hearted celebration and defense of middle-America, specifically his own family and their experience. That love and loyalty (pietas) for his people and heritage, with all their virtues and flaws, their joys and sorrows, is really what informs all his music, including his criticism of the Iraq War in songs like "America First" and "Where's All the Freedom?"
Thank you to you and Tony for your celebration of word and song.
I read an interview in which he said of himself that he was "dumb as a rock" when he wrote "Okie," and I think yes, he had made a turn-around because he was also later on a defender of marijuana. I liked "Okie," but I was a kid when it came out. And in 1968 the world was upside down in an unprecedented way. LOTS of ordinary people were confused and feeling attacked for being ordinary Americans. I think like anyone would, he probably got more-than a little tired of the song after doing it for so long! But what I read was a "recant." Maybe he was also tired of being asked about it in terms of a political statement and not as you say as a rather light-hearted defense of an out-of-fashion way of life. It's obvious that he was a great talent both as a writer and musician and singer -- but he didn't want to be pegged as a politician!
That may be what was behind his later unease with the song: it seems he had a life-long aversion to being co-opted for anyone else' agenda, political or otherwise.
And that's why I like "Mama Tried." There's nothing political or social-justicey about it. It's not whiney and self-excusing. It fit our word to a T.
Debra,
"Mama Tried" is probably my favorite Haggard song. For so many reasons, including all the ones you had in your post. Thanks for sharing it.
Ken
Good one! Thanks, Debra. And now I shall be playing Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash by way of Pandora as I go about my Saturday chores. Keeping you and yours in my prayers, always. Our Word and Song family is so dear to me. Blest be the ties that bind.
Anne, thank you for loving my songs. I finished this one at 3 am. It had to rattle around in my head for some days. And it's been a few tough weeks at our house. We so appreciate the prayers.
In Johnny Cash's excellent autobiography, he describes in detail the physically painful, hot and humiliating work of picking cotton. The experience of rural white poverty was widespread during the depression and becomes one of the central recurring themes in Country and Western. Cash says that by the 60s there was a real divide in Nashville between those who had experienced that life and those who only pretended. Hag's authenticity was hard-earned.
Right all around you are. Yesterday would have been my own mother's 90th birthday. She was the 9th child and youngest daughter in a family of 13 children, and she grew up in grinding poverty in rural NJ. One day I hope to write about that. Life was hard, and the authentic stories resonated with people who had lived through the hardship of it.
Johnny Cash was the most recent performer my Dad liked. Cash's Man in White is in my Audible wish list. I guess that will be my next listen.
The one I read was "Cash: The Autobiography." Johnny's native intelligence really shines through despite his almost complete lack of education. I was trying to get a handle on his idiosyncratic Christianity: his faith is deeply felt but not organized by consistent practice. I think this explains how the theology expressed in his music can be so good in some songs and so bad in others.
Great choice! I have never heard that song before, but I see why it is a classic!
It was new to my husband, too. But we are all rediscovering the good things together here! I always loved this song. And this week I found out what went into the writing of it.