Workin' Man Blues
Workin' Man Blues

Author: Gerald Haslam

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2012-10

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 0520275055

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"Workin' Man Blues is possibly the most brilliantly astute and thorough examination ever written about country music in California and the impact it has had in our lives and on our culture. I'm extremely flattered to be even mentioned in such august company."—Dwight Yoakam, Singer, Songwriter "With all the pathos of a Rose Maddox ballad and more edges than a Merle Haggard song, Haslam has spun together the stories of the artists who have made California part of country music and country music part of California."—James Gregory, author of American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California "This book clears new ground in both the history of music and American ethnicity. As gorgeously detailed as any shirt worn by a Rhinestone Cowboy, there's no other book like it."—Kevin Starr, State Librarian of California

Workin' Man Blues
Workin' Man Blues

Author: Gerald W. Haslam

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1999-04-29

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 052092262X

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California has been fertile ground for country music since the 1920s, nurturing a multitude of talents from Gene Autry to Glen Campbell, Rose Maddox to Barbara Mandrell, Buck Owens to Merle Haggard. In this affectionate homage to California's place in country music's history, Gerald Haslam surveys the Golden State's contributions to what is today the most popular music in America. At the same time he illuminates the lives of the white, working-class men and women who migrated to California from the Dust Bowl, the Hoovervilles, and all the other locales where they had been turned out, shut down, or otherwise told to move on. Haslam's roots go back to Oildale, in California's central valley, where he first discovered the passion for country music that infuses Workin' Man Blues. As he traces the Hollywood singing cowboys, Bakersfield honky-tonks, western-swing dance halls, "hillbilly" radio shows, and crossover styles from blues and folk music that also have California roots, he shows how country music offered a kind of cultural comfort to its listeners, whether they were oil field roustabouts or hash slingers. Haslam analyzes the effects on country music of population shifts, wartime prosperity, the changes in gender roles, music industry economics, and television. He also challenges the assumption that Nashville has always been country music's hometown and Grand Ole Opry its principal venue. The soul of traditional country remains romantically rural, southern, and white, he says, but it is also the anthem of the underdog, which may explain why California plays so vital a part in its heritage: California is where people reinvent themselves, just as country music has reinvented itself since the first Dust Bowl migrants arrived, bringing their songs and heartaches with them.

Merle Haggard
Merle Haggard

Author: David Cantwell

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2013-09-15

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0292754175

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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.

The Hag
The Hag

Author: Marc Eliot

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2022-01-18

Total Pages: 463

ISBN-13: 030692319X

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The definitive biography of country legend Merle Haggard by the New York Times bestselling biographer of Clint Eastwood, Cary Grant, The Eagles, and more. Merle Haggard was one of the most important country music musicians who ever lived. His astonishing musical career stretched across the second half of the 20th Century and into the first two decades of the next, during which he released an extraordinary 63 albums, 38 that made it on to Billboard's Country Top Ten, 13 that went to #1, and 37 #1 hit singles. With his ample songbook, unique singing voice and brilliant phrasing that illuminated his uncompromising commitment to individual freedom, cut with the monkey of personal despair on his back and a chip the size of Monument Valley on his shoulder, Merle's music and his extraordinary charisma helped change the look, the sound, and the fury of American music. The Hag tells, without compromise, the extraordinary life of Merle Haggard, augmented by deep secondary research, sharp detail and ample anecdotal material that biographer Marc Eliot is known for, and enriched and deepened by over 100 new and far-ranging interviews. It explores the uniquely American life of an angry rebellious boy from the wrong side of the tracks bound for a life of crime and a permanent home in a penitentiary, who found redemption through the music of "the common man." Merle Haggard's story is a great American saga of a man who lifted himself out of poverty, oppression, loss and wanderlust, to catapult himself into the pantheon of American artists admired around the world. Eliot has interviewed more than 100 people who knew Haggard, worked with him, were influenced by him, loved him or hated him. The book celebrates the accomplishments and explore the singer's infamous dark side: the self-created turmoil that expressed itself through drugs, women, booze, and betrayal. The Hag offers a richly anecdotal narrative that will elevate the life and work of Merle Haggard to where both properly belong, in the pantheon of American music and letters. The Hag is the definitive account of this unique American original, and will speak to readers of country music and rock biographies alike.

The New Merle Haggard Anthology Songbook
The New Merle Haggard Anthology Songbook

Author: Merle Haggard

Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation

Published: 1991-01-01

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1495083616

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(Piano/Vocal/Guitar Artist Songbook). 54 of the very best from this country legend arranged for piano, voice and guitar, including: Okie From Muskogee * From Graceland to the Promised Land * A Place To Fall Apart * If We Make It Through December * Mama Tried * Let's Chase Each Other Around the Room * I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink * I Had a Beautiful Time * Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Star * and many more.

Tuba Skinny and Shaye Cohn
Tuba Skinny and Shaye Cohn

Author: Pops Coffee

Publisher:

Published: 2017-11-10

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 9781973270836

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Now updated to 2020, this is an account of the development and output of the great young traditional jazz band Tuba Skinny, which is based in New Orleans. Many recommendations are included of videos to watch and recordings available for purchase.

The Running Kind
The Running Kind

Author: David Cantwell

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2022-05-17

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 1477325697

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2022 Belmont Award for the Best Book on Country Music, International Country Music Conference/Belmont University New and expanded biography of one of country music’s most celebrated singer-songwriters. Merle Haggard enjoyed numerous artistic and professional triumphs, including more than a hundred country hits (thirty-eight at number one), dozens of studio and live album releases, upwards of ten thousand concerts, induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and songs covered by artists as diverse as Lynryd Skynyrd, Elvis Costello, Tammy Wynette, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Willie Nelson, the Grateful Dead, and Bob Dylan. In The Running Kind, a new edition that expands on his earlier analysis and covers Haggard's death and afterlife as an icon of both old-school and modern country music, David Cantwell takes us on a revelatory journey through Haggard’s music and the life and times out of which it came. Covering the breadth of his career, Cantwell focuses especially on the 1960s and 1970s, when Haggard created some of his best-known and most influential music: songs that helped invent the America we live in today. Listening closely to a masterpiece-crowded catalogue (including “Okie from Muskogee,” “Sing Me Back Home,” “Mama Tried,” and “Working Man Blues,” 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.

Merle Haggard's Okie from Muskogee
Merle Haggard's Okie from Muskogee

Author: Rachel Lee Rubin

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2018-03-22

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 1501321447

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Every now and then, a song inspires a cultural conversation that ends up looking like a brawl. Merle Haggard's Okie from Muskogee, released in 1969, is a prime example of that important role of popular music. Okie immediately helped to frame an ongoing discussion about region and class, pride and politics, culture and counterculture. But the conversation around the song, useful as it was, drowned out the song itself, not to mention the other songs on the live album-named for Okie and performed in Muskogee-that Haggard has carefully chosen to frame what has turned out to be his most famous song. What are the internal clues for gleaning the intended meaning of Okie? What is the pay-off of the anti-fandom that Okie sparked (and continues to spark) in some quarters? How has the song come to be a shorthand for expressing all manner of anti-working class attitudes? What was Haggard's artistic path to that stage in Oklahoma, and how did he come to shape the industry so profoundly at the moment when urban country singers were playing a major role on the American social and political landscape?

The Ultimate Country Fake Book (Songbook)
The Ultimate Country Fake Book (Songbook)

Author: Hal Leonard Corp.

Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation

Published: 1983-08-01

Total Pages: 925

ISBN-13: 1458432785

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(Fake Book). This fifth edition includes even more of your favorite country hits over 700 songs by country superstars of yesterday and today: Achy Break Heart * Ain't Going Down ('Til the Sun Comes Up) * Always on My Mind * Amazed * American Soldier * Are You Lonesome Tonight? * Bless the Broken Road * Blue Clear Sky * Boot Scootin' Boogie * A Boy Named Sue * Breathe * Butterfly Kisses * Crazy * Daddy Sang Bass * Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind * Down at the Twist and Shout * Elvira * Family Tradition * Forever and Ever, Amen * Friends in Low Places * The Gambler * Georgia on My Mind * The Greatest Man I Never Knew * Harper Valley P.T.A. * I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow * I Hope You Dance * Jambalaya * King of the Road * Long Black Train * Redneck Woman * Rocky Top * She Believes in Me * Sixteen Tons * There's a Tear in My Beer * Walkin' After Midnight * What's Forever For * Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning) * You're Still the One * Your Cheatin' Heart * and more. Also features a glossary of guitar chord frames and alphabetical and artist indexes.

The Great American Country Songbook
The Great American Country Songbook

Author: Hal Leonard Corp.

Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation

Published: 2001-05-01

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 1458432858

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(Easy Guitar). Easy arrangements with tab for 50 all-American country classics, including: Act Naturally * All My Ex's Live in Texas * Boot Scootin' Boogie * Crazy * Elvira * Faded Love * Folsom Prison Blues * For the Good Times * Friends in Low Places * Georgia on My Mind * Hey, Good Lookin' * King of the Road * Lucille * Rocky Top * Sixteen Tons * Take Me Home, Country Roads * There's a Tear in My Beer * You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma * Your Cheatin' Heart * and more.