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Pride In What I Am
''Pride in What I Am'' is the eighth studio album by American country music artist Merle Haggard and The Strangers released in 1969 on Capitol Records. Recording and composition After scoring four number-one hits in a row, the single "I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am" peaked at number 3 on the ''Billboard'' country singles chart. The song is a first person narration by a homeless drifter who laments his lonely, rootless existence but at the same time celebrates "living off the side of our great land..." as he defiantly proclaims, "Things I learned in a hobo jungle are things they never taught me in a classroom." Aside from the jaunty "I'm Bringing Home Good News," the album is largely a stripped down affair with arrangements and instrumentation that reveal a pop and folk music influence, such as on the title track. ''Pride in What I Am'' also showcases Haggard's affection for the blues on the comically self-loathing "I Can't Hold Myself In Line" and the Jimmie Rodgers classic " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Merle Haggard
Merle Ronald Haggard (April 6, 1937 – April 6, 2016) was an American country music singer, songwriter, guitarist, and fiddler. Haggard was born in Oildale, California, toward the end of the Great Depression. His childhood was troubled after the death of his father, and he was incarcerated several times in his youth. After being released from San Quentin State Prison in 1960, he managed to turn his life around and launch a successful country music career. He gained popularity with his songs about the working class that occasionally contained themes contrary to anti–Vietnam War sentiment of some popular music of the time. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, he had 38 number-one hits on the US country charts, several of which also made the ''Billboard'' all-genre singles chart. Haggard continued to release successful albums into the 2000s. He received many honors and awards for his music, including a Kennedy Center Honor (2010), a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (200 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sing Me Back Home
''Sing Me Back Home'' is the fifth studio album by American country singer and songwriter Merle Haggard and The Strangers, released in 1968 on Capitol Records. Background The album's title track was inspired by an inmate Haggard knew while he was serving time in San Quentin named Jimmy "Rabbit" Kendrick. As recounted in his 1981 autobiography ''Merle Haggard: Sing Me Back Home'', Rabbit devised a brilliant escape and invited Haggard to join him, but they both agreed it would be best that he stay put. Rabbit was captured two weeks later and eventually executed for the murder of a state trooper. Haggard, the "guitar playing friend", wrote the song as a tribute. Writing in the liner notes for the 1994 retrospective ''Down Every Road'', Daniel Cooper calls it, "a ballad that works on so many different levels of the soul it defies one's every attempt to analyze it." In a 1977 interview in ''Billboard'' with Bob Eubanks, Haggard reflected, "Even though the crime was brutal and the guy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Norm Hamlet
Norm Hamlet is an American steel guitarist and a member of Merle Haggard's The Strangers band for the past 49 years.Terry Downs: ''The Strangers'', http://www.terrydownsmusic.com/Archive/strangers_article.pdf, n.d., downloaded May 6, 2012.The Steel Guitar Hall Of Fame, Inc.: ''Steel Guitar Hall of Fame'', http://www.scottysmusic.com/hofplq.htm, 2012. Hamlet was born on February 27, 1935, in Woodville, California. He began playing guitar in his teens and played throughout North Central California for a number of years with several groups, before going to Bakersfield, California, in 1965 where he became an influential part of the Bakersfield sound. He has won many awards, including induction into the Western Swing Society hall of fame in Sacramento, California ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roy Nichols
Roy Ernest Nichols (October 21, 1932 – July 3, 2001) was an American country music guitarist best known as the lead guitarist for Merle Haggard's band The Strangers for more than two decades. He was known for his guitar technique, a mix of fingerpicking and pedal steel-like bends, usually played on a Fender Telecaster electric guitar. Nichols is considered one of the founders of the country music subgenre the “Bakersfield Sound”, which includes such notable country artists as Haggard, Buck Owens, and Don Rich. Biography Roy Ernest Nichols was born in Chandler, Arizona, to Bruce and Lucille Nichols, as the first born of seven children. The Nichols family moved to Fresno, California, when he was two, where they owned a camp for migrant farm workers. Sometimes a traveling gypsy band would stay at the camp and the young Nichols would hide and watch them play. His father Bruce was also a musician, playing upright bass at local dances on the weekends in the San Joaqui ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jimmie Rodgers
James Charles Rodgers (September 8, 1897 – May 26, 1933) was an American singer-songwriter and musician who rose to popularity in the late 1920s. Widely regarded as "the Father of Country Music", he is best known for his distinctive rhythmic yodeling, unusual for a music star of his era. Rodgers rose to prominence based upon his recordings, among country music's earliest, rather than concert performances. He has been cited as an inspiration by many artists and inductees into various halls of fame across both country music and the blues, in which he was also a pioneer. Among his other popular nicknames are "The Singing Brakeman" and "The Blue Yodeler". Early life According to tradition, Rodgers' birthplace is usually listed as Meridian, Mississippi; however, in documents Rodgers signed later in life, his birthplace was listed as Geiger, Alabama, the home of his paternal grandparents. Yet historians who have researched the circumstances of that document, including Nolan P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Simpson
Joe Cecil "Red" Simpson (March 6, 1934 – January 8, 2016) was an American country music singer and songwriter best known for his trucker -themed country songs. Biography Joe Cecil Simpson was born in 1934 in Higley, Arizona, and was raised in Bakersfield, California, the youngest of 12 children. At age 14, he wrote his first song. However, his father helped him listen to Ludwig van Beethoven. Simpson was working at the Wagon Wheel in Lamont when Fuzzy Owen saw him and arranged for Simpson to work at his Clover Club as a piano player. He then got a job replacing Buck Owens at the Blackboard Club on weekends. Simpson was influenced by Owens, Merle Haggard and Bill Woods, who asked Red if he would write a song about driving trucks. (By the time Simpson handed him four truck songs, however, Woods had stopped recording.) Simpson began writing songs with Owens in 1962, including the Top Ten hit "Gonna Have Love." In 1965, Capitol Records producer Ken Nelson was looking for some ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lefty Frizzell
William Orville "Lefty" Frizzell (March 31, 1928 – July 19, 1975) was an American country music singer-songwriter and honky-tonk singer. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1982. Frizzell released many songs that charted in the Top 10 of the Hot Country Songs charts. His success did not carry on into the 1960s, and after becoming an alcoholic, he died at age 47. Life and career Early life William Orville Frizzell was born the son of an oilman, the first of eight children, in Corsicana, Texas, Corsicana in Navarro County, Texas, Navarro County in North Texas, United States. During his childhood, his family moved to El Dorado, Arkansas, El Dorado in Union County, Arkansas, Union County in south Arkansas. As a child he was called "Sonny," but later took the name "Lefty." It was believed they called him "Lefty" because he had won a neighborhood fight; however, it turned out that this tale was a part of a fake publicity stunt set up by his label. Frizzell's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billy Mize
William Robert Mize (April 29, 1929 – October 29, 2017) was an American steel guitarist, band leader, vocalist, songwriter, and TV show host. Biography Mize was born in Arkansas City, Kansas, United States, but raised in the San Joaquin Valley of California, an area steeped in country music thanks to relocated " Okies". He originally learned to play guitar as a child, but fell in love with the steel guitar he received for his 18th birthday. Mize moved to Bakersfield, California and formed his own band playing local gigs and also working as a disc jockey on KPMC. In 1953, he, Bill Woods and Herb Henson put together a local TV show called The Cousin Herb Trading Post Show on KERO-TV Bakersfield (then channel 10), where he became affectionately known as Billy The Kid. The signal from that show was so strong the show could be seen as far as Fresno, all the way over to the central coast and Los Angeles. The show was popular because it not only featured fledgling acts such as Bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Legend Of Bonnie And Clyde
''The Legend of Bonnie & Clyde'' is the sixth studio album by Aemrican country music artist Merle Haggard and The Strangers released on Capitol Records in 1968. It rose to number 6 on the ''Billboard'' country albums chart. Background The title track to this album became Haggard's third consecutive number one country single, but it was its B-side, "I Started Loving You Again" (the "Today" was added to the title later), that became a standard and his most covered song. In the book ''Merle Haggard: The Running Kind'', David Cantwell discusses the song's impact, noting that between 1968 and 1975 alone "at least sixty recordings of the song were released. There have been pushing that many again in the decades since, and that's without counting the times it's been performed on television through the years, or during mega-star arena shows and don't-forget-to-tip-your-waitress bar sets, or the just-for-fun semipro and amateur versions YouTube lists into the thousands." Singer Bonnie Owen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Stephen Thomas Erlewine (; born June 18, 1973) is an American music critic and senior editor for the online music database AllMusic. He is the author of many artist biographies and record reviews for AllMusic, as well as a freelance writer, occasionally contributing liner notes. Erlewine was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and is a nephew of the former musician and AllMusic founder Michael Erlewine. He studied at the University of Michigan, where he majored in English, and was a music editor (1993–94) and then arts editor (1994–1995) of the school's paper '' The Michigan Daily'', and DJ'd at the campus radio station, WCBN. He has contributed to many books, including ''All Music Guide to Rock: The Definitive Guide to Rock, Pop, and Soul'' and ''All Music Guide to Hip-Hop: The Definitive Guide to Rap & Hip-Hop''. References External linksErlewine's pageat Pitchfork.comContributionsto ''Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on mu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its coverage of rock music and political reporting by Hunter S. Thompson. In the 1990s, the magazine broadened and shifted its focus to a younger readership interested in youth-oriented television shows, film actors, and popular music. It has since returned to its traditional mix of content, including music, entertainment, and politics. The first magazine was released in 1967 and featured John Lennon on the cover and was published every two weeks. It is known for provocative photography and its cover photos, featuring musicians, politicians, athletes, and actors. In addition to its print version in the United States, it publishes content through Rollingstone.com and numerous international editions. Penske Media Corporation is the current own ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pitchfork Media
''Pitchfork'' (formerly ''Pitchfork Media'') is an American online music publication (currently owned by Condé Nast) that was launched in 1995 by writer Ryan Schreiber as an independent music blog. Schreiber started Pitchfork while working at a record store in suburban Minneapolis, and the website earned a reputation for its extensive coverage of indie rock music. It has since expanded and covers all kinds of music, including pop. Pitchfork was sold to Condé Nast in 2015, although Schreiber remained its editor-in-chief until he left the website in 2019. Initially based in Minneapolis, Pitchfork later moved to Chicago, and then Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Its offices are currently located in One World Trade Center alongside other Condé Nast publications. The site is best known for its daily output of music reviews but also regularly reviews reissues and box sets. Since 2016, it has published retrospective reviews of classics, and other albums that it had not previously revi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
