Merle Haggard “Big City”
The future is not uncertain. It’s certainly terrible. Everything was better back then. When things were simpler. When America stood for something. When men could be men and women could be women. When I loved you and you loved me. When you could buy a cola for a nickel. When you could hop on a freight train and sleep under the stars. When the cities were on the outside and our Country was everything inside. Back before everything changed.
Welcome back to the great, complicated music of Merle Haggard, the most conservative popular recording artist America has ever known.
Merle wasn’t just “popular.” He was arguably the most successful Country artist of all time. Between 1965 and 2015, he released over sixty albums and almost forty number one Country hits. To put that in perspective, that’s more number one hits than Dolly Parton and Garth Brooks combined. More than Willie. More than Kenny. Merle Haggard owned the top spot of the charts for over two decades.
Merle wasn’t just “conservative,” either. In some ways he was libertarian, believing deeply in personal freedoms of speech. He believed in civil rights. He stood up for others’ rights to say things that he disagreed with. He was beloved by both conservative politicians and by the Grateful Dead. He smoked a forest of weed with Willie Nelson. He opposed the war in Iraq. Merle’s politics were complicated, to the point of being elusive. But to the extent that conservatism can be measured by a resistance to change, Merle Haggard was as conservative as they come. Deep in his make-up, the man hated change.
Merle Haggard was born into the late days of The Depression. His first home was a converted boxcar. He was in and out of trouble as a teen, eventually riding the rails to find work, adventure and more trouble. He spent several years in prison. Not small town jails. No. He escaped from those. So, Merle Haggard was sent to San Quentin for a couple of years. Real prison. When he was released in 1960, it’s clear that Merle had changed, but also that he never wanted to change again. It’s unclear whether he never wanted to go back or whether he profoundly appreciated the second chance. Or both. Or neither. But, upon his parole, he was psychically stamped in 1960 as a country boy, loyal to America and its “greatest generation” and disconnected with the counter-culture of his own generation. He was deeply patriotic. Deeply nostalgic. He spent an entire career writing songs about a time and a country that existed much more in his music than in reality. But, for Merle, that was everything. That was all he had. He protected that story and that country ferociously. The alternative was most certainly death.
In the early 80s, in the midst of restlessness, depression and addiction, Merle was taken to referring to his mid-life crisis as “male menopause.” As awful and dated as his description is, he was quite literally referring to a physiological change he was feeling and quite terrified of. Around this time, he described the disorientation of his middle age to a writer by wondering, “Why don't I like that anymore? Why do I like this now? And finally, I think you actually go through a biological change, you just, you become another. Your body is getting ready to die and your mind doesn't agree."
Merle wasn’t a constitutional conservative. He wasn’t a social conservative. He was a personal conservative. Progress requires change. And to Merle Haggard, change was quite literally the beginning of death. Beginning with his 1969 regressive American anthem, “Okie From Muskogee,” Merle stayed true to a sound and vision that would define an ongoing American conflict between the cities and the country, the elite and the left behind, and the old and the new. While he would often remind us that a man is more complicated than his characters or his songs, Merle’s steadfast conservatism inspired as many as it confounded. He was the Outlaw who loved the law of the land. He was the old fashioned American man who disdained hippies but was beloved by many of them. He grew older. He married five times. Everything around him changed. But Merle never did. He wrote three minute Country music songs that were sometime slow, sometimes had some Texas Swing and sometimes had some honky tonk. But they were almost uniformly great, well-written and sung, and frequently big hits. It’s hard to think of an artist as enduring and successful as Merle Haggard who so successfully resisted change.
By the mid 1970s, “Contemporary Country” had ascended to dominate the airwaves, assimilating its base form with the lighter fare of singer-songwriters and Pop balladeers. A new breed of Country superstars like Crystal Gayle, Kenny Rogers and others thrived in this softer, more aseptic brand of Country. It marked an undeniable sea change. Even Willie was not immune. Meanwhile, some of the heritage Country artists and famous Outlaws found themselves on the outside of the charts looking in. Merle’s string of number one hits ended in 1976. But he did not change for the times. He simply waited for the world to circle back to him. And, by the turn of the decade, it did. Many things that were out of fashion in Carter-era America returned under Reagan. In 1980, Merle had a novelty hit with a duet with Clint Eastwood for “Bronco Billy.” And then he scored again that year with “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink,” a song and title so good as to have been manifested by the gods of Country music. Like many Merle Haggard songs, you hear them and think, “was he really the first one to come up with that lyric and that melody?” They are that good and that familiar, even when you’ve not heard them before.
On the surface, 1981 seemed to foretell change for Merle. He left his longtime record label, MCA, to sign with (Sony) Epic Records. And though he’d scored hits in 1980, his albums had not been well received for quite some time. With a conservative new President and a wave of both frustration and patriotism sweeping the country, conditions seemed ripe for a full comeback. Change was not his style, though. A “return to form” felt beneath him. No. Merle Haggard wanted to show everyone that he was still the same goddamn Merle Haggard who wrote great songs with great stories about a great country. He hadn’t changed. The rest of the world had gone crazy. And, as if to prove his point, he and The Strangers entered the recording studio in October of 1981 with a feverish commitment to make the most “Merle Haggard-y” music they could summon. Over the course of just forty eight hours, they produced the music that would fill both 1981s “Big City” and 1982s “Going Where the Lonely Go.” The former would produce two number one Country hits, plus a single that reached number two, and would become one of the most critically lauded records of his middle-age. It is also one of the most passionately regressive, anti-progress albums ever made.
At ten songs and just thirty minutes, there is barely a wasted note on “Big City.” The first two tracks from “Big City” are the two chart-toppers. The title track is the opener. It locks in on a mid-tempo Swing that is not fast enough to dance to or slow enough to drink whiskey to. With just a little guitar, some fiddle, some upright bass and some slide for decor, it sounds like it could have been recorded in the 50s or early 60s. In the song, Merle wants to be free of the pace and scale of urbanity. He wants his retirement under the stars of Montana. You can take your social security and your steady job and your crowded sidewalks. He’d like to leave it all behind. It’s completely on brand, from its content to it’s two minutes and fifty nine seconds of concise verses, locked in choruses and laconic baritone. “My Favorite Memory” is the Broken Spoke slow dance second track. Looking backward again, Merle knows that time beats everything and everyone. It eventually consumes our bodies and our mind. But time will never beat his memory of love -- that first night, that trip together, that time they were lying in the grass. While not as far behind the beat as Willie, Merle nurses the lyrics here, and by the three minute mark, you’re happy the song is over, mainly because you need to get off the dance floor and dry your eyes.
Both in sound and matter, all of “Big City” is looking backward. The guitars are never loud. The piano never sounds electric. The most modern musical choices he makes are the occasional flourishes of trumpet or trombone that inject the slightest bit of Jazz into the Country music. And the songs are all about looking back -- with nostalgia or wistful romanticism -- or about escaping the modern rat race. “Good Old American Guest” is a little Country boogie number about riding the freight trains and the freedom and beauty of the hobo’s life. “Stop the World and Let Me Off” has a similar vibe and finds Merle asking the world to just slow down and give his mind and heart a break from all the spinning. “Texas Fiddle Song” is exactly what the name suggests, a short and sweet homage to South Texas dance halls of the middle 20th century. Each of these songs retread the same theme in slightly different forms. And each of them are succinct, well sung and well played. Merle knows how to beat the system with his melodies, so why bet big?
The most ambitious and provocative of these “times were better than” songs, though, is "Are the Good Times Really Over (I Wish a Buck Was Still Silver)." Played in an easy waltz time that would make it easy to sway to, sing along with or raise a (Confederate) flag to, it was the third single from “Big City” and reached number two on the Country charts. The older but not wiser cousin to “Okie From Muskogee” is also in some ways the spiritual godfather to Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places.” It’s a celebration of better and simpler times, before The Beatles and Elvis and Vietnam and when Coke was just “cola” and we all drove Fords. While we hurtle in our foreign cars towards hell, Merle opts to slow everything down and get wonderfully, maddeningly, simple.
My two favorite tracks from “Big City” are both about falling out of love. “I Think I’m Gonna Live Forever” is a more upbeat Swing number with standout harmonies from his then wife and longtime member of The Strangers, Leona Williams. With some upright, Texas saloon piano and some kick in his step, Merle sounds reborn. His heartbreak has healed and he’s inspired by the feeling of being out of love. He sings:
But now I think I'm going to live forever
Hey, dying ain't on my list of things to do
I think I'm going to live forever
Hey, it feels so good to be out of love with you
And then, near the album’s close, Merle sits perched on the verge of heartbreak and sounds vulnerable and empathetic for the first time on the record. With just the heartbeat of his guitar, some bass, slide and the slightest metronomic beat, on "You Don't Have Very Far To Go,” he delivers a perfect Country ballad about distance. Not the distance of the road or the distance of his family or the distance of the past. No. Merle is letting his love know that she is standing right on the line where his heart breaks and that, if that’s her desire, she doesn’t have far to go. Vocally, he reaches for the first and only time on “Big City.” It’s as though the idea of any break, of any change, compels him to howl. For most singers, the stretch would be perfectly normal. But Merle Haggard, who made song after song, album after album, singing and playing exactly what he knows, this slight change sounds breathtaking.
Given the latent politics and meta-text of it, “Big City” is a difficult album to fully consider. But it is simple and enjoyable to listen to. Merle Haggard is the rarest of artists who started out fully formed and never evolved or devolved noticeably during his long career. In 1981, at forty four, the singer and songwriter had already seen so much of life. He had been married three times. He had children. He had served years in prison. He had made and lost fortunes. He had traveled the world. The world had changed dramatically from that day, in 1960, when he regained his freedom. And he had undeniably changed as well. But very little of this change -- maybe none -- is embraced on “Big City.” And perhaps, in a sad but true way, that was a good thing; Because “Big City” is a small but wonderful album from a man who profoundly longed for simplicity and celebrated its beauty in song. Nobody held back the force of change like Merle Haggard did in 1981. Just two years later he’d be divorced, drunk and addicted to cocaine.