Merle Haggard is an artist I can't stop listening to. Sure, not everything he has done is a masterpiece, but he's made quite a few tunes good enough for one to invest in this cd. They're all here.
If you like Merle or never heard about Merle, but you like outlaw country, then you'll like this. There's been quite a few outlaw country artists, but most of them come out sounding like a poor man's Johnny Cash. Merle is different in the sense that he has added his personal touch in the form of his background in the 50's Bakersfield sound and the guitars you love from Buck Owens tunes are all here. Sometimes Merle explores a gentler touch as well, there's quite a few love songs on this cd too.
No matter how much you love Merle's gentler side or his socially aware stuff, when you make a Greatest Hits album, you must include Okie from Muskogee and The fightin' side of me and they are of course both included and Okie... is the version that is best, the live version.
For those of you that have never heard Merle, these tunes are tunes that you, due to their lyrics, either love or hate. The fightin' side of me is a declaration of war against peaceniks and hippies at a time when America fought a war in Vietnam. It's a rallying call for the silent majority to stand up and be counted, to defend American values.
Okie... is simillar. It's a song of love directed towards the American redneck. It's about a place, Muskogee in Oklahoma, where "even squares can have a ball" and include lyrics like "we don't smoke mariuahna in Muskogee, we don't take our trips on LSD" and lines about not lettings one's hair grow long and shaggy like the hippies down in San Francisco do. This tune came out about the same time as The fightin' side of me and became a huge hit among rednecks at the time, though Merle later claimed that Okie... was a pisstake and that he himself smoke weed everywhere cept for when he's in Muskogee.
These two tunes are my faves on this album, but there are many other good tunes too, among them Workin' man blues and Branded man.
Get this record somehow or get any other, there's plenty of Merle Haggard compilations out there!
A good, but in no sense perfect intro to the work of Merle Haggard receives 82,1% in rate of approval.
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