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MERLE HAGGARD

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Merle Ronald Haggard (born April 6, 1937) is an United States|American country music singer, guitarist and songwriter.

Emerging from prison in the 1960s, Merle Haggard has become one of the true giants of country music, as a singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist. Along with Buck Owens, Haggard and his band "The Strangers" helped create the Bakersfield Sound, characterized by Telecaster guitar twang, vocal harmonies, and a rough edge not heard on the more polished Nashville Sound recordings of that era. By the 1970s, he was aligned with the growing outlaw country movement, and has continued to release successful albums through the 1990s and into the 2000s. His songs display unflinching personal honesty about such universal themes as love, loss, regret and redemption.

Early life
Haggard was born in Bakersfield, California in 1937. His parents, Flossie Mae Harp and James Francis Haggard,<ref>[http://www.wargs.com/other/haggard.html Ancestry of Merle Haggard]</ref> moved from Oklahoma to California during the Great Depression. At that time, much of the population of Bakersfield consisted of economic refugees from Oklahoma and surrounding states.

Haggard's father died when Merle was nine years old and Merle soon began to rebel through petty crimes and truancy. His older brother gave him a guitar when he ... read all