Best Merle Haggard #1 Hit

Another impossible poll. "Always Wanting You" is my initial reaction but Jesus, this will be arbitrary.

Clint Eastwood?

I just read far enough to make sure "Mama Tried" was on there, and then voted for that.

The Eastwood one is from the soundtrack to Bronco Billy.

Mama Tried, narrowly over Sing Me Back Home and I Wonder If They Ever Think Of Me.

Hag's always best singing about prison.

Possibly my favorite singer of all time, but despite a couple great comebacks from 1981, the best songs here are obviously the earlier here. At most points in the past 25 years, Songs I'll Always Sing would have probably made an all-time Top 10 albums list if I gave the list enough thought. Anyway, I think my all-time favorite Hag song might be "I Take A Lot Of Pride In What I Am," which strangely nobody ever seems to talk about much. Here, I'm going with "Mama Tried," though "If We Make It Through December" and "I'm A Lonesome Fugitive" would be really close. (For what it's worth, though, I heard "Branded Man" on the radio yesterday, and thought what an amazing song about getting out of jail, but it sounded a little plain somehow, as much folk music as country. Awesome, obviously, but still somehow underwhelming to me. Weird.)

"...obviously the earliest ones here...." I meant. (Like, through 1970 or so.)

Always thought his songs about fucking up and getting away beat his songs about falling in love, too, fwiw.

My favourite Haggard song is almost certainly "Wishing All These Old Things Were New" which is the kind of song you have to have 20-odd years of career behind you to come up with.

Have you heard his relatively recent song, Wishing All These Old Things Were New? So great.

Oh man, you beat me to it by one second, LOL.

haha yeah it's a brilliant song

Favorite post-mid-'70s non-#1s I can think of off the top of my head: "Red Bandana," "My Own Kind Of Hat," "Kirn River," "Are The Good Times Really Over (I Wish A Buck Was Still Silver)," "Wishing All These Old Things For New" (wish the rest of If I Could Only Fly was half that good, but the song almost carries it), "That's The News."

Were New (and two people beat me to that one, obv. Anyway, it kills: "Watching while some old friends do a line/Holding back the want to end my own addicted mind.")

almost completely impossible to choose

The line in Wishing that always gets me is

"Thinking about the good old days
Before it all fell through"

It's one of the most brutally honest songs you'll ever hear.

So If I Could Only Fly worth hearing in its own entirety then?

It's definitely worth hearing, and probably worth owning. But mainly for that song. The rest is more than respectable, but it's totally ridiculous that it's the only Haggard album ever to place in Pazz & Jop -- it's not even the best Haggard album this decade (that'd be Like Never Before from 2003), much less his career. (Then again, Adult Alternative promotion via Anti- didn't hurt.)

"Khrushchev's Memoirs" ftw.

Ignore my grammar, please.

This was going to be my next one but forty #1's kind of blew me away. Wonder if any other country artist from that era comes close to that? Thanks for posting this.

Lonesome Fugitive, Sing Me Back Home, Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down, December, Okie are all in the running for me.

Surprised Swinging Doors wasn't a #1.

Also surprised Tonight The Bottle wasn't a #1!

Yeah! Voting Branded Man.

Also surprised Tonight The Bottle wasn't a #1!

Yeah, same goes for "Silver Wings" or "I Started Loving You Again" which supposedly sold 10,000 copies a week for like two years in Dallas Texas alone.

not enough love on this thread for "Workin' Man Blues," one of his most ain't-nothin'-to-it incredible vocals

love for Workin' Man Blues here - great riff too!

A quick google dig: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_Country_Artist_has_had_the_most_1_Hits

Lynyrd Skynyrd also want to hereby cast a write-in vote for "Honky Tonk Nighttime Man" (which apparently didn't hit #1, but clearly should have.)

gar! impossible. any of the first nine. what a start.

"pancho and lefty," too.

No "Swinging Doors" or "Silver Wings" = "Mama Tried"

mama tried....i don't think his version of pancho is nearly as good as townes

Another one for Workin' Man Blues - love it, even though i have 8 fewer children and have been on welfare

Voted Sing Me Back Home, but would probably voted for ...Make It Through December if i'd noticed it was there-that'll teach me to read these threads properly.

I voted "Big City"; I love the "so-called Social Security" line, the way it dances off his lips with a sneer but sounds great anyway. The phrasing throughout is terrific.

The title song off If I Could Only Fly is fab, check out this performance of it from the Tammy Wynette memorial:

forty #1's kind of blew me away. Wonder if any other country artist from that era comes close to that?

Conway Twitty has more. But I couldn't tell you a single one.

had no idea Big City was such a big hit. recently noticed it is used in Fargo.

"Lonesome Fugitive"

See my posts a month or two ago on the repeat listens thread.

Voted "Sing Me Back Home". That's the one I sing to myself the most. Funny that this and the Buck poll are up now as I drove through Bakersfield yesterday and drove past Merle Haggard Drive AND Buck Owens Drive on Highway 99. Made feel all patriotic!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Bump again

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

That's about right, the first 10 seconds of Mama Tried knock me flat every time.

One of the things that stands out to me about Merle Haggard's classic records, like the ones on Songs I'll Always Sing, is the way the band and production don't seem to be catering to rock values, Nashville values or pop values; No crossover, but not exactly what the "real thing" was at the time. It sounds very dry, like xhucx talked about upthread, folk almost. Some strings, some steel, some background vocals, but not much. It seems to fit more into an acoustic Neil Young sound.

An earlier song like "Folsom Prison Blues" has most of the same elements as "Mama Tried", but it is easy to see why the Johnny Cash song became an iconic rock song, for the big dramatic effect of the whole thing, while Merle Haggard's more matter of fact and understated story is loved, but not an instant sing-a-long anthem. At the same time, none of the sentimentality and lushness I associate with Nashville is present either. The female (and male) backing vocals are soulful, but again I don't know what other records they would have fit into. "Sing Me Back Home" is a good example of this.

It is really so just there.

The band is great, like Buck Owens, but the Buck Owens stuff I've heard is more wild, either rock 'n' roll or cornball. I don't know.

Anyone read this? Fucking great: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1990/02/12/ornery

What a brilliant piece. Thanks so much for posting it.

Not even halfway through but that is indeed awesome, thanks. Also, Mike Leech was his bass player at the time- who knew?

Let me take this opportunity to recommend In The Country of Country: A Journey To The Roots Of American Music, by Nicholas Dawidoff.

Wrote on "If We Make It Through December":

http://thisiheard.blogspot.com/2015/02/merle-haggard-if-we-make-it-through.html

Yeah that article is great. I should read it again. Every time it hear make it through December I think about it

"Okie From Muskogee" is such an interesting song. it's like the first conservative shot in the culture war. he really crystalizes what i imagine the rural parts of america felt at the time and still do to this day. you could almost see it in the same vein as dylan's political songs of the earlier 60s, merle as a kind of vessel just soaking up the feelings he was sympathetic to. i'm not even sure he believed half of what he wrote here ("where kids still respect the college dean?"), but he nails it. "I'm proud" is doing most of the work anyway.

Cocaine & Rhinestones has an episode in season 1 devoted to a close reading of Okie From Muskogee.

I hoped y'all revived this thread to mention David Cantwell's book; but that's a damn fine reading, Heez.

i just stumbled on this song. it has the same kind of charm as leonard cohen on "i'm your man"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Guk3zGx7tmY

Wow “Thank heaven for little girls” is the creepiest song I’ve ever heard. Wtf Merle

"Kern River" a year later is one of his classics.

Yes for sure

Alfred is it you that I owe gratitude to for hyping “wishing all the old things were new”?

Didn't see this in time---some great ones w 0 votes----here's my fave recent Hag cover, & fave track on the Krauss/Plant comeback, mostly AK vibin', rollin' with the flow---Merle such a hippie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnKCdn8aBLg

An original version w 0 votes: Merle & Willie, "Poncho and Lefty":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoKvUYbGu7A

Alfred is it you that I owe gratitude to for hyping “wishing all the old things were new”?

― Heez,

No idea but it IS a wonderful song.