User:Jtp wiki/Bakersfield sound

Merle Haggard
Besides Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, a Country Music Hall of Fame inductee, was the most well-known artist involved in the development of the Bakersfield Sound. As a child, Haggard spent a lot of his time listening to the records his mother had given him, particularly those of the Maddox Brothers and Rose, Bob Wills, and Lefty Frizell, his hero. A son of two Okie parents and a troublemaker from a young age, his music often touched on themes of outlaw living, the Okie experience in California's Central Valley, and working class pride. His most famous song, Mama Tried, is based on his real life experiences of being a rebel child, going to prison, and his mother's refusal to give up on him despite his troublemaker behavior. In songs like Mama's Hungry Eyes and Working Man Blues, Haggard alludes to the social inferiority of Okies and the struggle of providing for one's family while working in rural California. Merle Haggard's music is considered to have kept the Central Valley, and the many Dust Bowl migrants who came there to work, alive through his songs. Bakersfield author Gerald Haslam stated that "Merle is most a representative of The Other California when he writes with the voice of someone outside the state's paradigm of success . . . he offers glimpses into lives lived out of the mainstream, on an economic edge and often under a lingering racial or social stereotype. . . . Merle seems to be saying, among other things, 'Hey, we exist, too. Without us, there is no state.'" His lyrical allusions to the ordinary life earned him the nickname of the Poet of the Common Man.