The Running Kind

Listening to Merle Haggard

David Cantwell

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781477325698
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

2022 Belmont Award for the Best Book on Country Music, International Country Music Conference/Belmont UniversityNew and expanded biography of one of country music's most celebrated singer-songwriters. Merle Haggard enjoyed numerous artistic and professional triumphs, including more than a hundred country hits (thirty-eight at number one), dozens of studio and live album releases, upwards of ten thousand concerts, induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and songs covered by artists as diverse as Lynryd Skynyrd, Elvis Costello, Tammy Wynette, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Willie Nelson, the Grateful Dead, and Bob Dylan.

In The Running Kind, a new edition that expands on his earlier analysis and covers Haggard's death and afterlife as an icon of both old-school and modern country music, David Cantwell takes us on a revelatory journey through Haggard's music and the life and times out of which it came. Covering the breadth of his career, Cantwell focuses especially on the 1960s and 1970s, when Haggard created some of his best-known and most influential music: songs that helped invent the America we live in today. Listening closely to a masterpiece-crowded catalogue (including "Okie from Muskogee, " "Sing Me Back Home, " "Mama Tried, " and "Working Man Blues, " among many more), Cantwell explores the fascinating contradictions—most of all, the desire for freedom in the face of limits set by the world or self-imposed—that define not only Haggard's music and public persona but the very heart of American culture.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Introduction. “Silver Wings”: Kansas City, Missouri, September 14, 2001
• 1. “Hungry Eyes,” 1969
• 2. The Roots of His Raising
• 3. “Mama Tried,” 1968
• 4. Toward the Bad He Kept on Turnin’
• 5. He Loves Them So: A Playlist of Early Influences
• 6. “Leonard,” 1981
• 7. The Bakersfield Sound and Fury
• 8. Someone Told His Story in a Song
• 9. “I Started Loving You Again,” 1968
• 10. The Legend of Bonnie and Him
• 11. “Sing Me Back Home,” 1967
• 12. They Won’t Let His Secret Go Untold
• 13. He’s Living in the Good Old Days: Countrypolitan, Country Soul, Country Rock
• 14. “Workin’ Man Blues,” 1969
• 15. He Likes Living Right and Being Free
• 16. “Irma Jackson,” 1969
• 17. His Fightin’ Side
• 18. He’d Rather Be Gone
• 19. “It’s Not Love (But It’s Not Bad),” 1972
• 20. He Wishes He Was Santa Claus
• 21. Merle Loves Dolly
• 22. Songs He’ll Always Sing
• 23. He Takes a Lot of Pride in What He Is (Hint: He’s a White Boy)
• 24. “A Working Man Can’t Get Nowhere Today,” 1977
• 25. His Country Girl with Hot Pants On
• 26. He’s Always on a Mountain When He Falls
• 27. “Rainbow Stew,” 1981
• 28. He Wishes a Buck Was Still Silver (Not Really) and Likes the Taste of Yesterday’s Wine (Really)
• 29. “Kern River,” 1985
• 30. He’s Going Where the Lonely Go
• 31. “Me and Crippled Soldiers,” 1990
• 32. The Hag versus the Man in Black
• 33. He’ll Never Be Gone? Merle Haggard in the Twenty-First Century
• 34. “If I Could Only Fly,” 2001
• Epilogue. Cuba, Missouri: July 15, 2010
• Selected Discography
• Acknowledgments
• Selected Bibliography
• Index