Merle Haggard enjoyed numerous artistic and professional triumphs, including more than 100 country hits (38 No. 1s), dozens of studio and live album releases, upwards of 10,000 concerts, induction ...

NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Haggard's biographer Marc Eliot about his book: The Hag. Haggard spent his early years going from family tragedy to odd jobs to broken marriages to petty crime to prison.

HighTone Records returns under Craft, debuting Tulare Dust, a Merle Haggard tribute that proves the legend wrote circles around most. Originally founded in 1983, HighTone carved its reputation by ...

Author Marc Eliot knew the subject of his latest released biography, "The Hag: The Life, Times, and Music of Merle Haggard," for 25 years before his death in 2016. The writer's exposure to music, ...

Merle Haggard, the working man’s poet, an architect of the Bakersfield Sound and a fiercely independent artist who influenced country music like few others, died Wednesday in California, surrounded by ...

Tomorrow, country music legend and Texas icon Willie Nelson turns 90. At this stage, he’s outlived most of his friends and contemporaries including Waylon Jennings, Johnny Paycheck, Ray Price, Buck ...

LOS ANGELES - Country legend Merle Haggard, often called "the Poet of the Common Man," whose music reflected his hardscrabble roots and hard-living ways as well as a tenderness that made him a revered ...

A photo of Merle Haggard from the commemorative plaque outside the Haggard House at the Kern County Museum. (Rebekah Kearn/Courthouse News) BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (CN) — When I read that the late country ...

Twenty years ago, the country legend talked with Variety's chief music critic about what drove him to write the anti-Bush/anti-Iraq-war song, now being revived as the Republican VP candidate's walk-up ...

The masterful guitarist, fiddler, songwriter and co-founder of the "Bakersfield Sound" died Wednesday at his home, on his birthday, his manager said. Country giant Merle Haggard, who rose from poverty ...

Only 7% of LAist readers currently donate to fund our journalism. Help raise that number, so our nonprofit newsroom stays strong in the face of federal cuts. Donate now. HAGGARD: (Singing) Well, hey, ...