On The Record 1998 Merle Haggard

[Music] thank you tonight an unforgettable moment a history of country music October 16 1970 Merle Haggard and Marty Robbins sang together for the first and only time on television in their great careers you know you can wait around and Hope but I'll tell you you'll never see the likes of this again close today [Music] just long enough [Music] [Music] okay [Music] [Applause] ladies and gentlemen one of the greatest country singers of all time my special guest Merle Haggard early hello brother thank you good to see you my friend have a seat Merle do you remember that magic night when you and Marty sang like it was last night yeah sure do you know he came in wearing that horse blanket that wild coat and I think he's blue yeah he said to me he said well I may not out sing him but I sure out dressed him but that was that was magic that night you wrote that song originally for him didn't you I wrote it well with him as no I wrote it with it it was um begging to you that that sort of was like if you say you sit down to write a song you say I want to sing it and I want it to be something like folks from prison blues or I want it to be something like uh San Antonio Rose well I said I want this to be something like begging to you okay and that was the inspiration for the the melody that came and it kind of wrote itself it just it was it was there when the words was was done the melody was already with me and Bonnie had gone get a hamburger and she came back and I was sitting in my shorts in the middle of the bed and I sang her this song and she cried and it was actually written on a paper bag I tore the bag open and wrote the words down there and I understand there are over 400 recordings now of Today I Started Loving You Again it's been a lot of great recordings of it and a lot of great artists have recorded it I want to go back to that night with Marty Robbins let me ask you a question in your in your road so do you still do uh Impressions do you ever do those anymore everything I can I use every trick I got I don't do them every night is the occasion Falls to where it's it's it feels good to do them if I run out of other things to do well I want you to look at this with me and see if you remember this this is you doing Marty Robbins with Marty looking on I told Mary about us [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] back I could be free ever more but I don't want to be and I don't want to see Merry Christmas [Music] [Applause] [Music] the plane and you took me all over Bakersfield and showed me bits and pieces of your life and we went to this box car which had been made into a house and this was this was where you were born tell me about that well in 1935 following the uh the um are actually still in the middle of the Dust Bowl my family moved to California and dad went to work for Santa Fe railroad out there and and was part of the big migration that took place in those days and in Bakersfield was nothing but a desert then and a railroad that ran through the edge of a little town called Oildale which is next to Bakersfield separated by Kern River which was a song Kern River comes from and there was nothing out there except Sagebrush and an old railroad track that ran down into the oil fields and there was a vacant lot that was for sale and it had an old boxcar that sat on it it was a 40-foot Santa Fe reefer that's what it was and uh my father went to the owner of that property and and bargained with her to to let him pay it off over the next few years and he bought it from her for five hundred dollars about the lot in there with that old boxcar on it well Dad was a was a carpenter and a man with his hands and he could he could build and he could do anything so he made that into a home and he took uh he built a front on it and able to back on it and it was shaped like a team from the air you couldn't have told what it was but as I showed you around behind you still see the old metal uh components on the end of The Boxcar there and it was it was made out of wood this is your baby picture Merle uh looks like you're fresh out of the box there yeah and uh this is at one one year night this was taken in 1938 yeah it's getting ready to go on stage there every kid every kid in the in the world has a picture like this yeah where he's lost his teeth and I believe on the back of the photograph it says you're seven years old here yeah right remember the time period it was really I had a great set of parents they uh my mother never left left my side from the time I was born until uh until I run off from home when I was 11 years old that's the first time I ever and my dad died when a nine and he was his a I wish I could have shown him off when he passed away he was only 46. I think the result of a a collision a car collision that caused him to have a growth that caused a cerebral hemorrhage and he died of cerebral hemorrhage about a week he was very healthy how old are you in this picture do you have any idea yeah I was about about the same age as that other one about six or seven your father's a very handsome fellow there yeah he was he was a fiddle player too wasn't he played fiddle played guitar played like Merle Travis and sang sang Jimmy Rogers songs and gold Miss flossy you're beautiful lady and I went back and reread your book although the book has came out in 1981 it covers all this this period the books Sing Me Back Home and uh the thing I got out of this is that the death of your father was one of the most devastating things that ever happened to you it took you a long time to get over that I had a lot of things happen to me more over my life that have been hard to take you know and there was never anything that compared to the uh to the grief that that caused me we were we were close and and I was just nearing the age that I I didn't have no idea how much I needed to father but her I guess you know things are laid out for you I believe in predestiny and I think that that he had to go in order for me to to uh get out and do what I did I guess I might not have ever been in trouble I might not have known what it was like being places I needed to know what it was like so I could write these songs or something I don't know but I sure did miss my dad and I still do Dear Mama the mama that tried boy that what a great what a great tribute to her that song is you know and I listen to you I listen to every song in this this Capital uh box set let's show that over oh excuse me it's called down every road and it's a box set and it features about a hundred songs and maybe a little a few more than a hundred and I and I as I listened to all of it I thought which which song is the most powerful song that describes Merle Haggard and I I chose Mama Tried as as depicting your battles with Merle Haggard and your mama putting up with them and uh absolutely that lady that lady's got a lot of patience she had a lot of patience a wonderful woman she never gave up on you did she no she never even considered that I don't think I don't even think she worried about anything except my health during the time I was getting in trouble I think she knew that that was just a Valley that I was going through and she never lost confidence I mean she never was ashamed when people ask her where I was at she'd tell them I was San Quentin or I should be and uh oh I didn't know that well I won't tell anybody she said I don't care if you do tell someone and she was sort of like Rush straight forward you you met her and and uh she had faith in me and she had Talent and my dad had talent and she was she was betting on the fact that I was going to inherit some of that talent that she wouldn't let my daddy use and she wouldn't let Dad go play in the bars I say she wouldn't let him she she didn't want him to and he he was he wouldn't uh he always honored every rule that she had I mean there was no smoking in the house from the time I was born he went outside to smoke voluntarily not by her request but he knew that we have a videotape here I'm going to sit here with the audience this was shot on the road I think in California president and it was the last time she ever saw you perform Ed Miss flossy was quite a lady a lot of patience been me out of shot you I needed it [Music] there was something that happened in your life that I don't understand you had a friend named Bob Teague yeah and you went to see one of your Idols was Lefty Frizzell you went to a place called Rainbow Gardens and I think Bob talked Lefty Frizzell into listening to you sing right Bob wound up out in the they used to have a beer area like it was teenagers inside but there was a overhang where they could sell beer out of this one place if he was 18. or 21 or whatever it was well Bob went out in there and wound up talking to Lefty he left he was out there drinking a beer in between shows and he told him he said he had this kid I didn't know this until later and he come back and told me so I'm gonna take it back see meet Lefty I'm I'm 16. I'd seen Lefty once before and another thing Roy Nichols was in the band I had double reason for wanting to go see that show that night was the great guitar player Roy Nichols and and uh is this singer that I idolized I'd seen one time before but never met now this building is the the Rainbow Gardens right sure is you could dance about 2 000 people in there and and there must have been 2500 left he was there that either I was telling you about here he said come on back I'll meet you I want you to go back and meet Lefty and I said not on your life I said I'm not going back there I said I don't and he said you're going back there if I have to drag here whip your ass he said one way or another you're going back and Bob was one of the toughest guys that I've ever seen in my life I'd seen him whip two guys once several times I said okay what where are we going he virtually drugged me back there and I I never was the one that wanted autographs or wanted to bother these guys that I watched and idolized and heard but when I got back there he was sitting there with Wayne Rainey and Wayne's wife and Alice left his wife and uh of course I'm in I feel like I'm with the some like a president or something to me there was nobody that I had ever met in my life that had that much power and uh Bob said this is this kid hears things like you and uh and I thought well hell what am I going to sing I don't know anything except his songs I can't sing him I don't want to come here and sing his song so uh he left he said well let me hear you saying something and he handed me his guitar the one with Lefty Frizzell across the front and I hunkered down in front of him on put you know like go down like this and you know and set the guitar here and saying uh traveling Blues Jimmy Rogers song and I got about halfway through it and he just stopped me and there's a big old guy with a cigar come in there about that time you go back home you know cigar smoke everywhere and I don't know his name was something else I forget his name and um left he said well he said he said I'm going back on just a minute he said but first he said I want this I want this kid to go out and sing with my band I looked at Left End and I and boy fear set in you know and uh so I'd never been on stage in my life I let alone with what pops probably one of the greatest Honky Tonk bands in the world and here he is telling me I'm gonna get to go on stake and uh with his guitar and this guy said hey nobody wants to see no local kid and uh and left you just real calm he says well we he said we we'll get on with my show as soon as he gets through doing a couple songs kind of smiled at the Sneed Sam Joe Sneed and uh so Joseph we'll get him out sir whatever you say get him out there you know and one of those deals so what did you say I remember singing uh blue yellow number six one of these mornings sure Gonna Leave This Town how'd you go up they liked it you get a big hand big hand did you like it it's like the guy that catches his first big fish you know is who called who yeah okay that's well put it all right now this is this is the troubling aspect I have with your life story you go on stage you're holding Lefty's guitar lefties looking at you the crowd loves you why didn't this turn you around at that moment take you away from the life of crime and and and it wasn't really it had you into music I'll tell you why uh same reason did a lot of things happen nowadays I was I was a kid without any legal representation America is only free if you got the money to pay for it huh [Applause] but you're gonna have to tell me a little more here when I was a boy I didn't have no money and uh I've had lawyers review my problems and they said I wouldn't do I wouldn't have done one day in jail had I had any correct representation I did do some time for things that I didn't do and the things that I did do mainly the problem was all I was trying to do was something most kids don't want no part of nowadays is all I was trying to do was work and my dad passed away when I was nine and my mother was old and I didn't want to be a problem and I wanted to go out there and make my own damn living but this but you had truant officer on your butt a lot because you want to be back in school and uh and also your mama wanted you back in school she sure did everybody did and uh and I just uh when I went to school after I finished the eighth grade I went to nine days of the ninth grade and uh I didn't learn one thing except that there were two good-looking girls in class the woman's name Mildred and woman's name Carol and we took a break and I said how did you guys like to go to Texas on a freight train and they said boy that sounds like it might be fun I'd been on a couple of Freights and it was really a an unusual hobos were still in America they were still hobo Johnson I mean you took these two girls to Texas on a freight train I teach the two girls in a freight train but we didn't get to Texas but we didn't go to Texas we went up and the train went to the right and went across the desert and went to L.A got these two girls on there they're my age they're the same age I'm 15 16 year old girl what you have in the back of your mind about what you think did you get in trouble for that no so they didn't take these girls on a train no the girls took me huh they were my son it was you know they were we were the same age the parents get upset yeah they they picked us up in MLA walking down the street and they put us in this little place and a little jail deal uh holding cell and they called our parents and parents coming one of their parents came out from my parents my mother didn't have a car so I got to ride home with their parents and they thought it was cute you know and so there was no problem with that we didn't we didn't know there was nobody harmed take it off did they get after you for or ask you what your intentions were with their I told them I intended to molest their daughters but it never got to it oh sometimes they send you to the Reformatory I stayed there off and on from time I was 14 until I was 23. how many times did you escape 17. so that when you've got to I didn't give up when you got when you finally was were sent to San Quentin one of your problems was that you had escaped so many times that's why they sent me there that wasn't for what I did scare you you ain't kidding when you got to saying Quentin you were there sort of as an habitual criminal in which then it was not true I mean it was just uh I was just running from them and they're chasing me because I was running um it just uh I never stole anything except the car trying to get away you know I didn't I didn't I'm not a thief I don't want nobody's money because you were going to bring the car back weren't you I brought a lot of them back you just wanted you just wanted to go joy riding and bring it back with gasoline and and a worse job okay I knew a lot of people up there because I'd already been in a lot of trouble and I knew where I was going and uh people there knew I was coming and uh when I hit the yard in San Quentin it was like oh buddy week for for about a year and a half all we did was play guitar and and we didn't have to work unless we wanted to and and I didn't realize they were grading me you know and when I went for my first parole a chance for parole they said looks like you and enjoying yourself in here and uh see you next time I said what do you mean said see you next year denied no parole get out of here and uh oh I thought they're going to send me home I'm just a young kid I didn't know hadn't done anything they didn't do that so you're fixing to write a book about well the the part of my life that this hasn't really not much to say it just starts right about where we're talking right now I thought that one week in solitary was probably the most important week of your life because it turned you around I guess you sat there in that cell and re-examined your life yeah I did there was nothing in there in that cell but a slab of concrete and uh they gave you a blanket at night you're in army army blanket and there was a Bible in there and I used the Bible for a pillow and uh you'd try to make up your mind with the fold that damn blanket and lay on it so you could stand it or roll up in it but something did happen to me I I decided to this was not it I didn't want to do this the rest of my life and I wanted out of there I came out of there and I went down and hired out in the textile mill that was the roughest job in the in the joint nobody wanted to text on me and I worked there for 18 months and about three months after I was there I made I ran the place I ran the old textile mill his boss well I'd never done anything in my life that was worth a damn up until then you know I'd satisfy anybody they thought I was incorrigible that I'd never no chance for me to ever turn around that's the way they looked at me when I went for parole when I went back after this year in the textile mail they they all took their glasses off it looked at me in my goodness what a change and they said we'll let you know and so when the paper came that evening it said time set at two years nine months in two years three months out I mean time said it five years that meant that I had less than 60 days to go you finally get out and uh we have a we have something on this show here that this occur you got out in 1960 didn't you yeah you're February 3rd 1960. 12 years later I believe uh the governor of the state of California Ronald Reagan okay gave you a pardon this is a picture of that pardon we we shot this picture down at the Country Music Hall of Fame where you you folks can go by take a look at it yourself but Ronald Reagan was the governor and pardoned Merle Ronald Haggard and uh you said that you were the only man that was ever sent to prison by a town that 12 years later made him the man of the year your songs called branded man big hit for you and you you you wrote in branded man I'd like to hold my head up and be proud of who I am but they won't let my secret go Untold I've paid the debt I owed them they're still not satisfied now I'm a branded man out in a cold you told me one time about the paranoia of an ex-con that when when he's out on the street he feels like everybody knows he's an ex-con by what's paper shoes or other ways I want you to I want you to give me the spirit of this moment when you're first out of prison and I assume that's why you wrote that song the greatest thing that ever happened to me up until the current family that I happen to have right now was getting out of jail if you can imagine there's nothing like it I mean if you in the hospital if you've been in the hospital for several months and you get out of there or any place you're incarcerated and you're taken away from your family your friends and other opposite sex all that well getting out of getting out of a place like that is absolutely the greatest rush I've ever had in my life and and then there's a there's a thing that's not obvious or not a parent that happens you come out and all of a sudden you realize you don't have any friends none everybody you knew is gone there's not anybody there you don't know anybody's phone number and everybody you ever knew is inside that place you just walked out of that you hate and you go through this enormous depression for that that I've talked to other prisoners about and it lasts anywhere from uh usually from the second day out for at least three or four months and most I think 96 percent of the of uh returned to prison because of those uh those emotional feelings that happened their their family their friends everything is inside so they go back during that 90 days when I came out of there I had that same experience with one uh guys first out he feels like yeah he feels about everybody the last thing in the world you want to do is have to tell somebody where you've been and and it's mandatory that you do that if if you want a job you have to walk up and tell a man hey look I've been in prison can I have a job well of course not and uh so that's so most ex-cons are are that's the end of it right there is this what leads them back to crime there's a void out here they walk out into to a place that uh there's no friendliness do you feel like we've we forced some people back into crime by not supporting them economically by giving them a job hey if we if there's a if there's anybody in the house that wants to do something good for Humanity there was a lady done something for me one time when I walked out of San Quentin I expected somebody to be there and she wasn't there so the 10 30 Rush of walking through the gates of San Quentin in just a matter of minutes my heart was broke because she wasn't there I had those two emotions going up and down and I'm standing on the middle of the sidewalk with fifteen dollars in my pocket wondering what the hell to do and this voice said beautiful female voice kind voice said pardon me uh could I give you a turn around to this lady standing with a car door open and she said could I give you a lift somewhere she's sitting just outside the San Quentin wall just out where the free people are in a car by herself asking a guy she knew just walked out of there if he needed to lift I said I sure do ma'am I said and uh she said I do this because I'm wealthy and she's in my family and my husband would die if they knew what I did she said I do this every Tuesday and she said I come and take convicts to the bus or someplace and she said I've never had one of them ever harm me or act as though they wanted to and I said boy I certainly don't that's I said would you save me over here's the ground depot is and uh I sometimes wonder if she was real I wish you'd tell us why well um talking to the to the man that made it Mark Kendrick start with uh the uh the guy that did it he said it's very hard to make actually and it's it's uh there's things that happen in this guitar that don't happen on the ordinary Telecaster for for one thing the neck goes all the way through oh that's cute you know it's not only cute it's makes a lot of sense because the other one was screwed on here with a piece of wood the normal Telecaster this is all concave and different from from the regular Telecaster and uh it's a Merle Haggard style this is this is what I had a Jerry Jones bill for me and uh you you play this on it's made out of Western big leaf Western Maple did you played this on stage this is my guitar this is the very best guitar I've ever had my hands on now up here on the what do you call this part of the guitar right here that's called uh tough dog tally no no I'm talking about the part where you the keys are oh that's the tuning area okay any knobs this this is the uh Fender tough dog Telly Merle Haggard that says here but it's the Merle Haggard special guitar made by Fender now I want to tie this in with another commercial I don't think you've seen this but this is from an old television show called that Nashville music and you're doing a commercial with Tuffy oh really thank you folks Purina experience in pet food is something that you can rely on when you go shopping for your pet it's a ride tough dog that's funny well we wanted to show them who tough he was how about singing a little bit for us could we go through a few songs that made you famous and I wish you since we talked about Lefty earlier I think Lefty and Whitey Shaffer wrote a song called That's the Way Love Goes sometime in a hotel room and let me tell you about it you know Johnny Rodriguez was there and and Whitey shaver was there and Whitey and Lefty just wrote this song and uh I didn't know it they didn't say hey we just wrote a song Leslie was sitting over behind me on the bed and he said let me see that guitar and he took the guitar and he said I've been I've been home [Music] I spent most of all my life searching for that four leaf clover yet you run with me chasing my rainbow honey I love you too that's Way Love Goes thank you know that song that you didn't like and I didn't like but fuzzy liked was your first big hit first top ten this sir smoke Bill bar is something I still don't like it [Applause] you mentioned George Jones didn't George get a hold upset over some song you did about a rose George broke ranks and uh got on a jet and actually physically came to where I was in the United States on another tour I was in Amarillo Texas and George was supposed to be in Ohio we had a rollaway bed in one of the rooms there's three guys in each room first he was in the railway bed and he beat on the door and got in there and rolled it and rolled fuzzy up in the in the bed and locked it and rolled fuzzy right out in the street [Laughter] what you said Buck Owens and fuzzy too what did George want there was a low note on there and he he actually uh found that good enough reason to to jump to her and he came came over to my tour and he was lost for a few days then hit the headlines and it was a big deal you know it was back one of them days where Jones had missed another date and oh oh what are we going to do you know you want to sing a little bit of that song uh let's see but once I lived a life of wine Rose you still got a picture on your bus of Hank Williams and Dolly Parton yeah the um I'll take it back it's still on the bus that it's been on all these years and when the bus I had that bus for uh 14 years I got a new bus and I started to take those pictures out of there and I said no I'm going to leave them there and Dolly's picture is still in my old bus and saw his Hanks you fell in love with Dolly one time oh yeah I think didn't everybody oh you said you said I was like this is from your book he said I was like a school boy I could have carved Merrill loves Dolly on every damn tree in the country if she asked me to and uh and you wrote a song which uh you got a good song out of this to this episode of your life call always wanting you and you wrote it for her yeah it was about three o'clock in the morning I was I was at Harrah's working Harris two-week stand and it must have been 1974. and uh I wrote two songs that night and both of them were about her and we were using each other I think for sound boards at the time you know I I didn't you know I didn't have any intentions ever make anything happen out of this level it was absolutely impossible you know I knew that she couldn't help it I couldn't help it we had to go in different directions and that was that but we could write songs and so I wrote These two songs always wanting you and I've got a yearning and uh one night up there by myself after I got off work about 3 30. my time which must have been around 5 30 here I called her house and then some lady answered and I said his dolly sleep she said she sure is I said would you go wake her up she said oh I wouldn't want to do that and I said well I said I got a song and I've been working on all night I said I know she wants to hear it she and us it's about her and well why don't you call in the morning and we'll we'll play it for her and she said she's way down in underneath the cover I said well you go way down and wake her up so she got her on the phone and she came to the phone she was infectious you know the thing about dolly that I'm gonna say something here that maybe has not been said about her there was so much facade and when she walked out that people that didn't get to see her at breakfast never really got to see the beauty that she contained and in the there was the wig and the you know and there was always so much focus on the on the boobs and all that and uh and she was she was a person underneath all of that that the public knew about that was uh rare she had this unbelievable talent for a one-on-one guitar pulling I mean she could sit there and sang his songs that she wrote since she's five and knock you out hey you were going to sing always wanting me we're always wanting you laughs [Laughter] always wanting you never having you [Music] makes it hard to face tomorrow cause I know I'll wake up wanting you again [Music] always loving you [Music] but never touching you [Music] sometimes hurts me almost more than I can stand you're thinking about writing another book or perhaps a sequel to sing me back home I'm thinking about writing a book uh that uh for a lack of a better title is called from from the bottom to the top and it's going to take a place during the period of uh the time that we talked about a while ago death row up until uh better times begin to occur you playing uh Labor Day in San Angelo we have a Labor Day first annual Merle Haggard Festival that we're going to start uh uh this year in San Angelo Texas and you're going to do a spiritual album which I assume will be out in the winter we have a great album It's called if I could only fly it's uh it's a one of the greatest songs that I've come across in my life written by a fellow who passed away nine years ago and it's a blaze Foley tuned and we're trying to acquire that music and do a whole tribute to this guy and he's uh but if I could only flies is the name of the the inspirational album you're talking about I'll be out shortly on tally and there will be a lot of old songs in it won't there there will be some old gospel music and there'll be some new songs there's a couple of songs in there that I do of Albert E Bromley and Albert E Bromley Jr is singing on there with me okay and alberty Brumley Jr was my mother's favorite singer so Merle Haggard I thank you for being my friend and I thank you for coming and being on our program I thank you for being my friend ladies and gentlemen I'm happy to hold this up I'm a hag fan [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] we still label Glory down at the courthouse and white lightning still the biggest thrill of all [Music]

Channel: TNN The Nashville Network

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Id: QhGh_w-rGSQ

Length: 43min 39sec (2619 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 29 2023