The rough face of country

Next year country music will turn ninety, going by the convention that traces its birth to 1927, thanks to the first singles by Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family.

Country circles are thus far more accustomed to mourning than the rock universe. Yet the death of Merle Haggard amounts to a genuine earthquake, and, all proportions considered, its weight can be compared to that of David Bowie.

Among the genre's own, Willie Nelson and Glen Campbell are the only ones still alive who can claim a stature equal to Haggard's, but given that Alzheimer's has sadly left Campbell in a semi-vegetative state, Nelson now remains the sole custodian of the genre's history.

Nelson himself is one of the people hit hardest by Haggard's death. A friend for half a century now, with several co-billed albums, tours together, and a relationship that went well beyond work. “He was my brother,” said Nelson, summing up the bond perfectly.

Even though good old Willie is quite liberal, he always fell under Merle's spell, whose strength lay also in his ability to win over people with convictions profoundly different from his own. Many of his songs are indeed patriotic anthems celebrating small-town America and the “values of the good old days,” but the complexity of the man never let him take too clear a side. If we had to define his role, we might call him a “critical Republican,” a figure the party could really use right about now.

In 1969, with “Okie From Muskogee” he made clear what he thought of the hippie community and of those who challenged government and military authority. "We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee, we don't take no trips on LSD, we don't burn no draft cards down on Main Street, we like livin' right and bein' free".

And if the reference to the Vietnam War was only indirect, the following year he made a point of clarifying it with the extraordinary “The Fightin’ Side Of Me”. “I hear people talkin' bad, about the way we have to live here in this country. We're always wavin' Old Glory, singin' about how things should be”.

There were no more half-measures: the Vietnam War simply wasn't to be criticized, and not so much because Haggard was in favor of the military intervention, but because he couldn't stand the idea of kids staying safe back home in America, complaining at the expense of the soldiers who were going off to die in Asia.

These were perhaps reactionary positions, but they didn't stop his songs from being loved by everyone for their passion, their honesty, and the admiration they generated by daring to take a stand, at a time when music seemed to demand a single, uniform opinion.

Among his longtime admirers are some of the most radical names in American counterculture, such as Phil Ochs and the Grateful Dead, who even went as far as covering him (despite the fact that Haggard would happily have given a smack not necessarily to them personally, but certainly to their political views).

Because Haggard had a universal quality that made it clear he wasn't just another blustering Republican. Sensitivity.

That sensitivity allowed him to look beyond political divides and sing in support of people who had run afoul of the law, trying to make listeners understand their condition rather than judge them (Mama Tried). In this, he had very little of the Republican about him.

Just as when he wrote about interracial love for an audience still rather closed-minded on the subject (Irma Jackson, launched by Tony Booth).

Just as when it once thrust the poverty of rural America in your face (If We Make It Through December, tragic from the title alone, or Hungry Eyes, an abyss of disillusioned hopes).

A sensibility that, decades later, led him to harden his critical stance toward the Grand Old Party, right up to the final break. Tired of Fox News's aggressive propaganda, which he considered built on manipulated stories, and disappointed by the failures of the Bush administration, Haggard declared his support for the Democratic Party in 2008, while still insisting he was "anything but liberal". But evidently, even for a grumpy old man who's all "mama", "road" and "dust", enough is enough.

While we wait for his albums to return to the American charts on a wave of grief, along with the inevitable tribute covers, it's worth getting reacquainted with his songbook.

Haggard turned out classics of the genre without a break from 1966 to 1982, the year of his splendid duet with Nelson on “Pancho And Lefty”, a Townes Van Zandt cover (one of those covers that could rightfully claim the somewhat unkind, but entirely deserved, title of "better than the original").

His passing leaves a chasm in American culture. We've talked so far about his themes, but the music was no less brilliant, and country without him would have been profoundly different.

Before his debut, Buck Owens was the only country star who had rebelled against Nashville's pop aesthetic, singing an electric, bright country music with a rather lean production style that would go down in history as the Bakersfield sound. It seemed no one had the nerve to follow him until Haggard burst onto the scene with the force of a tornado, achieving even bigger numbers (the LP "Okie From Muskogee" went on to sell over a million copies).

The spread of that sound was crucial to the development of country-rock, as many artists on the other side of the divide fell under its spell and began incorporating its elements, from the Byrds to Creedence Clearwater Revival, from the Flying Burrito Bros to Bob Dylan himself. And further down the line, the alt-country of artists like Steve Earle would also look to the Bakersfield sound as a model of integrity.

These are just a few of the reasons why the music world has just suffered a loss far more painful than it has been perceived outside the United States.

Merle Haggard died on his seventy-ninth birthday.

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