Country star Merle Haggard is larger than life in 'The Hag'

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

Author Marc Eliot has written a new biography of country music icon, Merle Haggard. The Hag details Haggard's quite extraordinary life; from breaking into a restaurant (that turned out to be open) and subsequent jail time to his many broken marriages and everything in between. Haggard turned his past failures into songs, writing and singing about his inner turmoil. Eliot told NPR's Steve Inskeep that he thinks the Hag deserves a little more respect: "I think if he were played on the same radio stations that, say, play Frank Sinatra ... he'd be just as accepted. I think he was that good."

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's book of the day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. I've been listening to a lot of
0:08.3	Lil Wayne lately, and maybe that's why I couldn't stop thinking about him as I was listening to
0:14.1	today's interview with writer Mark Elliott about his biography of country star Merle Haggard.
0:19.9	I mean, think about it. Between Wayne and
0:22.3	Haggard, you've got extreme hometown pride, using both music and substances to process
0:28.1	tragedy, a criminal background, and a certain exactitude with words.
0:34.3	Elliot tells NPR Steve Inskeep that Merle Haggard's voice belongs in the echelons of the
0:39.4	Frank Sinatra's of the world. And maybe so. But Haggard's life story, to me at least, it
0:45.8	reads like he belongs on Young Money Records. In the U.S., national security news can feel
0:52.1	far away from daily life. Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.
0:58.0	On our new show, Sources and Methods. NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,
1:04.3	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:08.1	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:14.8	Sing it's all.
1:20.4	Sadness.
1:24.5	The late Merle Haggard sang about breakups, working, loving, fighting, American flags, getting drunk and working some more.
1:31.4	Well, hey, hey, the working man like me.
1:35.9	I ain't never been on welfare, and that's one place I won't be.
1:40.1	He sang all the country music stereotypes.
1:42.4	But is it really a stereotype if you helped to write the stereotype?
1:46.4	And before that, it was your life?
1:48.3	A new biography examines the story of Merle Haggard,
	...

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