Merle Haggard
and
Okie From Muskogee

A Most Merry and Illustrated Historic Evaluation

It's rare that a song intended to censure a specific socio-cultural group was sung with gusto by the group itself. But it wasn't unknown for members of the 1970's counterculture to belt out:

We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee.
We don't take our trips on LSD.

These, of course, are the iconic opening lines to Merle Haggard's hit tune "Okie From Muskogee". And if there's any doubt as to who Merle's song was censuring, he spelled it out pretty clearly:

We don't let our hair grow long and shaggy
Like out in San Francisco do.

But what really caught the public's ear was the catchy sing-along chorus:

I'm proud to be an Okie From Muskogee,
A place where even squares^* can have a ball.

First released in September, 1969, "Okie From Muskogee" quickly rose to #1 on the country and western charts. Three months later on December 29, Merle sang "Okie" in a live performance at - of course - Muskogee, Oklahoma. In his introduction to the song which ended the concert, he said:

The fact that Oklahoma for some reason or another has been able to keep out of the [counterculture] conflict and the college campuses haven't had any trouble that I know of - haven't been in the news anyway. And [applause] ... and as far as I know is about hippie free.

The concert was recorded and released as Merle's first live album. Both the single and the album sold over a million copies and were Merle's first Gold Records. The popularity of "Okie" also had the welcome effect that Merle's fee for live appearances skyrocketed.

But how did a pure country and western song, complete with de rigueur sob-in-the-throat ornamentations, also make it to the pop charts? We'd really like to know this.

I thought you would, as Captain Mephisto said to Sidney Brand. It's very simple really.

To a large extent the song backfired. Yes, you can see the song as affirming traditional values. But it was also a perfect example of unintentional self-satire on the very people for whom the song was intended to celebrate.

Soon there appeared the inevitable parodies. One version sung by John Denver and Taffy Nivert was particularly pointed:

I'm proud to be an Okie From Muskogee
I'm proud to be a redneck from the South.
There's flag decals on all of my car windows.
Love me or I'll punch you in the mouth.

Of course, anyone can argue that these words are every bit as opinionated as the original. Other satires, though, were milder and less confrontational, such as the Youngbloods' "Hippie From Olema".

Well, I'm proud to be a hippie from Olema
Where we're friendly to the squares and all the straights.
We still take in strangers if they're ragged.
We can't think of anyone to hate.

Naturally for the last chorus the words were changed to:

We still take in strangers if they're HAGGARD.

What to make of the song? Well, at the least and looking back from a span of half a century, some of Merle's lyrics are puzzling. For instance the last two lines of the chorus are:

We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse.
White lightning's still the biggest thrill of all.

Although the Official CooperToons Advice is to eschew all proscribed substances, there is the legitimate question as why anyone would single out a product for criticism whose major component has been reported by peer-reviewed scientific reports to reduce nausea arising from medications prescribed for serious illnesses - and at the same time singing the praises of a product which is also prohibited by law and whose main component has been linked to cancer, stroke, fibrosis, arrhythmias, steatosis, cardiomyopathy, hypertension, hepatitis, pancreatitis, cirrhosis, is responsible for 3,000,000 deaths per year, and also makes you pee.

And the motive? Just why did Merle write the song?

Shortly after he released "Okie", Merle explained his motive. This is the most contemporary exposition of his views:

I don't like [the hippies'] views on life, their filth, their visible self-disrespect ... They don't give a ! what they look like or what they smell like.

Now with all due respect to Mr. Haggard and his opinions, we must doubt that at this time he had much interaction with the "hippie" counterculture. So we must question his authority regarding any particular miasma originating therein.

As for someone representing values, in his early years Merle was not - as he readily admitted - the most sterling example. After a largely fatherless childhood of petty crime with stints in juvenile reformatories, Merle finally obtained his majority and in 1958 he landed in San Quentin for burglary. The actual sentence is reported variously on the Fount of All Knowledge as ranging from two-and-a-half years to fifteen.

The variability thus reported, though, does have a simple explanation. First, a prison sentence is not a specific number of years, but is inevitably a range. Next, the range of years can be pretty broad. Truth to tell, Merle's sentence was six months to 15 years. Usually, a prisoner is eligible for parole after serving one-third of the maximum - which would have kept Merle in the hoosegow for half a decade. On the other hand technically you can get out after serving the minimum.

Although you do hear that it was one of Johnny Cash's famous performances at the prison that inspired Merle to change his ways, a stint in solitary with nothing to read but a Bible and nothing to wear but pajama pants also made an impression. So Merle switched from being a rather rebellious inmate and an escape risk to a model prisoner. After two years and nine months as a guest of the State of California, Merle was paroled.

Merle had been a member of the prison band, and he was determined to make a career in music. Fortunately he had enough talent to realize his ambition. And a particular stroke of luck was that his hometown was Bakersfield.

Bakersfield is about a hundred miles north of Los Angeles and in the 1930's had attracted a lot of Dust Bowl refugees. Merle's mom and dad, Jim and Flossie, had lived in Checotah, Oklahoma, about twenty miles south-southwest of - yes - Muskogee. They settled in Bakersfield in 1935, and Merle was born two years later. Musical ability ran in the family, and when Jim lived in Oklahoma, he had played both fiddle and guitar. It was as a kid that Merle began playing guitar.

Out of the slammer, Merle returned to Bakersfield and began to play in the bars and honky-tonks. This was the right place at the right time. Bakersfield had become the center of a country music revolution. Getting away from the smooth sophisticated sound that had been inspired by the swing bands in the 1930's and 40's, the musicians around Bakersfield began working with lean and stripped down instrumentation. Called "outlaw" country, the music worked quite nicely, thank you, with just a couple of guitars, a bass, and maybe drums.

Merle's ability as a singer and musician (he learned to play a good country fiddle as well) brought him to the attention of another Bakersfield musician, Buck Owens. Buck was already an established country star, and Merle landed a spot as one of Buck's Buckaroos.

Of course, Merle had bigger plans, and he soon struck out on his own. In 1962, only two years after his parole, Merle recorded a single "Sing a Sad Song" which made #19 on the Country Charts.

In 1965, Merle formed a band called the Strangers which was staffed with top-notch musicians, and Merle quickly landed a contract with Capitol Records. Their first album, simply titled Strangers, did well, but it was their second album, Swinging Doors in 1966 that reached #1. The same year Merle's single "The Fugitive" hit #1 and the next year "Branded Man" also reached the top.

The usual story is that Merle and the Strangers were driving through Oklahoma and saw a sign pointing to Muskogee. Merle mentioned to drummer Roy Burris that he bet they didn't smoke marijuana there. So with "Okie" and "Muskogee" having an obvious internal rhyme, they soon had the song.

Merle debuted "Okie from Muskogee" at a concert at Fort Bragg, Louisiana. As soon as they finished, some of the soldiers came on stage and told him they wouldn't let him leave until they sang the song again. Merle and the Strangers had to sing "Okie" a total of four times to end the show.

Things weren't so chummy at the White House when in 1973 President Richard Nixon had specifically invited Merle to perform. The reaction of the audience - virtually none of whom were country and western fans - was muted. The band also didn't quite fit in with the black-tie bunch as Merle's $1000 Stetson had become a bit bedraggled. At the airport the wind had blown it into the mud, and he didn't bother getting it cleaned.

Still you'd think that there would have been a warmer reception. In 1971 Dick had declared his famous "War on Drugs" which was not, according to one of Dick's principal advisors, prompted by a desire to instill in the country proper values. Instead the War on Drugs was intended to be a tool to target and incarcerate Dick's adversaries in the counterculture and black communities.

But Dick loved "Okie from Muskogee". Once when Johnny Cash performed at the White House, Dick, completely unaware of John's philosophy of tolerance and his friendship with many folk singers of the left, asked him to sing the song. Johnny instead played "What is Truth?" which is the exact opposite of what Dick wanted to hear.

A young man sittin' on the witness stand,
The man with the book says "Raise your hand."

And although the young man solemnly swore,
Nobody seemed to hear anymore.

And it didn't really matter if the truth was there.
It was the cut of his clothes and the length of his hair.

In defense of Merle, it would certainly be wrong to pigeonhole him as a one-dimensional and narrow minded dogmatist. After the success of "Okie", Merle wanted his next release to be "Irma Jackson", a song about the troubles encountered by an interracial couple. The inspiration for this song might have been from the problems his friend Johnny Cash had after racist groups began claiming that Johnny's first wife, Vivian, was black. In the song Merle seems to be saying, so what? What does it matter?

But reportedly the producers scotched the idea. They wanted a follow-up to "Okie From Muskogee". Merle agreed and wrote "The Fightin' Side of Me".

They're walkin' on the fightin' side of me,
Runnin' down a way of life
Our fightin' men have fought and died to keep.
If you don't love it, leave it.

Although Merle did release Irma Jackson in 1972, this did not mean he immediately adopted an ivory-and-ebony theme for his songs. Five years later Merle wrote "I'm a White Boy". And there are, we must admit, parts of the lyrics that raise concern:

Cause daddy's name wasn't Willy Woodrow
And I wasn't born and raised in no ghetto.

The song is not, Merle's critics say, something to promote ethnic tolerance and harmony.

But Merle's fans snort, oh, c'mon. Clearly the song's not intended to be taken seriously. After all, there's the verse:

Well, I'm out to find me a wealthy woman
And a line of work that don't take no diploma.

So Merle's song is nothing more than self-deprecating satire of the "good old boy". He certainly isn't putting down other races. So don't get bent out of shape and just lighten up, for crying out loud.

Naturally Merle's critics disagree. Instead of making excuses, look these four sequential lines from the song:

I ain't black and I ain't yella,
Just a white boy lookin' for a place to do my thing.

Yeah, I don't want no handout livin'.
Don't want any part of anything they're givin'.

Certainly a listener might wonder. Is Merle implying that other races do want a "handout livin'"? And this is from the guy who was saying he wanted to find a "wealthy woman"?

Still, we can cut Merle some slack. About ten years later, he seems to have undergone a change of heart:

"Okie" made me appear to be a person who was a lot more narrow-minded possibly than I really am.

But that didn't mean the song didn't reflect Merle's basic philosophy. As he later said.

I didn't give a ! how long their hair was. But the fact that the ones with long hair were the ones burning the ! flag - I didn't like it. I still don't. See, I've got to go with this flag until they hang up one that's better.

And then in yet another ten years he was saying:

Sometimes I wish I hadn't written "Okie". Not that I'm ashamed of it. I'm not sure but what bothers me most is the people that identify with it. There is the extremity out there.

... and he later supplemented:

At the time I wrote that song, I was just about as intelligent as the American public was. And they was about as dumb as a rock.

I had been brainwashed like most of America ... But if a guy doesn't learn anything in 50 years, there's something wrong with him.

Without doubt the biggest surprise was in 2005 when Merle and folk singer Bob Dylan made a brief tour together. The truth is that Merle had always been a fan of Bob's music stretching back to the early 1960's. And yes, on the tour Merle did sing "Okie from Muskogee".

There was no way around it. Wherever Merle appeared, that's what people wanted to hear. But as his opinions and philosophy evolved, so did the song. When Merle performed with Kris Kristofferson in 2011 and knowing the audience of the 21st century wasn't the same as that of forty years before, he changed the lyrics a bit. What had been sung as ...

We don't let our hair grow long and shaggy
Like the hippies down in San Francisco do.

... became ...

We STILL let our hair grow long and shaggy
Like the PEOPLE over in San Francisco do.

Then Kris took over:

We don't smoke our draft cards in Muskogee.
We ain't never heard of pitchin' woo.
We don't shoot that deadly marijuana.
We get drunk like God wants us to do."

Kris was joking, of course.

Of course.

Merle's 1969 live performance wasn't his only appearance in Muskogee. When he returned two years later, fully ten percent of the city's population turned out for the concert.

Alas, at that time Muskogee had been going through some tough times. The police force - the representatives of justice - had nine members that had been forced out. That was a substantial chunk of the total, and to help preserve order the city officials had asked the governor, Dewey Bartlett - yes the same Honorable Dewey Bartlett who bestowed on Merle his OKIE status - to send in the National Guard. Governor Bartlett demurred but did agree to assign additional state highway patrolmen to the city. To fill in any slack, the local Odd Fellows Lodge volunteered to supply personel to help maintain order, an offer that the city officials accepted.

Order was needed indeed. A business owned by a city councilman had burned down and arson was suspected. Like the Marquess of Queensbury, we make no charge but five minutes after the fire was discovered, a police car had been seen leaving the scene. The internal dissension within the force grew, and a number of wives of the policemen demanded the police chief be replaced. At that time the chief of police was certainly not a long term job. A previous chief had resigned after his car had been bombed.

It's hard to believe that all of this went on in a town immortalized as the Épitomé of Wholesome Values by that most Quintessential of Patriotic Songs. And in the greatest irony, on the day Merle performed the concert, four teenagers were arrested with - yes, a grocery bag containing marijuana.

But worse was to come.

A state trooper had his hat stolen.

Will these
OUTRAGES
never
CEASE
!!!!!??????!!!!!

References

My House of Memories, Merle Haggard with Tom Carter, Cliff Street Books, 2003.

"Haggard, Merle Ronald (1937-2016), Oklahoma Encyclopedia of History, The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture.

"Merle Haggard", Biography, April 2, 2014.

"Merle Haggard by the Numbers: His Gold and Platinum Albums", Ryan Faughnder, The Los Angeles Times, April 6, 2016.

Merle Haggard's Okie From Muskogee, Rachel Lee Rubinart, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.

"Merle's 'Okie From Muskogee' Era Home for Sale", Robert Price, Barkersfield.com, August 6, 2018.

"Bob Dylan Raves About Springsteen, Downplays Haggard Feud", Daniel Kreps, Rolling Stone, February 13, 2015.

"Campaigns Aside, 'Okie' Remains Offensive Term", Kevin Canfield, Tulsa World, July 15, 2007.

"Why 'Okie From Muskogee' Was Merle Haggard's Contradictory Masterpiece", Charles Aaron, Rolling Stone, April 7, 2016.

"Merle Haggard: 'Sometimes I wish I hadn't written Okie From Muskogee'", Martin Chilton, The Telegraph, April 8, 2016.

"How Merle Haggard Went From Solitary Confinement to Stardom", Lily Rothman, Time, April 6, 2016.

"Merle Haggard Could Easily Have Died in San Quentin", Trevor Burrus, Newsweek, April 12, 2016.

"Country Music Stalwart Merle Haggard Dies Aged 79", The Irish Times, April 6, 2016.

"Merle Haggard's Too-Good-To-Be-True Story about Johnny Cash? It Really Happened", Emily Yahr, The Washington Post, April 8, 2016.

"Buck and Merle", Peter King, The Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1995.

"Alcohol", World Health Organization.

Merle Haggard's Life of Crime, This Week, October 1, 2009.

"Report: Aide says Nixon's War on Drugs Targeted Blacks, Hippies", Tom LoBianco, CNN, March 24, 2016.

"When Merle Haggard Played at the Nixon White House", Tevi Troy, The Observer, April 7, 2016.

"Okie from Muskogee: Recorded 'Live' in Muskogee, OK by Merle Haggard: A Critique of Willful Misinterpretation", Adam Newton, Bearded Gentlemen Music, July 19, 2018.

"Muskogee Okla., Model City in Country Music Song, Is Torn by a Police Rift", Martin Waldronjan, The New York Times, January 10, 1971.

"Merle Haggard and Kris Kristofferson 'Okie From Muskogee' at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass", Mark Konings, YouTube, October 5, 2011.

"Merle Haggard: The Outlaw", Mikal Gilmore, Rolling Stone, May 5, 2016.