Country music icon Merle Haggard has passed on after battling double pneumonia, his manager has confirmed. He died on his 79th birthday.
Haggard had been battling double pneumonia, and had canceled a series of concerts due to poor health. He canceled the rest of the shows slated for this year just last week, before passing at home near Redding, CA on Wednesday morning.
Merle had recently enjoyed a collaborative album release with fellow veteran country crooner Willie Nelson last year, called Django and Jimmie.
Taking a far-too-literal cue from Johnny Cash, Mr. Haggard didn’t just visit San Quentin State Prison to perform for the inmates as the Man in Black did. Convicted of burglary in 1957, Merle served nearly three years as an inmate, where he was on hand for the At San Quentin recording, and spent his 21st birthday in solitary confinement.
“I wound up with nothing to lay on except a Bible and concrete slab,” Haggard said of his jarring entry into manhood. “I don’t know — it was something about the whole situation that I knew that if I was lucky enough to get out I would be all finished.”
Upon release, Haggard dedicated himself to leaning the guitar, first learning a few chords from his mother before following in the footsteps of the country legends he loved like Jimmie Reed, Bob Wills and Hank Williams. He would write many songs about his incarceration, including “Mama Tried,” “Branded Man” and several others, most of them laced with poignancy, struggle, and regret. He became a poet of the common man, writing gripping and realistic tales of farmers, blue-collar workers, widows, gypsies, musicians, and alcoholics.
He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1994.
