“Merle Haggard is dead at 79, and that seems impossible.
“The performer—an American poet, ambivalent culture warrior, reformed criminal, and all-around good-time character who changed country music by returning to its roots—was such an institution that it’s hard to believe his career only spanned five decades, just as it’s painful to imagine a future without him.
“The singer, songwriter, guitarist, and violinist reportedly died in Bakersfield, California—his home town, which he helped put on the map as a music center—on Wednesday, his 79th birthday.
“Along with Buck Owens, Haggard was one of the progenitors of the Bakersfield sound, a twangy, guitar-driven, hard-edged style of country that provided an alternative to the increasingly smooth, commercial music being made in Nashville in the 1950s and ’60s.”
Read more at The Atlantic
