"Merle Haggard enjoyed numerous artistic and professional triumphs, including more than a hundred country hits (thirty-eight at number one), dozens of studio and live album releases, upwards of ten thousand concerts, induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and songs covered by artists as diverse as Lynryd Skynyrd, Elvis Costello, Tammy Wynette, Bobby ""Blue"" Bland, Willie Nelson, the Grateful Dead, and Bob Dylan.
In The Running Kind, a new edition that expands on his earlier analysis and covers Haggard's death and afterlife as an icon of both old-school and modern country music, David Cantwell takes us on a revelatory journey through Haggard's music and the life and times out of which it came. Covering the breadth of his career, Cantwell focuses especially on the 1960s and 1970s, when Haggard created some of his best-known and most influential music: songs that helped invent the America we live in today. Listening closely to a masterpiece-crowded catalogue (including ""Okie from Muskogee,"" ""Sing Me Back Home,"" ""Mama Tried,"" and ""Working Man Blues,"" among many more), Cantwell explores the fascinating contradictions-most of all, the desire for freedom in the face of limits set by the world or self-imposed-that define not only Haggard's music and public persona but the very heart of American culture."
By:
David Cantwell
Imprint: University of Texas Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 235mm,
Width: 156mm,
Spine: 36mm
Weight: 680g
ISBN: 9781477322369
ISBN 10: 1477322361
Series: American Music Series
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 17 May 2022
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction. “Silver Wings”: Kansas City, Missouri, September 14, 2001 1. “Hungry Eyes,” 1969 2. The Roots of His Raising 3. “Mama Tried,” 1968 4. Toward the Bad He Kept on Turnin’ 5. He Loves Them So: A Playlist of Early Influences 6. “Leonard,” 1981 7. The Bakersfield Sound and Fury 8. Someone Told His Story in a Song 9. “I Started Loving You Again,” 1968 10. The Legend of Bonnie and Him 11. “Sing Me Back Home,” 1967 12. They Won’t Let His Secret Go Untold 13. He’s Living in the Good Old Days: Countrypolitan, Country Soul, Country Rock 14. “Workin’ Man Blues,” 1969 15. He Likes Living Right and Being Free 16. “Irma Jackson,” 1969 17. His Fightin’ Side 18. He’d Rather Be Gone 19. “It’s Not Love (But It’s Not Bad),” 1972 20. He Wishes He Was Santa Claus 21. Merle Loves Dolly 22. Songs He’ll Always Sing 23. He Takes a Lot of Pride in What He Is (Hint: He’s a White Boy) 24. “A Working Man Can’t Get Nowhere Today,” 1977 25. His Country Girl with Hot Pants On 26. He’s Always on a Mountain When He Falls 27. “Rainbow Stew,” 1981 28. He Wishes a Buck Was Still Silver (Not Really) and Likes the Taste of Yesterday’s Wine (Really) 29. “Kern River,” 1985 30. He’s Going Where the Lonely Go 31. “Me and Crippled Soldiers,” 1990 32. The Hag versus the Man in Black 33. He’ll Never Be Gone? Merle Haggard in the Twenty-First Century 34. “If I Could Only Fly,” 2001 Epilogue. Cuba, Missouri: July 15, 2010 Acknowledgments Selected Discography Selected Bibliography Index
David Cantwell is the coauthor of Heartaches by the Number: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles and the author of the first edition of this book, Merle Haggard: The Running Kind (2013). His journalism appears in the New Yorker, Salon, Rolling Stone Country, the Oxford American, and No Depression.
Reviews for The Running Kind: Listening to Merle Haggard
Cantwell captures why Haggard's best-known songs still matter while never shying away from honest critiques of weaker selections that never made it into the classic country canon. Ultimately, this warts-and-all look at a half-century-spanning back catalog gives its subject his due. * Wide Open Country * Sharp-eyed and sharp-eared insight...abounds in [Cantwell's] book...The Running Kind paints Merle Haggard in a broad and nuanced American cultural landscape, rather than the tight corners that Nixon, the counterculture, country fans, and Haggard himself frequently painted him into. * New York Journal of Books * If you want to read the definitive book on Merle Haggard, this is the one...The beauty of Cantwell's book lies in his in-depth, astute, and entertaining close readings of Hag's songs and the covers of those songs by others, from Dylan to Bobby 'Blue' Bland. * No Depression * A remarkable book by one of Merle's most astute scholars. * Lawyers, Guns & Money * In essays on the songs, eras and influences that shaped Haggard's life and legacy, Cantwell makes a case for Haggard's genius not by leaving out the contradictions that are evident in his work, but by shining a light on them. * Holler *
