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Jazz Articles about Merle Haggard
Merle Haggard at the Paramount Theater
by Harry S. Pariser
Merle Haggard Paramount Theater SFJAZZ Oakland, CA February 13, 2016 Some consider Merle Haggard to be “The Poet Laureate of California." Certainly, he is the state's most famous singer-songwriter and bandleader. His straight-shooting songs, with their wonderful lyrics, have the drama and controversy befitting a country music “rebel." Merle has been nothing if not resilient. He is recovering from a bout with double pneumonia, which had forced a postponement of the initial ...
read moreMerle Haggard at the NYCB Theatre at Westbury
by Mike Perciaccante
Merle Haggard NYCB Theatre at Westbury Westbury, NY June 26, 2015 Merle Haggard is a true American original. The multiple-time Grammy Award winner (for Best Country Vocal Performance in 1984, Best Country Collaboration with Vocals in 1998 and the recipient of the 1999 Grammy Hall of Fame award) is also a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Oklahoma Music Hall Of Fame. Merle Ronald Haggard, who is now ...
read moreMerle Haggard: That Blue Flame
by Paul Olson
Arguably the world's greatest living country music singer and undeniably the greatest living country music songwriter, Merle Haggard has been writing, recording and performing for over forty years. He's charted over forty number-one country hits. While considered the most truly “country" of country artists, there has always been a strong influence of blues and especially jazz music in the sound of Haggard and his virtuoso group the Strangers. Few bodies of recorded work have aged as well as his. 2004 ...
read moreMerle Haggard: Unforgettable
by Roger Crane
Merle Haggard is, as the great Duke Ellington used to say, “beyond category." Like the best, he is a genre-defying artist. There is a strong influence of both jazz and blues in Haggard's work, though it's usually labeled as country and western. For example, he phrases like a jazz singer and he features horns in his exceptional band, The Strangers--and, unlike almost all other country singers, he actually gives the band a chorus. Perhaps most importantly, he and the band ...
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