Words matter. These are the best Haggard Quotes from famous people such as Jake Owen, Wilbur Smith, Sturgill Simpson, Trisha Yearwood, Chris Sullivan, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I had always loved music. I grew up listening to classic country, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard. My dad loved Vern Gosdin and Keith Whitley. So I kept going to class and started getting totally into playing guitar and teaching myself these songs.
Many people have compared me to the Victorian adventure writer, Rider Haggard. I accept that as a compliment. As a boy growing up in Central Africa I read all Haggard’s African novels.
I read all of Rider Haggard’s books. For me he had the romance of Africa with a little bit of mysticism. I’m delighted to be looked on as his heir and be categorised as an adventure novelist because that’s exactly what I am.
Willie Nelson, Marty Robbins, Merle Haggard and Keith Whitley – guys like that were huge influences.
It’s cool when your husband starts to sing some old Merle Haggard song and I can pop in with a harmony and it doesn’t sound too bad.
Michael Rooker is like the Merle Haggard of the acting world. Never a dull moment.
And I think it’s safe to say that the single very impressive figure to me was Merle Haggard.
I was mainly influenced by the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, and others like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash.
I listen more to music when I’m on my computer. I’m into the latest YouTube thing. I’m a nanosecond kind of listener, but if I’m driving I would be listening to a Merle Haggard box set. It’s a weird experience listening to ‘Working Man Blues’ by Merle Haggard and cruising around in a Porsche.
Around 14, I was turned on to Shania, Reba, Merle Haggard, Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood… and I’ve followed it ever since.
I listen to Lil Wayne, and then I listen to Merle Haggard.
If I’m listening to country, it’s Hank Williams, George Jones, Merle Haggard and stuff like that. If people out there don’t take that stuff seriously, well, they just haven’t listened to it and don’t know what they’re talking about.
Some of my biggest commercial musical influences would be people like Merle Haggard, George Jones, of course, Johnny Cash. People that wrote and sang their own stuff, I really admired.
I hung out with Merle Haggard on his bus, which sort of freaks me out. It was him and his wife. We played with Merle in Oklahoma City. I’m from Arizona, and we talked about Arizona, and he remembered playing for two dollars a day down there at a bar.
I’ve had mentors who were kind of the troubadour singer-songwriters, like Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Neil Young, and that’s just what I’ve always liked – people who would talk real honestly about their lives and their circumstance.
If there ever was a poet for the working class Billy Joe Shaver and Merle Haggard would be my nomination.
One of sports journalism’s great ironies is that covering an Olympics can be wildly unhealthy. NBC shows athletes in peak health performing on the ice and snow, but not the haggard reporters subsisting for three weeks on stadium starches, cheap beer, deadlines, and little sleep.
My music comes from country music. Merle Haggard is God, and I do believe that. I’m not too tuned in to country music. I don’t know who Brooks and Dunn are. I like Shania Twain, though!
The Bowery was a place that would let us do original songs – not just covers – but we would have to work for tips, so we learned how to work an audience. In order to keep our jobs, we had to keep people happy, so that meant playing the latest Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top or Merle Haggard.
