Remembering Merle Haggard, in his own words
Oklahoma and much of the rest of the country is in mourning for a favorite son. Merle Haggard died Wednesday, his 79th birthday. The cause was pneumonia.
The country outlaw released 71 top ten hits.
"Okie from Muskogee" -- Haggard's answer to anti-Vietnam War demonstrators and every other facet of the counterculture -- made him a star in 1969. He said even those who didn't like the sentiment liked the song.
"Everybody's proud of where they came from," Haggard told CBS News in 2010. "And I'm proud to be an Okie, and somebody else is proud to be something else, but everybody's proud of something."
Haggard's parents, Jim and Flossie, joined the Depression Era exodus from Oklahoma to Bakersfield, California, where Haggard was born in 1937.
After his father died when Haggard was nine, he started getting into trouble -- the inspiration for his song "Mama Tried."
He enjoyed his bad boy image. When CBS News interviewed him in 2010, he brought a gun.
"I've got one right here, and it stays right here," he said. "It's unloaded."
Haggard spent his teenage years in and out of reform school, then prison.
"The more I went to jail, the more I learned about bein' an outlaw," he said.
He spent two years and nine months at San Quentin Prison. Released in 1960, he had a whole country songbook of hardship -- the material for more than 30 number one hits.
Cancer surgery took part of one lung in 2008, but he continued touring and recording. His most recent was last year with Willie Nelson.
Haggard lived with his wife Theresa on 200 acres near Redding, California, where he built a railroad bridge -- a reminder he grew up beside the tracks.
