Editing Merle Haggard (section)

===Early career===
[[File:Merle Haggard Tally Records - Cropped.jpg|thumb|upright|Haggard in a 1961 publicity photo for Tally Records]]
Upon his release from San Quentin in 1960, Haggard began digging ditches for his brother's electrical contracting company. Soon, he was performing again and later began recording with Tally Records. The [[Bakersfield sound]] was developing in the area as a reaction against the overproduced [[Nashville sound]].{{sfn|Cusic|2002|pp=XXIII–XXVI}} Haggard's first record for Tally was "Singing My Heart Out" backed by "Skid Row"; it was not a success, and only 200 copies were pressed. In 1962, Haggard wound up performing at a [[Wynn Stewart]] show in [[Las Vegas Valley|Las Vegas]] and heard Wynn's "Sing a Sad Song". He asked for permission to record it, and the resulting single was a national hit in 1964. The following year, he had his first national top-10 record with "[[(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers]]", written by [[Liz Anderson]], mother of country singer [[Lynn Anderson]], and his career was off and running.{{sfn|Cusic|2002|pp=XXVII–XXVIII}} Haggard recalls having been talked into visiting Anderson—a woman he did not know—at her house to hear her sing some songs she had written. "If there was anything I didn't wanna do, it was sit around some danged woman's house and listen to her cute little songs. But I went anyway. She was a pleasant enough lady, pretty, with a nice smile, but I was all set to be bored to death, even more so when she got out a whole bunch of songs and went over to an old pump organ... There they were. My God, one hit right after another. There must have been four or five number one songs there..."{{sfn|Haggard|Russell|1981}}

In 1967, Haggard recorded "[[I'm a Lonesome Fugitive]]" with [[The Strangers (American band)|the Strangers]], also written by Liz Anderson, with her husband Casey Anderson, which became his first number-one single.<ref name=RS15>{{cite magazine|url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/12-most-badass-merle-haggard-prison-songs-20150406/im-a-lonesome-fugitive-20150406|title=12 Most Badass Merle Haggard Prison Songs|magazine=Rolling Stone|date=April 6, 2015|access-date=April 6, 2016}}</ref> When the Andersons presented the song to Haggard, they were unaware of his prison stretch.{{sfn|Cantwell|2013|p=103}} [[Bonnie Owens]], Haggard's backup singer and then-wife, is quoted by music journalist Daniel Cooper in the liner notes to the 1994 retrospective ''Down Every Road'': "I guess I didn't realize how much the experience at San Quentin did to him, 'cause he never talked about it all that much ... I could tell he was in a dark mood ... and I said, 'Is everything okay?' And he said, 'I'm really scared.' And I said, 'Why?' And he said, 'Cause I'm afraid someday I'm gonna be out there ... and there's gonna be ... some prisoner ... in there the same time I was in, stand up—and they're gonna be about the third row down—and say, 'What do you think you're doing, 45200?'" Cooper notes that the news had little effect on Haggard's career: "It's unclear when or where Merle first acknowledged to the public that his prison songs were rooted in personal history, for to his credit, he doesn't seem to have made some big splash announcement. In a May 1967 profile in ''Music City News'', his prison record is never mentioned, but in July 1968, in the very same publication, it's spoken of as if it were common knowledge."<ref name="autogenerated1962">{{Cite AV media notes |title=Down Every Road 1962–1994 |title-link=Down Every Road 1962–1994 |others=Merle Haggard |year=1996 |first=Cooper |last=Daniel |type=Liner notes |publisher=[[Capitol Records]] }}</ref>

The 1967 album ''Branded Man'' with [[The Strangers (American band)|the Strangers]] kicked off an artistically and commercially successful run for Haggard. In 2013, Haggard biographer David Cantwell stated, "The immediate successors to ''I'm a Lonesome Fugitive''—''Branded Man'' in 1967 and, in '68, ''[[Sing Me Back Home]]'' and ''[[The Legend of Bonnie and Clyde]]''—were among the finest albums of their respective years."{{sfn|Cantwell|2013|p=125}} Haggard's new recordings showcased his band the Strangers, specifically [[Roy Nichols]]'s [[Telecaster]], [[Ralph Mooney]]'s [[steel guitar]], and the harmony vocals provided by [[Bonnie Owens]].

At the time of Haggard's first top-10 hit "[[(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers]]" in 1965, Owens, who had been married to [[Buck Owens]], was known as a solo performer, a fixture on the [[Bakersfield, California|Bakersfield]] club scene and someone who had appeared on television. She won the new [[Academy of Country Music]]'s first ever award for Female Vocalist after her 1965 debut album, ''Don't Take Advantage of Me'', hit the top five on the country albums chart. However, Bonnie Owens had no further hit singles, and although she recorded six solo albums on Capitol between 1965 and 1970, she became mainly known for her background harmonies on Haggard hits such as "[[Sing Me Back Home (song)|Sing Me Back Home]]" and "Branded Man".<ref>{{Cite AV media notes|title=Queen of the Coast |year=2007 |url=http://www.dekedickerson.com/docs/DekeDickerson-BonnieOwens.doc |first=Deke |last=Dickerson |type=Liner notes |others=[[Bonnie Owens]] |publisher=Bear Family Records |location=Germany |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160207091721/http://www.dekedickerson.com/docs/DekeDickerson-BonnieOwens.doc |archive-date=February 7, 2016 }}</ref>

Producer Ken Nelson took a hands-off approach to produce Haggard. In the episode of ''[[American Masters]]'' dedicated to him, Haggard remembers: "The producer I had at that time, Ken Nelson, was an exception to the rule. He called me 'Mr. Haggard' and I was a little twenty-four, twenty-five-year-old punk from Oildale... He gave me complete responsibility. I think if he'd jumped in and said, 'Oh, you can't do that', it would've destroyed me."<ref name=AmericanMasters>{{Cite episode |title=Merle Haggard: Learning to Live With Myself|url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/merle-haggard-learning-to-live-with-myself/1545|access-date=April 7, 2016|series=American Masters|series-link=American Masters|first=Merle|last=Haggard|network=[[PBS]]|date=July 21, 2010}}</ref> In the documentary series ''Lost Highway'', Nelson recalls, "When I first started recording Merle, I became so enamored with his singing that I would forget what else was going on, and I suddenly realized, 'Wait a minute, there's musicians here you've got to worry about!' But his songs—he was a great writer."<ref>{{Cite episode|title=Beyond Nashville|series=Lost Highway: The History of American Country|first=Ken|last=Nelson|network=[[BBC]]|date=March 8, 2003|season=1|number=3}}</ref>

Towards the end of the decade, Haggard composed several number-one hits, including "[[Mama Tried (song)|Mama Tried]]", "The Legend of Bonnie and Clyde", "Hungry Eyes", and "Sing Me Back Home".{{sfn|Cantwell|2013|p=125}} Daniel Cooper calls "Sing Me Back Home" "a ballad that works on so many different levels of the soul it defies one's every attempt to analyze it".<ref name="autogenerated1962" /> In a 1977 interview in ''[[Billboard (magazine)|Billboard]]'' with [[Bob Eubanks]], Haggard reflected, "Even though the crime was brutal and the guy was an incorrigible criminal, it's a feeling you never forget when you see someone you know make that last walk. They bring him through the yard, and there's a guard in front and a guard behind—that's how you know a death prisoner. They brought Rabbit out ... taking him to see the Father, ... prior to his execution. That was a strong picture that was left in my mind."  In 1969, Haggard's first tribute LP ''[[Same Train, A Different Time|Same Train, Different Time: A Tribute to Jimmie Rodgers]]'', was also released to acclaim.

In the 1969 ''[[Rolling Stone]]'' review for Haggard and the Strangers 1968 album ''Mama Tried'', [[Andy Wickham]] wrote, "His songs romanticize the hardships and tragedies of America's transient proletarian and his success is resultant of his inherent ability to relate to his audience a commonplace experience with precisely the right emotional pitch... Merle Haggard looks the part and sounds the part because he is the part. He's great."<ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/mama-tried-186689/ |title=Mama Tried |last=Wickham |first=Andy |author-link=Andy Wickham |date=March 1969 |magazine=[[Rolling Stone]] |access-date=February 12, 2023}}</ref>