MERLE HAGGARD PIONEERED THE “BAKERSFIELD SOUND”
According to History, Merle Haggard’s mother referred to him as “incorrigible.” It was an apt description. In 1957, he pushed his luck a little too far with a robbery attempt. At the age of eighteen, Haggard soon found himself in California’s San Quentin Prison, a maximum security penal institution not far from San Francisco.
By this time, Haggard had such a reputation for escape attempts that he wasn’t allowed out of his cell past 4 P.M, according to a 2013 interview with Dan Rather. He planned to escape from San Quentin, too, but he was talked out of it by fellow prisoners, particularly after his cellmate made a break, shot a police officer, and was returned to prison for execution. Haggard met another death row inmate during a stint in solitary confinement, and these two incidents put something like the fear of God in Haggard. He buckled down, stopped thinking of escape, and according to NPR, became a steady worker in the prison’s textile plant.