MERLE HAGGARD PIONEERED THE “BAKERSFIELD SOUND”
![THE TRUTH BEHIND MERLE HAGGARD'S TIME IN PRISON](https://tradcountry.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/trad2-24-1024x569.png)
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.