MERLE HAGGARD’S REFORM WAS INSPIRED BY A VISIT FROM JOHNNY CASH
A pivotal moment in Haggard’s life, according to the Washington Post, was a 1959 performance at San Quentin by Johnny Cash. Cash is perhaps most often associated with Folsom Prison, since that title inspired his huge 1956 hit “Folsom Prison Blues” and provided a venue for a prison concert for the ages in 1968. Sliding back ten years earlier, though, History reports that Cash did his first prison concert at San Quentin, with a 20-year-old Merle Haggard as one of the inmates in the audience.
That concert, with Cash’s performance, has often been credited with inspiring Haggard to focus on music. Haggard later said of Cash, “He had the right attitude. He chewed gum, looked arrogant and flipped the bird to the guards — he did everything the prisoners wanted to do. He was a mean mother from the South who was there because he loved us. When he walked away, everyone in that place had become a Johnny Cash fan.”
Soon afterward, Haggard joined the prison’s country music band, and started to hone his songwriting and performing skills. Haggard was paroled in 1960 after serving two years of his sentence. Years later, in 1972, he was granted an unconditional pardon from Ronald Reagan, then-governor of California, according to Rolling Stone.