Merle Ronald Haggard (born April 6, 1937) is an American country and Western songwriter, singer, guitarist, fiddler, and instrumentalist. Along with Buck Owens, Haggard and his band The Strangers helped create the Bakersfield sound, which is characterized by the unique twang of Fender Telecaster and the unique mix with the traditional country steel guitar sound, new vocal harmony styles in which the words are minimal, and a rough edge not heard on the more polished Nashville sound recordings of the same era.
By the 1970s, Haggard was aligned with the growing outlaw country movement, and has continued to release successful albums through the 1990s and into the 2000s. In 1994, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 1997, he was inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame.
Haggard's parents, Flossie Mae Harp and James Francis Haggard, moved to California from their home in Checotah, Oklahoma, during the Great Depression, after their barn burned in 1934. They settled with their children, Lowell and Lillian, in an apartment in Bakersfield, while James Francis Haggard started working for the Santa Fe Railroad. A woman who owned a boxcar, which was placed in Oildale, a nearby town north of Bakersfield, asked Haggard's father about the possibility of converting it into a house. He remodeled the boxcar, and soon after moved in, also purchasing the lot, where Merle Ronald Haggard was born on April 6, 1937. The property was eventually expanded by building a bathroom, a second bedroom, a kitchen and a breakfast nook in the adjacent lot.
"Daddy Frank (The Guitar Man)" is a song written and recorded by American country music artist Merle Haggard. It was released in September 1971 as the first single from the album Let Me Tell You About a Song. "Daddy Frank (The Guitar Man)" was Haggard's tenth No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles. The song topped the chart for two weeks around Thanksgiving 1971, and spent 13 weeks in the chart's Top 40.
The song's main characters are part of a family band, led by the blind patriarch in the title character, a guitarist who also played the French harp. While the sister played the tambourine, the mother (only referred to as "Mama") was totally deaf but, by reading lips, sang along with the band. The family lived in a highway camp, and the band was its only means of living. The song's values come from how Frank and Mama use their handicaps to "make each other strong."
MY ROUGH AND ROWDY WAYS
(Jimmie Rodgers)
« © '33 Peer International, BMI »
For years and years I've rambled I drank my wine and gambled
But one day I thought I would settle down
I have met a perfect lady she said she'd be my baby
We built a cottage in the old hometown
But somehow I can't give up my good old rambling ways
Lord the railroad trains are calling me away
I may be rough I may be wild I may be tough and that's just my style
I can't give up my good old rough and rowdy ways
But somehow I can't give up...