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.
James Rogers or James Rodgers may refer to:
James Frederick "Jimmie" Rodgers (born September 18, 1933 in Camas, Washington, United States) is an American popular music singer. Rodgers had a brief run of mainstream popularity in the late 1950s with a string of crossover singles that ranked highly on the Billboard Pop Singles, Hot Country and Western Sides and Hot Rhythm and Blues Sides charts; in the 1960s, Rodgers had more modest successes with adult contemporary music.
He is not related to the earlier country singer of the same name, who coincidentally died the same year the younger Rodgers was born. Among country audiences, the younger Rodgers is often known as Jimmie F. Rodgers to differentiate the two.
Rodgers was taught music by his mother, learned to play the piano and guitar, and joined a band called "The Melodies" started by violinist Phil Clark, while he served in the United States Air Force in Korea.
Like a number of other entertainers of the era, he was one of the contestants on Arthur Godfrey's talent show on the radio. When Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore left RCA Victor for Morris Levy's company, Roulette Records, they became aware of Rodgers' talent and signed him up.
The Pacific Community (previously the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) until November 2015) is a regional intergovernmental organisation whose membership includes both nations and territories in the Pacific Ocean and their metropolitan powers. It aims to "develop the technical, professional, scientific, research, planning and management capability of Pacific Island people and directly provide information and advice, to enable them to make informed decisions about their future development and well-being." The headquarters of the organisation is in Nouméa, New Caledonia, and it has a large office in Suva, Fiji.
SPC was founded in 1947 as the South Pacific Commission by six developed countries with an interest in the region:
For reasons either of reduced development interest in the Pacific Islands region or a desire to concentrate assistance in other areas of greater poverty, two founding members have since withdrawn from the SPC: the Netherlands in 1962 and the United Kingdom in 1994 and – after rejoining in 1998 – again in 2004.
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...