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.
"The Way I Am" is a song written by Sonny Throckmorton, and recorded by American country music artist Merle Haggard. It was released in March 1980 as the first single and title track from his album The Way I Am. The song reached number 2 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart and number 1 on the RPM Country Tracks chart in Canada.
The Way I Am may refer to:
The Way I Am is the fourteenth studio album by Billy Preston, released in 1981.
Cuz I Can is the first album by the Swedish pop rock singer Ana Johnsson. The album was released exclusively in Sweden on April 14, 2004. It was later worldwide-released as The Way I Am, so that this latter is sometimes considered to be the first album by Johnsson. The latter album has a different cover and track listing; otherwise the albums are identical. The Way I Am contains the first seven songs from Cuz I Can and some new tracks, including the huge hit "We Are", which was the official soundtrack for the Spider-Man 2 film, "Don't Cry for Pain" and "Coz I Can", a remix of "Cuz I Can". The leftover tracks were included as B-sides on the later released singles.
Singles released from Cuz I Can were "The Way I Am", "Life" and "Cuz I Can", of which only "Life" entered the Swedish Singles Chart, at number 17.
The Way I Am