In the following brief review for Rolling Stone, music critic James Hunter recaps five CDs that reissue ten Merle Haggard albums from early in the country star’s career. What central claim(s) does Hunter make? What emotional, ethical, and logical appeals does he present in support of his claim, and how effective are these appeals?

Outlaw Classics: The Albums That Kept Nashville Real in the Sixties and Seventies

[Review of Merle Haggard (Capitol Nashville / EMI)]

BY JAMES HUNTER

Merle Haggard wasn’t the first outsider to rebuke Nashville prissiness in the Sixties—Johnny Cash, who arrived from Sun Records in Memphis, deserves that honor—but Hag was the most down-to-earth soul that the Music City had seen for some time when he loped onto the scene in the mid- to late Sixties. An ex-con from California with Oklahoma roots, he sang eloquently about booze and prison life. His beginnings were in honky-tonk Bakersfield, where he learned first-class musical directness from guys like the great Buck Owens and Wynn Stewart.

For years, Haggard’s Sixties and early-Seventies work has been represented chiefly on compilations. This bunch of reissues restores ten of those albums, all with interesting bonus tracks; four of the ten albums have never appeared before on CD. Each showcases Haggard’s awesome gifts and inextricable orneriness: There is no Tennessee gothic or flashy Texas ego to this outsider; Haggard was more about subtlety and West Coast calm. A hummable, elastic honky-tonk tune can convey everything he wants to say. His melodies carry a broad range of topics, from cranky love songs (“I’m Gonna Break Every Heart I Can”) to prison tunes (“Bring Me Back Home”) to perfectly wrought whiskey-and-wine songs, to looks back at his parents’ lives. Sometimes, as on the scarily good “I Can’t Be Myself,” Haggard seems to want to jump out of his own skin; other times, as on “I Threw Away the Rose,” he’s as centered in his own smooth, crusty tenor as any singer has ever been. In all cases, Haggard sounds like country’s coolest customer.

These reissues underscore how Haggard’s music far exceeds “Okie from Muskogee,” the anti-hippie 1969 smash that made him internationally famous. Cash rocked country up and then went on to become his world’s black-clad cultural ambassador. George Jones showed how the field needs at least one opera star, and Willie Nelson yoked local songwriting to American poetry. Haggard proved how crucial it was for a country guy to say what was on his mind—and because he was such a sublime recording artist, he was able to make it stick, right from the start.

Question