Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” is a certified country classic. Many fans of the genre know the words by heart and some have lived them. For the most part, Haggard lived the story that unfolds in the ...

“I would like to bring two of my very favorite best friends back out here. Merle Haggard has been a big influence on Toby Keith all of his life. And, like Merle, Toby sure has had a big influence on ...

Tomorrow, country music legend and Texas icon Willie Nelson turns 90. At this stage, he’s outlived most of his friends and contemporaries including Waylon Jennings, Johnny Paycheck, Ray Price, Buck ...

Merle Haggard was an escape artist. The future country music legend broke out of juvenile hall and prison 17 times by his own count as a teenager and young man. But his greatest escape was getting out ...

NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Haggard's biographer Marc Eliot about his book: The Hag. Haggard spent his early years going from family tragedy to odd jobs to broken marriages to petty crime to prison.