Episode #138 | 7.25.23
Merle Haggard: 17 Arrests, 17 Breakouts, Hard Time at San Quentin, and the Lonesome Fugitive
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In this episode
Merle Haggard was what authorities liked to call a “repeat offender.” He was arrested for riding trains, for skipping school, for stealing cars, for robbing gas stations, and for attempting to knock over a restaurant – during the Christmas Eve rush. He was committed to juvenile halls, correctional facilities, and reform schools 17 times, and 17 times he escaped. When he was arrested for the final time, he was sent to do hard time at San Quentin. He turned 21 in prison. And it was in prison that he found the freedom he’d been running towards his whole life – freedom that was delivered from an unlikely source.
Sources
Sing Me Back Home, by Merle Haggard
The Hag: The LIfe, Times, and Music of Merle Haggard, by Marc Eliot
Merle Haggard Talks Willie Nelson, Poker, and Weed in One of His Final Interviews (GQ)
RIP Merle Haggard (Thrasher)
How Merle Haggard Found a New Kind of Confessional Verse (The Paris Review)
Goodbye Merle Haggard: The Last Interview (Neil Strauss)
Merle Haggard: The Outlaw (Rolling Stone)
The Fighter: The Life & Times of Merle Haggard (Rolling Stone)
Merle Haggard: The Life and Times of a Badass Legend (Rolling Stone)
Disgraceland is a podcast about musicians getting away with murder and behaving very badly. It melds music history, true crime and transgressive fiction. Disgraceland is not journalism. Disgraceland is entertainment. Entertainment inspired by true events. However, certain scenes, characters and names are sometimes fictionalized for dramatic purposes.
Credits
Hosted by Jake Brennan.
Written by Zeth Lundy.
Copy editing by James Sullivan.
Mixed and engineered by Sean Cahalin.
Score by Jake Brennan.
Additional music and score elements by Ryan Spraker.
Additional music services by Bryce Kanzer.
Ad music composed by the late, great Ian Kennedy.
Disgraceland theme song, “Crenshaw Space Boogie” written and produced by Jake Brennan. Performed by Jake Brennan, Bryce Kanzer, Jay Cannava, and Evan Kenney. Mixed and engineered by Adam Taylor.
*illustrations by Avi Spivak @avispivak