VINYL FORMAT. On 180 gram vinyl! "Mama Tried is a typically fine late-'60s LP from Merle Haggard, comprised of a number of strong originals and several excellent covers. While "Mama Tried" stands out among Haggard's original material, "I'll Always Know" and "You'll Never Love Me Now" are both solid songs. Still, those two tracks pale next to the best covers on the record. Merle delivers "Little Ole Wine Drinker Me," "In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)," "Teach Me to Forget," "Run 'Em Off" and   [ read more ]

LP $20.98

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As early as 1972, Merle Haggard hits albums bore titles that cracked jokes at the use of "best" in their names -- Truly the Best of Merle Haggard and The Best of the Best of Merle Haggard being his second two compilations -- so way down the line in 2009, after decades of albums called "The Best" and just three years after Capitol put out an excellent, generous single-disc called Hag: The Best of Merle Haggard, the label has stripped down to barebones for 2009's The Best of Merle Haggard. T   [ read more ]

CD $7.58

If I Could Only Fly, Merle Haggard's first album for the indie label Anti, was deservedly hailed as his finest record in decades, as audiences and critics recognized a revitalized [ read more ]

MP3 $10.49

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For all the '90s, Merle Haggard was stuck in a kind of exile, recording albums that were strangely perched between familiar Haggard material and futile compromises to a modern country radio that would never play material from veterans. Hag knew that he hadn't lost it, so when he finally ran ou   [ read more ]

MP3 $10.49

Other people also bought:

Fly Seville  Carousel, Dan Melchior's Broke Revue  This Is Not the Medway Sound, The Magic Numbers  The Magic Numbers

Most of Merle Haggard's biggest hits for Capitol Records, classics like "Mama Tried," "Branded Man," "The Bottle Let Me Down," "The Fightin' Side of Me," "Okie from Muskogee," "Hungry Eyes," and "I'm a Lonesome Fugitive," are on the first hits volume, but there are still plenty of Haggard gems on this set, as well, including the brilliant "Today I Started Loving You Again," the wise and comforting "The Roots of My Raising," the poignant "Things Aren't Funny Anymore," t   [ read more ]

CD $9.48

While it's true that, strictly speaking, all of the Merle Haggard titles included on this Curb compilation reached the number one spot on the Billboard country charts, it is also true that the title and cover are more than a little misleading: none of these versions are original versions, and all of them are re-recorded jobs. Consequently, they all suffer when strictly compared to the singles. That's not to say that Haggard redoing some of his classics is a bad thing; it's not. He changes arrang   [ read more ]

CD $9.48

Why Curb decided to pack these 20 tunes onto two CDs is anyone's guess -- especially since in their "special offer" on the front, you get two discs for the price of one. Hmmmm -- perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the fact that the list price for each of these two compact discs released individually was originally $7.98 and this package lists at $18.98. In any case, it's the music that matters and you'd be hard-pressed to find the original comps in 2008 anyway. There are 20 cuts of prime {$Merle Haggard   [ read more ]

CD $18.98

CD $18.98

CD $11.38

Merle Haggard had been one of country music's biggest stars and most uncompromising talents for more than a dozen years when he rolled into the KLRU-TV studios in Austin, TX for a taping of PBS's long-running music series {#Austin City Limits} in early 1978. (It's said that Haggard had never heard of the show at the time, but was persuaded to take the gig by friend and superfan Darrell K Royal, coach of the University of Texas football team). At this point, Haggard was soon to leave {@C   [ read more ]

CD $18.98

CD $20.88

This 14-track compilation covering Merle Haggard's Epic years from 1981-1986 is as complete as a single disc can possibly be. It doesn't replace the double-disc Essential Merle Haggard, but it does offer a stellar collection of tracks from that period, including some expected singles -- a couple of which, like "Big City" and "Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Star," were Top Ten smashes. Not all of the choices are obvious, though. Sure, the aforementioned tunes, as well as {&"Are the Good Times Really O   [ read more ]

CD $7.59