48 Years Ago: Merle Haggard’s ‘Okie From Muskogee’ Album Lands at No. 1
Forty-eight years ago today, on May 22, 1970, Merle Haggard landed at the top of the charts with Okie From Muskogee, the live album that Haggard released in December of 1969.
"During Vietnam, there were all kinds of protests," Haggard told The Boot. "Here were these [servicemen] going over there and dying for a cause — we don’t even know what it was really all about — and here are these young kids, that were free, b—hing about it. There’s something wrong with that and with [disparaging] those poor guys. We wrote it to be satirical originally,” Haggard explains. “But then people latched onto it, and it really turned into this song that looked into the mindset of people so opposite of who and where we were. My dad’s people. He’s from Muskogee.”
The album contains 20 tracks, including several of his most famous songs -- "Mama Tried," "Silver Wings" and "Workin' Man Blues."