* The man stomped on the terra…

Country legend Merle Haggard has died, Bakersfield, California TV station ABC 23 reports. He was 79 years old. Today was his birthday. Earlier this year he was hospitalized due to pneumonia.

Haggard was born in 1937 near Bakersfield, California. His father died when he was young. Throughout his youth, he spent time in juvenile detention centers, and throughout the 1950s, he spent a significant amount of time in jail. His first single, “Sing a Sad Song,” was released in 1963. By 1967, he was a huge country star with 37 songs charting in the Top 10 that year. His 1969 single “Okie From Muskogee” went No. 1 and stirred controversy for its anti-hippie sentiments.

Since the 1960s, Haggard has been a fixture in country music, recording and performing consistently over the years. Along with his band the Strangers, he’s considered one of the most instrumental artists in establishing the Bakersfield sound. His last album was 2015’s Django and Jimmie—a collaboration with his longtime friend Willie Nelson.

* I saw Merle perform at the Du Quoin State Fair a while back and even got to meet him for a brief moment before he took the stage. He didn’t put on any “golden oldies” show that night. He had new stuff, his voice was strong and his band played brilliantly. And despite his now infamous line in “Okie from Muskogee,” I think I may have detected a whiff of green smoke when his tour bus door opened. “Well,” a friend observed, “He’s not in Muskogee, so I guess it’s still true.”

* Dwight Yoakum once said “The only thing that vies with Haggard’s poetic genius is the gift he has as a singer who delivers those songs with one of the most pure and profoundly powerful voices in music.”

Born in a boxcar, saw Johnny Cash perform while doing hard time at San Quentin Prison (for sticking up a roadhouse), pardoned by President Reagan, always on the side of the working man, he slayed that modified Telecaster Thinline right up to the end.

A pro-war patriot during Vietnam who wrote a song protesting the Iraq War. He had his contradictions and his personal failings, but he was always honest with his audience and that’s all we ever wanted…