Thursday, March 20, 2025
Time: 5:45 PM
Song: Turnin’ Off A Memory
Artist: Merle Haggard & The Strangers
Mode of Consumption: Listening to vinyl album “Let Me Tell You About a Song”
Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/6OKgoCF6Bz9F4XdbfbCqdl?si=10c2c6e55812486d
As leftovers warmed in the microwave, I picked an album from the newest stack of records to give a try. The jacket said “Million Dollar Hits” in big green letters. It was a compilation of pop hits from the 1960s. I thought it would be a nice easy listen on a Thursday night.
I removed the record from the jacket, gave it only a cursory look, and placed it on the turntable. The first sounds above a steady crackle was a man’s voice “Let Me Tell You About a Song…”
That’s strange, I thought, this sounds a lot like country. I looked at the spinning label. It turns out this was a completely different record, one by Merle Haggard and the Strangers.
It was a studio album from 1972, where Haggard introduces each track, usually starting with the line, “Let Me Tell You About A Song.”
Haggard mentions his stay in San Quentin before one song about labor camps. Many of the songs were about the downtrodden and the poor. This song is about drunks trying to drown away the pain. Another song champions interracial relationships.
In 1972, Haggard was known as an outlaw for singing about things. Today, he probably be called woke.
I’m not one that buys into labels very much. I think instead of being an outlaw, Haggard was simply a storyteller.
And those who haven’t been coaxed into lowest common denominator of societal and political discourse by those paid big bucks to fake outrage, know that the term “woke” has simply replaced the boogeyman, a scary thing that doesn’t truly exist.
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