Photo via Flickr
Merle Haggard.
A week ago, St. Louisans learned that the country music legend Merle Haggard wouldn’t be coming here for a show at the Peabody Opera House scheduled for this Saturday, April 9.
On Wednesday, the world learned that Haggard died.
On his 79th birthday, surrounded by family on his tour bus parked outside his home, the wanderlust spirit Haggard was known for left this world after his body contracted double pneumonia.
See also: When Merle Met Branson
That pneumonia led doctors to order Haggard to cancel several upcoming tour dates, including his April show in St. Louis with Willie Nelson.
When he cancelled his St. Louis show on March 29, Haggard released this statement:
“I want to thank my fans for their prayers and well wishes. I hope to be back on the road in May, but I’m taking it one day at a time.”
His final message to St. Louis was one of gratitude and hope, with a promise to live life as it comes.
Haggard’s death is a devastating loss for the music world, especially anyone who calls themselves a fan of country music. Here’s how the Bakersfield Californian, the newspaper for the town that inspired the genre of country music known as the Bakersfield sound, described Haggard, the most successful artist of that genre:
Haggard, famously schooled on train rails and in jail cells, became a songwriter and vocalist of astonishing power and skill, his gifts and blue-collar point-of-view earning the nickname Poet of the Common Man. He chronicled love, loss, poverty and pride with a poignant and resonant urgency that belied his nominal job description of country music singer and placed him in the rarified company of American giants like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and George Gershwin.
RIP, Merle.
Contact Lindsay Toler by an email at LToler@stlmag.com or on Twitter @StLouisLindsay. For more from St. Louis Magazine, subscribe or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
