mama tried

Merle Haggard and the Strangers etched themselves in country legend with the Bakersfield blues of these autobiographical honky tonk rebel child reminiscences.  Haggard was a rising star in the country world by the time he recorded 'Mama Tried' in the early months of 1968.  He had won four awards from the Academy of Country Music, including Top Male Vocalist in 1967; and had a string of hit albums and singles for Capitol Records.  The album was produced by Ken Nelson at Capitol Recording Studios in Hollywood with Merle Haggard on vocals and guitar; Tommy Collins, James Burton, Billy Mize, Roy Nichols, and Lewis Talley on guitar; Norman Hamlet on steel guitar; George French on piano; Jerry Ward on bass; Eddie Burris on drums; and Bonnie Owens on harmony vocals.  

Haggard helped to establish the Bakersfield sound with its rough mix of steel guitar and twangy fender telecaster that set it apart from the more polished music being produced in Nashville:  "Bakersfield was some sort of a I don't know, it was like country music artists found their way to Bakersfield, and then had this success out of there. I don't understand why, actually. Maybe because of the migration that took place in the '30s, or whatever. There was a lot of people that came out there from Oklahoma and Arkansas and Texas, that had a lot of soul. And this thing we call country music kind of came out of those honky tonks, you know, and some of the same area that a lot of other things came out of."

 'Mama Tried' went to number four on the country album chart and established Haggard as country music visionary. 





http://merlehaggard.com/






http://www.rhapsody.com/artist/merle-haggard/album/mama-tried/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/mama-tried/id14826785




"Mama Tried" became his fifth number one country hit in the US and his first in Canada.  Haggard says it's one of the songs for which he'd most like to be remembered; and is mostly autobiographical:    "Well, it really is very close, at least. There's some things we fudged on slightly to make it rhyme, but the majority of it, I'd say ninety-seven percent of it's pretty accurate, I guess...I was, to say the least, probably the most incorrigible child you could think of. I was just I was already on the way to prison before I realized it, actually. I was just I was really kind of a screw-up. But and I really don't know why. I think it was mostly just out of boredom and lack of a father's attention, I think...[My mother] didn't put me in a juvenile home. The authorities put me in there for truancy, for not going to school. And that they gave me six months in like, a road camp situation. And I ran off from there and stole a car. And so then the next time I went back, it was something serious. And I spent the next seven years running off from places. I think I escaped seventeen times...There was different institutions and different methods. There was some of them were minimum security, some were maximum security, and some of them were kid joints, and some of them were adult jailhouses.  And I just didn't stay nowhere. I was just I think Willie Sutton was my idol, if you know him. At the time, I was in the middle of becoming an outlaw. And escaping from jail, and escaping from places that they had me locked up in, was part of the thing that I wanted to do... I've had a lot of those things in my life. And, you know, those are the sort of things that a guy, unknowingly, like myself I guess I was gathering up meat for songs, you know. I don't know what I was doing.  I really kind of was crazy as a kid, and then all of a sudden, you know, while I was in San Quentin, I just - I one day understood that I saw the light, and I just didn't want to do that no more. And I realized what a mess Id made out of my life, and I got out of there and stayed out of there, never did go back. And went and apologized to all of the people I wronged, and tried to pay back the people that I'd taken money from, borrowed money from or whatever.  I think when I was 31 years old, I paid everybody back that I'd ever taken anything from, including my mother...I mean, there was no I don't think there was ever any time that anybody in my family was worried about me staying with this. It was just the way that you know, some people grow up in the Army and, you know, it's hard to be 18 years old. And, you know, they send 18-year-old boys to war because they don't know what to do with them.  And I was one; I wound up going to prison rather than war. And instead of growing up in the middle of a battlefield with bullets flying around me, I grew up on the isolation ward of Death Row. And that's where the song "Mama Tried" gets close to being autobiographical...I got caught for making beer...I was making some beer up there, and I got too much of my own beer, and got drunk in the yard and got arrested. It's hard to get arrested in San Quentin, but I did.  And they sent me to what was known as The Shelf, and The Shelf is a part of the north block, which you share with the inmates on Death Row. And that was the - as you put it, the sobering experience for me. I wound up with nothing to lay on except a Bible and an old, concrete slab, and woke up from that drunk - that I'd been on that day, and I could hear some prisoners talking in the area next to me. In other words, there was a - alleyway between the back of the cells. And I could hear people talking over there.  And I recognized the guy as being...the guy that they were fixing to execute. And I don't know, there was just something about the whole situation that I knew that if I ever got out of there, if I was lucky enough to get out, I made up my mind while I still had that hangover, that I was all finished...I went back down on the yard, and went down and asked for the roughest job in the penitentiary, which was a textile mill. And went down and just started building my reputation, you know - just started running in reverse from what I'd been doing, and started trying to build up a long line of good things to be proud of. And that's what I've been doing since then...I think, that these friends of mine talked me out of going on that escape. I mean, they felt that I had talent, and they felt that I was just an ornery kid and could probably make something out of my life.  And you know, believe it or not, in the penitentiary, there's some pretty nice people - and very unfortunate people. And they love to let somebody, so to speak, get up on their shoulders. You know, they like to boost somebody over the wall, if they can. If they can't make it themselves, they, I think sincerely, love to see someone else make it."



The first thing I remember knowing was a lonesome whistle blowing
And a young un’s dream of growing up to ride
On a freight train leaving town, not knowing where I’m bound
No one could change my mind but Mama tried
One and only rebel child from a family meek and mild
My mama seemed to know what lay in store
Despite all my Sunday learning towards the bad I kept on turning
‘Til Mama couldn’t hold me anymore
And I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole
No one could steer me right but Mama tried, Mama tried
Mama tried to raise me better, but her pleading I denied
That leaves only me to blame ’cause Mama tried
Dear old Daddy, rest his soul, left my mom a heavy load
She tried so very hard to fill his shoes
Working hours without rest wanted me to have the best
She tried to raise me right but I refused
And I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole
No one could steer me right but Mama tried, Mama tried
Mama tried to raise me better, but her pleading I denied
That leaves only me to blame ’cause Mama tried

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziFI_0Fx5ts





"In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)" 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Nn6us9fBls



"I Could Have Gone Right"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6g9EC7z9Kc



"I'll Always Know" 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YInmrplQlsM




"Teach Me to Forget" 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeKZnKa4jY0



"Folsom Prison Blues" 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue9Rq2U_LcE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSBxtXwu5PA







 'Mama Tried' 
full album:

Mama Tried from Merle Haggard and the Strangers on Myspace.

"Mama Tried" (Merle Haggard) – 2:12
"Green, Green Grass of Home" (Curly Putman) – 3:14
"Little Ole Wine Drinker Me" (Dick Jennings, Hank Mills) – 2:38
"In the Good Old Days"(Dolly Parton) – 2:45
"I Could Have Gone Right" (Mel Tillis) – 2:33
"I'll Always Know" (Haggard) – 2:22
"The Sunny Side of My Life" (Haggard) – 2:11
"Teach Me to Forget" (Leon Payne) – 2:24
"Folsom Prison Blues" (Johnny Cash) – 3:15
"Run 'Em Off" (Troy Martin, Onie Wheeler) – 2:47
"You'll Never Love Me Now" (Haggard) – 2:51
"Too Many Bridges to Cross Over" (Dallas Frazier) – 2:45