One of the things that I've never liked about country music is its predilection for sentimentality and cheap emotional appeals. There can't be anything more annoying then listening to someone wearing six thousand dollars worth of clothing and jewelery singing about their poor but happy childhood. Or, how the person they admire the most was their dear old Ma because she was a God fearing Christian who could feed six kids, the cow, and her no good drunkard of a husband, when there wasn't any food in the cupboard or money in her purse.
Not only do those types of songs make me want to gag, but they also romanticize the reality of poverty and living with an abuser, which is a disservice to anyone who actually has had to live through those experiences. Thankfully there are some country music performers who have lived through these types of experiences and would never trivialize them. That doesn't meant they always escape falling into the trap of resorting to appeals to cheap sentiment or manipulating simplistic emotional responses from their listeners, but at least they can be counted on to deliver the occasional nugget of reality unlike the majority of their contemporaries.
I don't think this dichotomy is more obvious in anyone than it is in Merle Haggard. One minute he can be signing a song that genuinely talks about the difficulties faced by a person released from prison, and the next he'll be singing some sentimental slop about a family of musicians led by a blind guitar playing father and their deaf mother. This was really brought home to me watching a new DVD just released by Shout Factory and the Country Music Hall Of Fame, Legendary Performances: Merle Haggard.
Culled from television appearances that Merle made between 1968 and 1983 the fifteen tracks on this DVD do a nice job of showing how his music evolved during the fifteen years he was at the top of his game and providing an overview of the type of material he does best. For those of you who're only familiar with songs like "Okie From Muskogee" that managed to get some cross over play, this disc will give you a much better understanding of the type of music Merle first became famous for in country music circles.
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