The country music singer died today on his 79th birthday. I am not greatly familiar with his music but I loved his big 1969 hit Okie From Muskogee that contrasted supposedly wholesome patriotic small town values with the hippie, anti-war, drug-using behaviors of the coastal cities.
As Patrick Doyle writes:
He had a hit with his signature song, “Okie From Muskogee,” in 1969, which he wrote after becoming frustrated watching hippies protest the Vietnam War. Released three weeks after Woodstock, the song captured the tension between the hippies and the heartland. Its plainspoken pro-military, anti-drug, anti-premarital sex lyrics became an anthem for Americans feeling alienated by the counterculture movement. It stayed at Number One a month.
Haggard was coy as to whether the lyrics were heartfelt or a parody. The words are so funny (Muskogee is described as “a place where even squares can have a ball”) that I cannot believe that they were meant to be taken seriously, and the expressions on his face and that of his band mates during this live performance suggest that they were all in on the joke. He also flubs the last line.
There were rumors that the idea for the song came to him as their tour bus drove through the town of Muskogee while the band was high on marijuana, and that he thought it would be funny to draw such a sharp contrast between caricatures of city and country values. Later in life he advocated for the legalization of marijuana calling it “one of the most fantastic things in the world.”
I agree, Mano, great song. Definitely a parody, IMO.
I stayed in Muskogee a while, back in 1980 or so. It was an awful experience.
I think a lot of country music is supposed to be parody, but the writers aren’t really good at it, and the fans take it ‘way too serious.
…Its plainspoken … anti-drug… lyrics …
Only anti-pot/acid:
Hmm, you’re saying Merle was a con man. So many of his songs were in the same vein as Okie, e.g., Are the Good Times Really Over for Good, Where Did America Go, Rainbow Stew, America First, Politically Uncorrect with Gretchen Wilson, etc. He must have been really inauthentic! It boggles the mind.
I forgot Merle’ s I’m A White Boy. Yes, surely his music is parody, since it is unthinkable he might feel any affection for or loyalty to the people he came up among.
Fellownutter,
I am not sure why you think that Haggard writing one song as a satire implies that all his songs were. I found this article that contained a collection of the many times where he explained the genesis of the song and that it indeed started out as a joke. Here’s a sample but the article contains more.
You’re right. I’m in a strange and grieving mood.
In the early 1990’s I used to date a cute little girl from Checotah, Oklahoma whose last name was Haggard. She was from Merle’s family. She told me that “Okie from Muskogee” was written as a cover for her family’s marijuana smuggling activities.The McClellan–Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System had been completed and the Haggards were using it to smuggle hundreds of pounds of weed from the Gulf of Mexico. She said they wanted to branch out from making moonshine. FYI: Any one can consult Google Maps and verify that Interstate 40 is more than 19 miles from Muskogee. There would not have been a sign that read “Muskogee 19 miles” like Merle said.