Along with Buck Owens and Wynn Stewart developed the Bakersfield Merle Haggard country style in the sixties: a mix of two-part harmonies, tasteful guitar work, catchy choruses and a basic overall sound. This added this singer / songwriter and guitarist once his western swing influences to it. Typically proletarian texts balancing between classic drunken wailing of the honky tonk singer and ethics
… of the worker with the sleeves rolled up. Like many country stars of the sixties and seventies Haggard disappeared from the mainstream in the following decades. In 2000, however, he made a strong (with Johnny Cash equivalent) comeback with the touching and bare produced If I Could Only Fly.more