My Musical Journey. Part 20: I'm A Lonesome Fugitive.

While living in Chico during college, I was lucky enough to find a very small one-bedroom, furnished house for $35 a month plus yard work. The yard was big and included walnut and almond trees as well as peach and apricot and a gorgeous flowering mimosa. There was also a big front porch and a noisy swamp cooler. It was perfect for an introverted college boy.

One day, my cousin Chris showed up. The last I had seen him, he was a 10-year-old Cub Scout with buck teeth who played violin. Now he had gone full hippie: long hair and beard, hitchhiking across the state with just a backpack and a mandolin.

We drank cheap jug wine late into the night and talked politics and music. He assured me that "Don't Mess With Bill" by the Marvelettes was a work of genius "way ahead of its time" and played some great country songs on the mandolin.

I was especially taken by "I'm A Lonesome Fugitive" and "Sing Me Back Home" by Merle Haggard. I soon became a big fan of his, especially the songs that came out his brief time in prison.

I bought his newest album: "Okie From Muskogee," recorded live in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and loved it. This was the time of the First Culture War, and many people took the song "Okie From Muskogee" as a straightforward political statement--"We don't burn our draft cards down on Main Street." But I thought it was hilarious. I mean "We like holding hands and pitching' woo?" come on. Later Merle insisted that the song was always meant as a joke, and I want to believe him.

Whichever way you take it, the album is a classic. You have to love the part where Merle is given the key to the city by the mayor. 

Merle has a lot of great drunk songs, too.

I also appreciated Merle's take on the music of Jimmie Rodgers (the Singing Brakeman) and Bob Wills (King of Lone Star Swing), and over the years I collected most of their work, too.

In 1971, I was able to see Merle in concert at the Hollywood Bowl. My sister and her boyfriend and my future first wife and I bought a front row box and packed a picnic dinner with plenty of wine. Merle's regular fans were a bit skeptical at first of the presence of four stoned hippies in their midst, but once they saw us enthusiastically singing along with every song, they decided to embrace us.

It was one of the best concerts I've ever attended.

P.