“It’s good to be here… Good to be anywhere,” joked Keith Richards Thursday night (April 6) at the 80th birthday tribute concert for the late Merle Haggard. Watch the Rolling Stones’ great sing Haggard’s “Sing Me Back Home” below.
Richards, always a huge country music fan, and Sheryl Crow were late additions to the bill for the tribute concert.
The late country music giant Merle Haggard would have turned 80 on April 6, and in his honor a bevy of performers from within various genres convened at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville—”Hag” died last year on that date, his 79th birthday.
“Sing Me Back Home: The Music of Merle Haggard” also featured Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, Kenny Chesney, John Mellencamp, Dierks Bentley, Loretta Lynn, the Avett Brothers, Hank Williams Jr., Alison Krauss, Ronnie Dunn, Warren Haynes, Jamey Johnson, Kacey Musgraves, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Lucinda Williams, Ben Haggard, John Anderson, Connie Smith, Bobby Bare and others.
Watch Richards’ performance of “Sing Me Back Home”…
Following a troubled youth that found him incarcerated several times, Haggard became a singer/songwriter and eventually signed with signed with Capitol Records. He first gained famed in the late ’60s with hit self-penned country songs like “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive,” “Branded Man,” “Workin’ Man Blues,” “Sing Me Back Home” and “Mama Tried,” the latter two often covered by the Grateful Dead.
Related: Merle Haggard dies at 79
In 1969 his song “Okie From Muskogee” touched a nerve nationally, finding favor among conservatives and courting derision from the young hippies whose lifestyle was criticized in the lyrics. A followup, “Fightin’ Side of Me,” mined the same territory lyrically. (Ironically, later in life Haggard became a marijuana and cocaine user, and his politics leaned toward the liberal side.)
Haggard remained a virtually unstoppable hit machine well into the 1980s, racking up more than 100 chart placements on the Billboard country singles chart, 38 of them reaching #1. Beside the Dead, his songs were covered by Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Byrds, Keith Richards, John Fogerty, Jorma Kaukonen, New Riders of the Purple Sage, the Flying Burrito Brothers and others.
Haggard recorded numerous collaborations over the years, including the massive hit album Poncho and Lefty with Willie Nelson in 1983.
Haggard was the recipient of a Kennedy Center Honor on December 4, 2010, from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He also received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Watch Merle Haggard perform his hit “The Fightin’ Side of Me”
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