Mama Tried

Haggard, Merle

album cover

Yes, Mama, You Were Right

Country singers love their mamas. Country singers also love whiskey, and when they love whiskey too much, they get into trouble. When they get into trouble, they let mama down. This makes them feel worse, so they find their way back to whiskey.

Such is the cycle of life Merle Haggard sketches on his inspired Mama Tried. Not all the songs talk about running afoul of what mama taught was right—"In the Good Old Days" fondly remembers a hardscrabble youth spent walking miles to school carrying lunch in the bib of his overalls, and "Run 'Em Off" is the directive of a man worried about his wife being too friendly with the milkman.

But many of the originals are set in prison cells, with the young Haggard, who'd only been recording for four years when he made this, looking back. In the straightforward, affectation-free singing style that remains his trademark, he recalls nights of drinking that went sour and the horrible deeds that ensued, lamenting how, as his mama well knew, "I Could Have Gone Right." Even before the cover of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues", Haggard has laid out a detailed profile of the roughneck rogue—who only now, with the benefit of hindsight, has regret about what he's done.

The songs of Mama Tried are drawn, at least partly, from experience. Haggard's family fled the dust bowl of Oklahoma in the 1930s and settled in Bakersfield, California. His father died when he was nine; the trauma propelled young Merle to a life of petty crime that landed him in prison several times. He returned to Bakersfield (from San Quentin) in 1960, and began performing—aligning himself with the assertive, honkytonk sound then blossoming in the region. This and other recordings for Capitol—including the hit "Okie from Muskogee"—established Haggard as an articulate and passionate torch carrier for traditional country and its working-folks values.

Genre: Country
Released: 1968, Capitol (Reissued 2006)
Key Tracks: "Mama Tried," "In the Good Old Days," "Teach Me to Forget"
Catalog Choice: A Working Man Can't Get Nowhere Today; Lonesome Fugitive
Next Stop: Waylon Jennings: Honky Tonk Heroes
After That: George Strait: Strait from the Heart
Book Pages: 334–335

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About 1,000 Recordings

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