{"id":4287,"date":"2016-04-06T15:45:35","date_gmt":"2016-04-06T19:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=4287"},"modified":"2016-06-15T20:37:11","modified_gmt":"2016-06-16T00:37:11","slug":"haggard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/06\/haggard\/","title":{"rendered":"Merle Haggard dies at 79"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Country Music star Merle Haggard died today on his 79th birthday. <a href=\"\/blog\/2003\/09\/12\/cash\/\">Unlike Johnny Cash<\/a> who also made the pain of incarceration a central theme in his work, Haggard actually did serve time. And, ironically or perhaps luckily, Haggard was in the audience at Cash&#8217;s very first concert at a prison, and that experience led him him to take up a career in music.<\/p>\n<p>But Haggard didn&#8217;t leave his roots behind. Of his many songs about incarceration, my favorite is &#8220;Branded Man&#8221; about the discrimination faced by formerly incarcerated people: &#8220;No matter where I&#8217;m living, the black mark follows me,&#8221; he sings. &#8220;I&#8217;m branded with a number on my name.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Here is a live performance from 1968:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"610\" height=\"458\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/W-ER-yo1V3s\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The song, which peaked at #1 in 1967, is still in frequent rotation on country music stations. Merle Haggard deserves credit for 49 years of trying to teach this country just how short-sighted it is to hold past mistakes against people. As he sings in the chorus:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I&#8217;d like to hold my head up and be proud of who I am<br \/>But they won&#8217;t let my secret go untold<br \/>I paid the debt I owed them, but they&#8217;re still not satisfied<br \/>Now I&#8217;m a branded man out in the cold<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now Merle Haggard went on to become famous, in no doubt because, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/lists\/12-most-badass-merle-haggard-prison-songs-20150406\/huntsville-20150406\"><i>Rolling Stone<\/i> put it last year<\/a>: &#8220;Luckily for Haggard, his music career never again required him to answer the &#8216;have you ever been convicted of a crime?&#8217; question on a job application.&#8221; It&#8217;s well past time to extend that right to more people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Country music star Merle Haggard spent 49 years trying to convince this nation that discriminating against the formerly incarcerated is bad social policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[11],"class_list":["post-4287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memory","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4287"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}