The greatest Merle Haggard show I ever saw wasn’t a show at all. It was a rehearsal at Harrah’s in Reno – not even a rehearsal, a sound check – that went on for two or three hours. Merle had a twelve-piece “orchestra,” very similar to this one, made up of former Playboys, the core of Merle’s band, the Strangers, and a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old Mark O’Connor. The show that Merle did

that night for the public was professional enough but not even remotely on the same plane. The sound check was music purely for the sake of making music – and I think they would have played all night (another Bob Wills reference) if they hadn’t had a supper show to do. Just to show how dedicated Merle can be when it comes to what he really cares about, he learned to play fiddle just so he could play Bob Wills music with the great Bob Wills band. To my mind there could be no better proof of the totality of Merle’s commitment to music: like Duke Ellington, for Merle the band (whether the Strangers or this augmented group) was his indulgence, the gigs were his way of paying for it. Merle’s originals were unquestionably the centerpiece of his work, but here we have perhaps the greatest songwriter of our time (of any time?), of his genre (of any genre?), singing the songs of one of his musical heroes with just as much genuineness and pure emotion as he would bring to any song of his own. Merle was an uncompromising original, but if you want to place him in a broader context of creativity, think of Sam Cooke, too: an incomparable singer and songwriter, who always presented his music just as he heard it in his own head.