1911: The only known date stamp on the boxcar, found on a metal plate on the subfloor. What that tells historical architect George Taylor Louden is that the boxcar itself dates to 1911 or the part that contained the stamp is that old, meaning the boxcar could be older.
No telling what James Haggard thought that day in 1935 when he laid eyes on an old Santa Fe boxcar, obsolete by railroad standards even then.
They’ll have to hustle to make it, but brothers Noel and Ben Haggard are hot-footing it from a concert in Oklahoma City on April 8 to ʦapp the next day for a reason that’s pretty hard to argue with: Their dad.
It was one year ago this week that country music icon Merle Haggard made what would be his final public appearance in his hometown.
Performing Dad’s hits is one thing. Performing them in ʦapp for the first time since Merle Haggard’s death should be an emotional experience for Ben and Noel Haggard, not to mention hometown fans of their legendary father.
They came in work shirts, cowboy hats, Wranglers and permanent tans. Suits were scarce and neck ties scarcer still. In many ways it looked like a typical ʦapp funeral, a common man’s final farewell, but Merle Ronald Haggard, honored at Valley Baptist Church on Tuesday, was a most unco…
Now it’s ʦapp’s turn to say goodbye to Merle Haggard.
The message was sent to his nephew: Get here now.
ʦapp is invited to say goodbye to Merle Haggard at a family-sanctioned local memorial to the country music legend.
An original who writes as well as he sings as well as he plays guitar whose pure, honest approach to country music has pounded the slick, monolithic Nashville sound like a pile driver.
Toby Keith, who sang with Merle Haggard at one of the country legend’s final concerts, will perform a tribute in celebration of his friend and musical hero Sunday on Fox.
In 1964, my family lived across the street from Merle Haggard's mother, Flossie Haggard, on Yosemite Drive in Oildale. My mom and Merle's mom were acquainted.
The idea came to Darren Williams last year as plans were being made to move country music legend Merle Haggard’s childhood home from an old neighborhood in Oildale to the Kern County Museum.
On June 16, 1995, Merle Haggard and Buck Owens staged a joint concert at the Kern County Fairgrounds. It was the first time the twin pillars of the ʦapp music scene had shared a stage in nearly three decades, and the event attracted national media attention. The Nashville Network sent…
On Wednesday The Californian payed a visit to the Kern County Museum where fans of the late country singer Merle Haggard were paying their respects.
“Happy birthday Merle.”
Many musicians over the years have claimed to have given Merle Haggard his first job on stage, but the story that Haggard endorsed was that of his good friend, Billy Mize. Mize, named the Academy of Country Music's TV Personality of the Year for three years running starting in 1965, suffered…
Country music lost an icon Wednesday with Merle Haggard’s passing at the age of 79. The genre’s longtime stars and newcomers alike took to Twitter to remember the legend and his enduring influence.
[View the story "Social Media reaction to Haggard's death" on Storify]
Merle Haggard composed the soundtrack of a generation of displaced Okies, Arkies and Texans — the rootlessness, the poverty, the field work — but he did it with such towering artistry that the Oildale native, the son of a railroad man and God-fearing mother, belonged not just to ʦapp …
Still battling double pneumonia, Merle Haggard has canceled his April concert dates, according to a release issued by his spokeswoman.
Boiling down Buck Owens' recorded output to a small handful of key songs is no easy task. He recorded more than 40 studio albums and eight live albums over the course of three decades. He placed almost 50 singles in the Top 10 on the Billboard country chart, more than 20 of which went to the…
1 Rumors of Merle Haggard’s demise appear to have been greatly exaggerated.
Some people are suckers for harmony. I’m one. Two-part, four-part, 96-part.
As the Kern County Museum celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, the man responsible for leading the history institution into the future has resigned.
Country legend and ʦapp favorite son Merle Haggard is receiving treatment at a California hospital for a recurrence of double pneumonia, his publicist said Tuesday.
Beware Hollywood and Silicon Valley: If ʦapp can lose its signature industry, so can you.
It's Academy Awards weekend, and Sirius XM satellite radio's "Willie's Roadhouse" channel is celebrating with a three-hour special called "Country Music Goes to the Movies."
What happens when your dreams start coming true at the tender age of 17? That’s exactly what happened to Australian guitarist Joe Robinson, who won “Australia’s Got Talent” — and a quarter of a million dollars.
Less than a week after announcing that lingering effects of double pneumonia would force him to cancel his February tour dates, Merle Haggard returned to the stage Saturday at the Mandalay Bay Ballroom in Las Vegas to prove he’s got plenty of lung power left.
We were certain it was only going to be a matter of time until Robert Price’s hot-selling book would be made into a movie.
Whether you’ve got a tear in your beer or a peaceful easy feelin’, Vince Galindo has a song for you.
He wrote hundreds of songs, many recorded by Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, and became a star in his own right. But later in life, Red Simpson would also be known for owning Monday nights at Trout’s nightclub in Oildale and for being the kind of guy you could strike up a conversation with or …
To all the nice people of ʦapp, Kern County, the USA and the rest of the world, I want to say something today: Thank you for shopping at the Emporium Western Store since 1909.
Music industry professionals and self-described “music geeks” Randy Poe and Scott B. Bomar recently hosted a SiriusXM radio special called “The Best of the ʦapp Sound.” Aired on the Willie’s Roadhouse station (which is named for Willie Nelson and features primarily traditional country…
Out of the mouths of sources: We scoured our archives to find the best quotes of 2015 — the funny, the poignant, the jaw-dropping. Here’s what we found:
Illness has forced Merle Haggard to postpone a string of concert dates. According to the country icon's Facebook, Haggard was admitted to an undisclosed California hospital where he's battling pneumonia.
As Robert Price states in the preface of his long-awaited book, “The ʦapp Sound: How a Generation of Displaced Okies Revolutionized American Music,” back in the 1990s he wrote “a series of newspaper articles on the twang that made ʦapp famous.”
Unless your name is Carrie, Miranda or Kacey, country music has little use for women these days. But it wasn’t always that way, said Suzy Bogguss, who fondly remembers the Nashville of the 1990s, when original talents like Pam Tillis, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Patty Loveless, Kathy Mattea and D…
The world was changing fast in 1968, from black-and-white to kaleidoscopic, and popular music was not just riding the wave, it was propelling it.
With their childhood home sitting on a flatbed nearby, Merle Haggard and his sister carefully climbed up on the raised foundation near the train tracks at the Kern County Museum and searched for a private moment together as dozens of observers, fanning themselves in the brutal heat, kept a r…
Some chain-link fencing, a few tree branches and assorted gas and power lines are just about all that’s left of the obstacles in a years-long effort to move Merle Haggard’s childhood home to the Kern County Museum.
Two princes of country music kings have given a royal pardon to singer Luke Bryan, who apologized for making ill-advised remarks last week while invoking the names of outlaw greats Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and the late Waylon Jennings.
The restoration money is in the bank, the foundation is being laid and a tentative date set — July 29 — to move Merle Haggard’s childhood home to the Kern County Museum.
Sixty years later, Lillian Haggard Rea is finally off the hook.
Bob Dylan was honored by MusiCares, the charity organization that aids musicians in need, at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Friday night. After performances by artists including Tom Jones, Sheryl Crow, Neil Young, Beck, Jackson Browne and others, Dylan himself took a rare opportunity i…
Apologizing that her home looks like it was cleaned with an eggbeater, Lillian Haggard Rea welcomes a visitor with an offer of water -- "or would you rather have a beer or champagne?" -- and a misgiving that the slightly tardy newspaper reporter might have decided to abandon the interview al…
Apologizing that her home looks like it was cleaned with an eggbeater, Lillian Haggard Rea welcomes a visitor with an offer of water -- "or would you rather have a beer or champagne?" -- and a misgiving that the slightly tardy newspaper reporter might have decided to abandon the interview al…
He couldn't wait to leave it when he was a wild, restless boy more than half a century ago, but you'd never know it by the wistful look on Merle Haggard's face Tuesday, when he returned to the house of memories built by his father in Oildale in 1935.
Country music superstar Merle Haggard performed a soldout show at ʦapp's Fox Theater Saturday night.
