1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 83. Merle Haggard and the Strangers – I'm A Lonesome Fugitive (1967)

 

With both an artist name and an album title like that, you’d be forgiven for expecting some country, and that’s exactly what we get. Twangy steel guitars and songs about whiskey and women. There’s a quote attributed to Jean-Luc Goddard that “all you need to make a film is a gun and a girl”, and in many ways the same could be said to be true for country and American folk. At least it’s decidedly not psychedelia though, for a change.

There are songs about prison life and songs about post-prison life and songs about avoiding prison. Haggard spent time in San Quentin as a young man after going off the rails after his father’s death, and although most of the songs weren’t written by him he evidently felt a connection to them. That’s very country music.

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