Haggard Persuasive Speech

His love songs are among the best ever written, which is why they've been recorded and performed by others extensively over time. "I Started Loving You Again," from 1968, has a lyrical nod to Owens' earlier hit "Crying Time," yet still became a country classic on its own:

What a fool I was to think I could get by

With only these few million tears I've cried

I should have known the worst was yet to come

And that crying time for me had just begun

As a music fan who has loved country music since I can remember — part of my DNA thanks to my mother's roots growing up during the Depression in the coal-mining country of eastern Kentucky — I've taken every opportunity that cropped up to connect with Haggard during my years covering popular music
"I think we're probably guilty of living up to the Constitution for the first time in the history of America — which is really something to say," Haggard told me in 2009. "In my lifetime, they were still lynching blacks without a court, without a trial. To see it come all the way to [an African American] being elected president is really something."

Every time I watched him sing "Okie From Muskogee" — outwardly poking fun at the hippie peace-and-love generation that was in full flower when he wrote it in 1969 — I tried to discern whether he was being sincere, or being slyly ironic. I finally concluded it was a little of both, which also was part of his great gift as a writer.

As much as anyone, he recognized that life wasn't etched in black and white but in a full complement of colors. And like Mark Twain, Haggard could convincingly capture the attitude of any number of characters in his songs, without necessarily internalizing the views he helped them