Steven Gaydos Executive VP of ContentNearly 50 years after his passing, 2022 Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee Lefty Frizzell remains one of the indisputable pillars of country music.
His influence on another country music giant, the late Merle Haggard, is both profound and clear to anyone with ears. Haggard’s vocal style developed in the 1950s when Frizzell’s impact was at its peak.
Marc Eliot’s essential Haggard biography, “The Hag,” sketches the time in the ’50s when Frizzell had a personal impact on young “Hag.”Merle Haggard was sixteen by the time he was released from the reformatory, tougher than ever and hardly reformed.
Back in Oildale, Flossie still tried to put her boy on the righteous path. On September 20, 1953, she had Merle baptized at the Church of Christ.
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