Posted on Jul 8, 2022
A Kansas City writer wants you to know why the late country music legend Merle Haggard still...
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Kansas City author David Cantwell, who just published a new version of a book he wrote years ago, says Merle Haggard was 'constantly singing about the things that we're still arguing about today.'
Every Saturday when David Cantwell was growing up in South Kansas City, the family took his grandmother to the Safeway at 73rd Street and Prospect Avenue.
That was where, in 1970, Cantwell bought his first record: Edwin Starr's "War."
"Which, through the years, has been kind of a cool thing to be able to say: that my first single was Edwin Starr's 'War,'" he says. "Because it’s a great record, a politically astute record, anti-war — not just anti-Vietnam War but anti-war generally."
But he confesses, the record he actually meant to buy that day was Merle Haggard's "The Fightin' Side of Me" — whose message to "squirrelly" anti-war Americans is, "if you don't love it, leave it."
Every Saturday when David Cantwell was growing up in South Kansas City, the family took his grandmother to the Safeway at 73rd Street and Prospect Avenue.
That was where, in 1970, Cantwell bought his first record: Edwin Starr's "War."
"Which, through the years, has been kind of a cool thing to be able to say: that my first single was Edwin Starr's 'War,'" he says. "Because it’s a great record, a politically astute record, anti-war — not just anti-Vietnam War but anti-war generally."
But he confesses, the record he actually meant to buy that day was Merle Haggard's "The Fightin' Side of Me" — whose message to "squirrelly" anti-war Americans is, "if you don't love it, leave it."
A Kansas City writer wants you to know why the late country music legend Merle Haggard still...
Posted from kcur.org
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Posted 2 y ago
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Haggard died in 2016. But in his body of work, one can almost hear the seeds of this era's "great resignation," a massive societal re-calibration of our relationship with work, in which 40 million people left their jobs last year.
"One of the things he focuses on a lot, is that a key but rare element of freedom for wage earners is free time. And he sings about the desire for that a lot," Cantwell says.
"How, you know, 'I need to stop and grieve this death,' or spend time with my children or my spouse, or maybe just write a new song or go fishing," he says. "He wrote those things in the '60s and '70s and '80s and '90s, but I think there's still things that we share today."
..."Haggard died in 2016. But in his body of work, one can almost hear the seeds of this era's "great resignation," a massive societal re-calibration of our relationship with work, in which 40 million people left their jobs last year.
"One of the things he focuses on a lot, is that a key but rare element of freedom for wage earners is free time. And he sings about the desire for that a lot," Cantwell says.
"How, you know, 'I need to stop and grieve this death,' or spend time with my children or my spouse, or maybe just write a new song or go fishing," he says. "He wrote those things in the '60s and '70s and '80s and '90s, but I think there's still things that we share today."
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