Okie from Muskogee Lyrics
We got to talking it over and thought we'd take off a little time if we can
I'm coming home if I can find me a flight this morning, man
The Okie from Muskogee is coming home
It has been twenty years of traveling
Twenty years of living out on the road
Learning these chords and learning these songs
Paying up all these dues they said I owe
And I may always be a rambler never lose the urge to roam
I'm coming home if I can find me a flight this morning, man
The Okie from Muskogee is coming home
Okie is a derogatory term, but Merle Haggard has every right to use it, as do I. Because our families were part of the Okie migration to California. You can't use it on us as a bad word, but we can use it about ourselves as a term of pride. It's taking back something that was once derogatory and making it our own. My folks moved from Oklahoma and Arkansas to California in the twenties and thirties to pick cotton, which makes them Okies. You were an Okie even if you were from Arkansas, although sometimes they said Arkie too. But my folks were Okies, I'm descended from Okies, and I'm proud of it, and I'll use the term Okie any time I want. Merle Haggard has certainly earned that right himself. He's right from around the same area my folks are from -- Bakersfield, Wasco, etc. He talks like them. He moves like them. He looks like them. We're Okies, and nothing wrong with that. I agree the song was originally intended to be satirical, though, and then veered off course when people started identifying with it. Merle Haggard was hardly a pristine, law-abiding figure and he rarely tried to look like one.
Back during the 1960's and 1970's, the ones who made the most noise were the ones who ripped out the rock and roll during that time in history. It turns out, ironically enough, those who spoke for the working class musically spoke for the war effort in Vietnam. Nowadays, you don't find that unless you listen to country on a regular basis.
Well this song remind's me so much of the kind of people I used to see and talk to in my town's coffee house. Im freind's with all of them...an i dont know whether it's what the song's lyric's are about or just the way Haggard talk's...But it really puts a smile on my face. I agree with OpinionHead too, this has working class writen all over it...And Good Ol' Boyism
before everyone gets all nostalgic about small town america, let's get this outta the way:
Merle said about the song, "It started out as a joke. We wrote to be satirical originally. But then people latched onto it, and it really turned into this song that looked into the mindset of people so opposite of who and where we were. My dad's people. He's from Muskogee, you know?"
also i was raised in muskogee and it's nothing like the song.
@sun_giant I doubt the veracity of that quotation. I've read other things Merle Haggard said about this song and this does not correspond to it. Some journalist managed to cajole a response from Haggard that said it was a "parody," which used to be on the wikipedia page now, but I don't see it any longer. It was never accurate. Check out the wikipedia page now (2023) to get a more realistic view of what he actually thought when he was writing the song. It was not a joke.
@sun_giant I doubt the veracity of that quotation. I've read other things Merle Haggard said about this song and this does not correspond to it. Some journalist managed to cajole a response from Haggard that said it was a "parody," which used to be on the wikipedia page now, but I don't see it any longer. It was never accurate. Check out the wikipedia page now (2023) to get a more realistic view of what he actually thought when he was writing the song. It was not a joke.
Personally I find this song insulting. I have lived in Muskogee most of my life, I was even born here, and have heard people from other areas associate me with this song just because of where I am from.
This song is offensive.
Yeah! And Your name is Sue. ;-)
Yeah! And Your name is Sue. ;-)
Also Okie is a derogatory term, learn your history.