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.
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.