Various Holding Things Together - The Merle Haggard Songbook (CD)

(Ace Records) 24 tracks - 20 page booklet

 Universally known to his fans and peers as 'Hag', the late Merle Haggard was one of the prime exponents of the 'Bakersfield Sound', developed in the early '60s as an alternative to the increasingly smooth and homogenized country music that was coming out of Nashville. Haggard was also one of country's most prolific hitmakers and composers, writing more than three quarters of the hundred plus songs he placed on Billboard's Country charts between 1962 and 1990, as well as numerous album tracks.

This entry in Ace's Songwriter Series offers a broad cross-section of premium Hag copyrights, as reinterpreted by artists as diverse as Gram Parsons, Bettye Swann, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Grateful Dead and legendary 'Singing Cowboy' Roy Rogers, to name but a few. Most of the featured songs are famous enough to be recognized by their titles and are rightly considered to be country music classics but as ever, we have unearthed a few lesser known killers - some of which are appearing on CD for the first time.