Jamboree director: Replacing Haggard a matter of ‘timing’

Scott Swanson

The death of country music legend Merle Haggard last week leaves the Oregon Jamboree and other festivals scrambling to find an artist to replace him, festival Director Robert Shamek said.

Replacing him in the line-up will likely require coordination and cooperation with other festivals in the same boat.

The Jamboree had Haggard scheduled as one of its three headliners for this year’s three-day festival, July 29-31.

Haggard died on his 79th birthday, April 6, 2016, in Palo Cedro, Calif.

“You can’t replace Merle Haggard,” Shamek said, adding that he had been personally looking forward to Haggard’s scheduled performance.

Haggard had been scheduled as the Jamboree’s Saturday headliner. He was to perform Saturday night, July 30, following Neal McCoy and Josh Gracin. Carrie Underwood is scheduled to headline Friday’s line-up and Toby Keith on Sunday night.

“We have some good options,” Shamek said Monday, regarding Haggard’s replacement. “It’s just timing. Timing is everything. It’s just late in the game. I’m really hopeful that within the next two weeks we’ll have somebody to put in that time slot.

“We’re trying to hopefully do some routing with other festivals that had Merle Haggard. We’re working with our agency in Nashville to get a replacement. ”

Haggard had canceled tour dates in December after he checked into a hospital and learned he had double pneumonia. He also canceled shows scheduled for late January after he suffered a relapse. At the end of March, he announced he was canceling all his April touring schedule on doctor’s orders.

According to news reports, Haggard had been in hospice care before he died.

Merle Ronald Haggard was born in 1937 just outside of Bakersfield, Calif. His family struggled financially throughout his childhood, living in an old converted boxcar after their home burned down. Life got tougher after Haggard’s father died when he was 9. When he was 10, Haggard hopped a freight train to Fresno, an hour away, where he was picked up by authorities. He had numerous brushes with the law as he took on a variety of unskilled jobs as a teen, from oil field rustabout to short order cook.

He served time in various penal institutions for crimes ranging from burglary to auto theft, to escape. Before he was 21, and shortly before he married his first wife, Leona, he served time in San Quentin Penitentiary for a bungled attempt at burglarizing a tavern.

Haggard began to take music seriously while in prison at San Quentin, where he was present during Johnny Cash’s performance that was released in a live album, “At San Quentin.”

Haggard began to make a name for himself in the club scene around Bakersfield after his release, developing a hard-charging approach to country music that prominently featured twangy electric guitars. He released his first single, a cover of Wynn Stewart’s “Sing a Sad Song,” in 1964, but it was Haggard’s own compositions that launched him as one of the most important and influential country hitmakers of his generation – deeply personal songs such as “The Bottle Let Me Down,” “Branded Man,” “Sing Me Back Home,” “Mama Tried” and others.

Haggard maintained that successful streak through the 1970s and into the 1980s, scoring more hits including “If We Make It Through December,” “Ramblin’ Fever” and “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink.”

In a career spanning decades, he amassed 38 No. 1 hits, 19 ACM awards, six CMA awards and three Grammys. He arguably made his biggest mark with his 1969 album “Okie from Muskogee,” which earned him both ACM and CMA Album of the Year, Single of Year and Top Male Vocalist of the Year.

He won a Song of the Year award in 1982 for “Are the Good Times Really Over?” and a Grammy for Best Country Vocal Performance, Male in 1984 for “That’s the Way Love Goes.”

He stayed active in his later years, touring regularly and releasing a new album, Django & Jimmie, with Willie Nelson in 2015, which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Country Albums chart.

Haggard struggled with his health and family life. He was married and divorced four times before marrying his fifth wife, Theresa Ann Lane, in 1993. He underwent angioplasty in 1995 to unblock clogged arteries, and in 2008 Haggard had part of his lung removed after he was diagnosed with non-small-cell lung cancer. He returned to the stage just months after that surgery, and remained active in performing until right before the end of his life.

Haggard was honored as BMI Icon in 1996, at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2010, and was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1977 andinto the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1994.

Heperformed twice at the Oregon Jamboree, in the third festival in 1994 and in 2005, as a headliner.

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