Merle Haggard - A Working Man Cant Get Nowhere Today '1977;2021

Tracks list

One can quibble about packaging and marketing decisions regarding this music,
but not the music itself. Sure, it is a little phony to see Merle Haggard
dressed up like a hard-hat worker on the front, and making a joke about him
leaving his lunchbox behind on the back certainly will bring to mind the line
about someone being a couple of sandwiches short of a box lunch. And then theres
the stupid note about the problems of the working man signed by the girls at the
office. The country fan would have been much better served by a list of the
pickers on the album, because the playing is simply impeccable. This is one of
this country legends well thought-out combinations of hardcore traditional
material from Hank Williams and the Delmore Brothers, combined with his own
brilliant songwriting from some of his tried and true perspectives, such as the
lonely loser of The Running Kind or the bittersweet, moderate beer drinking
narrator of the title tune. Riding high on the success of the tongue-in-cheek
Okie From Muskogee, Haggard appears comfortable in his role as a philosopher,
going way out on a limb on Im a White Boy, but, suprisingly enough, the limb
doesnt break and he is home free. The hard to count highlights include the
charming tribute to Lefty Frizzell, made up almost entirely of lines from his
songs, Blues for Lefty. Backup is simply credited to the Strangers, and it
sounds like a well-recorded distillation of one of their typical sets, plenty of
twangy picking with a bit of jazzy horns thrown in. Theres a cliche about music
being so good it goes by really quickly, but in this case not only sheer genius
but a total running length of about 24 minutes contribute to this phenomenon. ~
Eugene Chadbourne

Tracklist:
1 01. Merle Haggard - A Working Man Cant Get Nowhere Today (02:57)
1 02. Merle Haggard - Making Believe (03:03)
1 03. Merle Haggard - Blues Stay Away From Me (02:18)
1 04. Merle Haggard - Got A Letter From My Kid Today (02:31)
1 05. Merle Haggard - When My Last Song Is Sung (02:00)
1 06. Merle Haggard - Moanin The Blues (02:08)
1 07. Merle Haggard - Goodbye Lefty (02:42)
1 08. Merle Haggard - Blues For Dixie (02:38)
1 09. Merle Haggard & The Strangers - Running Kind (03:04)
1 10. Merle Haggard - Im A White Boy (02:05)

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