Merle Haggard – Sing Me Back Home

One of the many Haggard songs that my dad would play. This one along with a song called Sam Hill I heard a lot when I was a child. Sing Me Back Home was released in 1967, and it became one of Haggard’s most enduring hits.

Most people know that he spent his early adulthood behind bars for a failed attempt at robbery. While in San Quentin State Prison, Haggard wrote many songs while dreaming of freedom and life beyond the bars of a cell.

Sing Me Back Home was inspired by his fellow inmates James Rabbit and Caryl Chessman. Rabbit was executed in 1961 for killing a California Highway Patrolman, and Chessman was the first modern American executed for a non-lethal kidnapping.

Haggard and James Rabbit hatched a plan one night to escape (they would hide inside a desk he was building in the prison furniture factory), though at the last moment, Rabbit advised Haggard not to take part in the plan. Rabbit escaped, was recaptured, killed an officer, and was brought back to San Quentin to be executed. It was the first of many events to change something in Haggard’s criminal ways.

It is an incredibly sad song and you get it with the first two lines of the song. The warden led a prisoner down the hallway to his doom, I stood up to say goodbye like all the rest.  The song was on his Sing Me Back Home album released in 1968. The album peaked at #1 on the Billboard Country Album Charts. The song peaked at #1 on the Billboard Country Charts and #7 on the Canadian Country Charts.

Merle Haggard: “Something happened to me there, I came to the fork in the road and took it, you might say. And I kind of started back in the other direction, trying to make something out of myself rather than to dig myself in a deeper hole.”

Sing Me Back Home

The warden led a prisoner down the hallway to his doomI stood up to say goodbye like all the restAnd I heard him tell the warden just before he reached my cellLet my guitar playing friend, do my request

Let him sing me back home with a song I used to hearMake my old memories come aliveTake me away and turn back the yearsSing me back home before I die

I recall last Sunday morning a choir from ‘cross the streetCame to sing a few old gospel songsAnd I heard him tell the singersThere’s a song my mama sangCan I hear once before we move along?

Sing me back home, the song my mama sangMake my old memories come aliveTake me away and turn back the yearsSing me back home before I die

Sing me back home before I die

….

Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player.

27 thoughts on “Merle Haggard – Sing Me Back Home”

  2. A favorite song of mine. His voice rings out so well and the story is compelling – especially since it is only partly fictional and was pivotal in his life. Compelling in the same way as “Long Black Veil”. Also one of the songs to show that the Grateful Dead were not merely ersatz country.

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    1. Garcia knew real country along with the roots and the history of it. I saw a documentary of him talking about the roots of rock as well.

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    1. He is one of the greats no doubt. I know Keith Richards, Jerry Garcia, and others were big fans of him. He is a no BS kind of guy in his songs…straight to the point.
      The song of his that probably is the most famous is Mama Tried.

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  5. He took the right fork- or left- in the road, that’s for sure. Its a song that sits right up against ‘Green Green Grass Of Home’ in sentiment, and that one had me blinking away the tears as an impressionable pre-teen.

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      1. With that ole Opry style ‘fiddle-me-dee, toss-my-stetson-in-the-air and spit tobacco juice all down my bib overalls’ style Country I’d run me a country mile- to get away from that sweet schmaltzy racket- but this stuff is the real pay dirt.

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  7. Gram Parsons turned me onto Merle and I have been hooked since. So many things I like about him and his music. His vocals are second to none for me. He cuts through musical genres for me. Country? I guess but so much more. Flatlanders to Merle. It’s a good day for music.

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  9. I was a Haggard fan from the get-go. He’s country without being too country, sort of like Glen Campbell and his pal Bobbie Gentry (hubba-hubba.) If that song doesn’t make you cry in your beer, then you got no emotions. I saw him in concert in 1972 in Dallas and the Fair Park Music Hall was packed with young and old, even though his Okie from Muskogee made fun of the hippies, there were plenty of them there at the show. Anything Merle recorded, is good enough for me. Good write up, Max.

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  10. I recalled this song from Don Williams’ beautiful version. But having said and it’s perhaps one of if not the only time his cover is beaten hands down by the original, in this case ‘Merle Haggard’. Your father had great taste Max.

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      2. Sure…my number 1 is “Mama Tried” 2 is this one and 3rd is The Fightin’ Side of Me
        In 4th and 5th place would be
        Branded Man
        That’s the Way Love Goes

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  11. Pingback: Sing Me Back Home – Making Home Home

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