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Okie from Muskogee (song)

"Okie from Muskogee"
Merle Okie.jpg
Single by Merle Haggard
from the album Okie from Muskogee
B-side "If I Had Left It Up to You"
Released September 29, 1969
Format 7"
Recorded July 17, 1969 (studio version)
Genre Country
Length 2:42 (studio version)
3:29 (live version)
Label Capitol 2626
Writer(s) Roy Edward Burris
Merle Haggard
Producer(s) Fuzzy Owen
Merle Haggard singles chronology
"Workin' Man Blues"
(1969)
"Okie from Muskogee"
(1969)
"The Fightin' Side of Me"
(1970)

"Okie from Muskogee" is a song recorded by American country music artist Merle Haggard, which he co-wrote with Roy Edward Burris. "Okie" is a slang name for someone from Oklahoma, and Muskogee is the 11th largest city in the state. The song was released in September 1969 as first single and title track from the album Okie from Muskogee, and was one of the most famous songs of Haggard's career.

Haggard told The Boot that he wrote the song after he became disheartened watching Vietnam War protests and incorporated that emotion and viewpoint into song. Haggard says, "When I was in prison, I knew what it was like to have freedom taken away. Freedom is everything. During Vietnam, there were all kinds of protests. Here were these [servicemen] going over there and dying for a cause — we don't even know what it was really all about. And here are these young kids, that were free, bitching about it. There's something wrong with that and with [disparaging] those poor guys." He states that he wrote the song to support the troops.

Critic Kurt Wolff wrote that Haggard always considered what became a redneck anthem to be a spoof, and that today fans — even the hippies that are derided in the lyrics — have taken a liking to the song and find humor in some of the lyrics, leading to cover versions of the song being recorded by such countercultural acts as the Grateful Dead, The Beach Boys, Phil Ochs, The Flaming Lips, String Cheese Incident, and Hank Williams III with The Melvins.

Written by Haggard and Roy Edward Burris (drummer for Haggard's backing band, The Strangers) during the height of the Vietnam War, "Okie from Muskogee" grew from the two trading one-liners about small-town life, where conservative values were the norm and outsiders with ideals contrary to those ways were unwelcome. Here, the singer reflects on how proud he is to hail from Middle America, where its residents were patriotic, and didn't smoke marijuana, take LSD, wear beads and sandals, burn draft cards or challenge authority.


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