Sing Me Back Home
| Sing Me Back Home | ||||
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| Studio album by Merle Haggard | ||||
| Released | January 2, 1968 | |||
| Recorded | April, July, September, November 1967 Capitol Records, Hollywood, CA |
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| Genre | Country | |||
| Length | 30:13 | |||
| Label | Capitol | |||
| Producer | Ken Nelson | |||
| Merle Haggard chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |
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| Pitchfork Media |   |
Sing Me Back Home is the fifth studio album by American country singer and songwriter Merle Haggard, released in 1967 on Capitol Records.
The album's title track was inspired by an inmate Haggard knew while he was serving time in San Quentin named Jimmy "Rabbit" Kendrick. As recounted in his 1981 autobiography Merle Haggard: Sing Me Back Home, Rabbit devised a brilliant escape and invited Haggard to join him, but they both agreed it would be best that he stay put. Rabbit was captured two weeks later and eventually executed for the murder of a state trooper. Haggard, the "guitar playing friend", wrote the song as a tribute. Writing in the liner notes for the 1994 retrospective Down Every Road, Daniel Cooper calls it, "a ballad that works on so many different levels of the soul it defies one's every attempt to analyze it." In a 1977 interview in Billboard with Bob Eubanks, Haggard reflected, "Even though the crime was brutal and the guy was an incorrigible criminal, it's a feeling you never forget when you see someone you know make that last walk. They bring him through the yard, and there's a guard in front and a guard behind - that's how you know a death prisoner. They brought Rabbit out...taking him to see the Father,...prior to his execution. That was a strong picture that was left in my mind." The track topped the country singles chart a few weeks into 1968 (his second number one in a row) and he performed it as a duet with Johnny Cash on the latter's network television show in 1969.
Although Haggard wrote or co-wrote most of the tracks on Sing Me Back Home, the song credits also list several important figures from his musical past, such as Lefty Frizzell, who wrote "Mom and Dad's Waltz" and was arguably Merle's biggest musical inspiration. In addition, a young Haggard had played behind both Buck Owens and Wynn Stewart during his time on the Bakersfield club scene, and the album features compositions by both. In fact, Haggard wrote "Home Is Where a Kid Grows Up" with Stewart and another one of his idols, Bob Wills (Haggard would cut a tribute album in honor of Wills in 1970).
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