Country singer and songwriter Merle Haggard (1937) saw Johnny Cash perform three times in prison, sitting in the audience. He spent his early years mostly as a criminal and only came to his senses when he had, at the last minute, refrained from participating in a prison break, which afterwards ended in a bloodbath. After that, this Californian descendant of Okies who migrated to the West during the
… Great Depression began to devote himself entirely to music and to play important roles in the development of the Bakersfield sound and Outlaw country, both counterparts of the slippery Nashville style. I Am What I Am also resounds raw and lived-in country & western. In terms of voice, Haggard balances between Cash and Willie Nelson, but his stories are authentic and averse to any form of false romance. He is who he is and he is real. (MR)more