Merle Haggard: From Graceland to the Promised Land

Haggard’s tender tribute to Elvis. I suppose I shouldn’t be amazed how much Elvis’ biographical details (his Mama, his age when he died, his Mama’s death-date, Elvis’ death-date, what all of that might mean) were absorbed into the culture by osmosis. People just know these things. I shouldn’t be amazed because Elvis was one of the biggest stars who ever lived. Maybe the biggest. Even people who aren’t Elvis fans know his favorite meal. But still: I find it moving, especially in a tribute like this, which treats Elvis’ life with great affection, a sense of loss, and a … care about him. Him the man. The legend, too, because you can’t get away from the legendary aspect. But he was a man. This was his life and what it might have meant to Elvis from the inside. Elvis was very aware of numbers, the margins of his books are filled with little mathematical equations and he used to count out the letters in words and try to uncover deeper meanings, etc. You could look at that in a condescending way, or you could look at it (as I do) as a man who lived close to the sun for 20-straight years, and was trying to make sense of how it all had happened. (Interesting, too, that Merle would “go out” on the day he “came into” the world.) Merle Haggard seems to not only understand all of that, in terms of Elvis’ life and the meaning of it and how Elvis might have tried to understand it, but looks upon it with tenderness. Care is the word that comes to mind. Merle cares about Elvis the man.

I am now thinking, too, of Waylon’s funny song about Elvis “Nobody Knows I’m Elvis”:

So awesome.

All of these guys … not so much haunted by Elvis, but constantly AWARE of him.

Haggard spoke of Elvis to Peter Guralnick in the 70s:

[Elvis was] a prisoner of success. I’m positive he was. I didn’t know Elvis well, but I met him and I knew a lot of people who were close to him. Elvis, I believe, was just plain simply tired of it. He didn’t want to live any longer. I don’t know how you feel about these things, but the celestial life – if such a thing exists – I think that was what he was seeking. I think it released him. Either that or he didn’t die at all. Had a face-lift and a fingerprint job – if you think about it, it isn’t that far-fetched. A lot of people who were there swear it wasn’t him in the coffin.