Merle Haggard, Country Music Legend, Dead At 79

Merle Haggard, who went from a California punk to a genuine, country music outlaw hero and a legend of the genre, died Wednesday at his Palo Cedro home. He was 79.

Haggard had been in failing health recently, according to The Tennessean, and had cancelled several concert dates scheduled for March.

He recorded 38 No. 1 hits over the course of his country music career and is credited with the creation of the "Bakersfield Sound," a raw style of country music that came out of Bakersfield honkey tonks defined by twangy electric guitars and a powerful steel guitar.

Haggard was a troublemaker growing up in Bakersfield. He ended up in various youth correctional facilities for petty crimes, and eventually spent nearly three years in San Quentin Prison. He worked hard labor there, tried several escapes and was eventually paroled in 1960.

Then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan officially gave him a full pardon in 1972.

He's been called country music's outlaw, as his songs, especially early on, told stories of prison and working-class struggles.

"I'm the poor man's Alan Greenspan," he told the Washington Post in 2007.

Haggard's first single was "I'm a Lonesome Fugitive" in 1966, and the hits kept coming. "Mama Tried," released a year later, became one of his signature singles and eventually won him a Grammy Hall of Fame Award.

He kept churning out number one hits until 1987, when "Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Star" hit the top of the charts.

It's hard to overstate Haggard's influence on country music, which lately has seen a shift toward cookie-cutter, pop-y ballads about beer, trucks and the beach.

In a recent story in Garden and Gun, he tells up and coming songwriter Sturgill Simpson, "If it’s like what they’re calling country, you don’t want to go near that sh**. I can’t say anything good about it. I wish I could."

Tributes from the country music industry poured in as news of his death spread.

He is survived by his wife and six children.