Story highlights Kim Reuhl: Merle Haggard was giant of country music, but his true allegiance was to the working class, those struggling, down on luck

She says his timeless themes highly apt today with political landscape awash in working class anger and middle-class frustration

Kim Ruehl is the editor of No Depression, a quarterly journal of roots music in print and online. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) California was not supposed to be a land of country music legends. For that, we had Austin, Houston, and Nashville. For outsiders, there was Tulsa and certain parts of the greater Southeast. But Merle Haggard never did things the way they were "supposed" to be done.

He was California born and raised, and, though it has become a braggadocio tagline for hat acts on country radio, it's actually true to say of Merle Haggard that he was country 'til the day he died. After all, as a colleague noted Wednesday, there's nothing more country than dying on the day you were born, which Haggard did on April 6, having just turned 79.

In life, Haggard was a giant of classic country music, one of a few singer-songwriters in a certain generation who got to go by just one name. There was Waylon, Willie, Dolly, Loretta, Johnny, Kris, and Merle, all of whom have defined country music in countless, inimitable ways. Of course, it's been years since Merle Haggard (or Johnny Cash, or Kris Kristofferson) was played regularly on country radio, thus each of these artists has found a more lasting embrace in the realm of "Americana" and "roots" music.

But genre categories aside, Haggard's truest allegiance was to the working class and anyone struggling, hard on their luck. The heroes of his songs were homeless ("Hobo Bill"), fleeing something ("Lonesome Fugitive"), drunk ("I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink"), lost ("Ramblin' Fever"), and heartsick ("Silver Wings"). Haggard wrote about them in a way that was more humanizing than sympathetic. He didn't want us to feel bad for anyone; he wanted us to recognize their humanity.

His people had pride, and his songs about them asked us to look past the vices and the violence, the cheating and the fear, to see the struggle of a person hanging on, even when it wasn't clear if there was anything to hang on to. They challenged us to see ourselves in their mirrors. There was no pity in "Mama Tried," in other words, only straight-faced honesty. ("Mama tried to steer me better, but her pleading I denied / That leaves only me to blame.")

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