Ramblin' Fever: The Playlist Pounder

 

I entered my heavy Hag phase when Merle Haggard’s career-spanning box set came out in 1996, Down Every Road: 1962-1994. I even remember where I first heard about the box: on the late, great Carol Taylor’s “Defenestration 89.5”freeform radio show on WHRV in Norfolk, Virginia (sadly the show ended soon after that, and Taylor was dead of cancer at 32 later that year). Before buying the box, I think I had only had bought a couple of Haggard’s budget-line greatest hits collections and some random late ‘80s and early ‘90s efforts, all on cassette.

“Ramblin’ Fever” (the title track for his 1977 MCA debut) became a quick favorite for me on the box. The opening drums and guitar revs up into something funky and lowdown and grabs you right off: turn up the volume, roll down the windows—we’re getting out of here. The first line is a simple but timeless-sounding declaration: “My hat don’t hang on the same nail for too long.” It sounds like something Hank Williams might have written 30 years earlier, or words from a cowboy hundred years before that (ironic because the next line is “My ears can’t stand to hear the same old song”). We learn that the narrator sure has this fever bad. It’s uncurable. It’s “in his blood,” and “it can’t be measured be degrees.” No woman will tie him down, and he’ll never be too old to ramble. Haggard sings, “I want to die along the highway and rot away like some old high-line pole.” Imagine coming to that line and feeling it, the miles it would take.

I love the way Haggard sings “pretty lady” when he offers these lines: “There’s times I’d like to bed down on a sofa/And let some pretty lady rub my back/And spend the early morning drinking coffee/ And talkin’ about when I’ll be coming back.” I was just rewatching Paul Newman in Harper, and there’s a part that almost plays out similarly to what Haggard describes when a battered Newman as Lew Harper returns home to his wife played by Janet Leigh, who is divorcing him, who is trying to stop loving him, and convinces her to give him another chance, to spend the night, but Harper slinks away again the in the morning as she’s making him bacon and eggs.

In November 1976, news came that Haggard and his wife of 11 years, country music singer Bonnie Owens, were divorcing. In the same archived newspaper where I read about the Haggard-Owens split, there was also an article from Utah’s death row about Gary Gilmore hoping to get married to 21-year-old Nicole Barrett before his date with the firing squad, a relationship “destined to achieve melodramatic status.” A few weeks earlier in November, the Associated Press reported that Haggard had canceled shows in Denver, Salt Lake City, and Reno and had gone missing. Utah police had been trying to locate him, and their search had become more intensified after they received an anonymous call that “Haggard’s body could be found in a Nevada gully.” But manager Fuzzy Owen told the reporter Haggard was OK and “somewhere between Arizona and Los Angeles.” “He’s be under quite a strain,” Owen said.

After the divorce, Bonnie Owens continued to perform in Haggard’s band into the early ‘80s. She even served as a bridesmaid for Leona Williams, another country musician, when Williams and Haggard married in 1978. “Ramblin’ Fever” was only one of two songs Haggard wrote on Ramblin’ Fever, which marked his switch from Capitol to MCA, motivated in part by Haggard’s desire to cross over to new audiences. The other song, “I Think It’s Gone Forever,” was a co-write with Williams. They divorced in 1983. Here’s a great live version of “Ramblin’ Fever” recorded in the Netherlands in 1978. Watch, it almost seems like Owens is smiling when he sings those lines about the pretty lady and back rubbing.

View the entire playlist for the Dec. 5 Zero Hour (scroll to the correct date) and listen to the archived audio.