Compared to his music, the details of country singer Merle Haggard’s life—his dealings with record companies, the lengths and locations of his tours, the comings and goings of his bandmembers, girlfriends, and wives—are of little interest. Indeed, it is the rare artist’s biography that reads like a novel and doesn’t make one wish for an abridgement. In the field of popular music, Peter Guralnick’s Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley (1994) comes to mind. Marc Eliot’s The Hag doesn’t rise to that level. But it is thorough, workmanlike, and contains many valuable insights about Haggard’s distinctively American working-man blues.
