Mama Tried | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | October 3, 1968 | |||
Recorded | February, March, June 1968 | |||
Studio | Capitol (Hollywood) | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 31:57 | |||
Label | Capitol | |||
Producer | Ken Nelson | |||
Merle Haggard and The Strangers chronology | ||||
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Singles from Mama Tried | ||||
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Mama Tried is the seventh studio album by American country music singer and songwriter Merle Haggard and The Strangers, released on Capitol Records in 1968. It reached number 4 on Billboard's country albums chart. The title song was one of Haggard's biggest hit singles and won the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999.
Haggard had scored four number one hits in the previous two years with prison songs or crime-related themes, including "I'm a Lonesome Fugitive" (1966), "Branded Man" (1967), "Sing Me Back Home" (1967), and "The Legend of Bonnie & Clyde" (1968), and the singer continued his domination of the country charts with the self-penned "Mama Tried," a song in which the narrator laments the pain and suffering he caused his mother by going to prison "despite all my Sunday learnin'..." Along with "Sing Me Back Home" and "Okie from Muskogee," it is probably the song most closely identified with Haggard. The story was partly autobiographical, and the fact that Haggard had actually spent two years in San Quentin gives the song an authenticity that makes the lyric sound all the more heartfelt. [2] [3] "Mama Tried" hit #1 in August 1968 and stayed there for a month. [4] It would also be featured that fall in the Dick Clark production The Killers Three, a film in which Haggard ironically plays a lawman. [5]
Although it isn't necessarily a concept album, Mama Tried is dominated with prison songs, including the Porter Wagoner hit "Green, Green Grass of Home," Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues," and the Mel Tillis original "I Could Have Gone Right," where Haggard once again pleads his mother's forgiveness. Haggard also recorded the Dolly Parton composition "In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)" several months before Parton cut it herself. As detailed in the liner notes to the 1994 Haggard retrospective Down Every Road, "It was Bonnie (Owens) who brought the song to Merle's attention when the two of them did a short tour with Dolly and Porter Wagoner. Relaxing on Merle's bus one day, the guys were up front playing poker while Dolly and Bonnie hung out in back. 'She sang to me all night long,' Bonnie says, 'songs that she'd written..." [6] As he had on his previous LP The Legend of Bonnie and Clyde , Haggard also included songs written by Dallas Frazier and Leon Payne.
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
Allmusic | [9] |
Pitchfork Media | (9.2/10) [10] |
Rolling Stone | (positive) [11] |
Mama Tried continued Haggard's artistic and commercial hot streak, reaching number 4 on Billboard's country albums chart. In the original Rolling Stone review, Andy Wickham wrote, "His songs romanticize the hardships and tragedies of America's transient proletarian and his success is resultant of his inherent ability to relate to his audience a commonplace experience with precisely the right emotional pitch...Merle Haggard looks the part and sounds the part because he is the part. He's great." [11] In 2013, Haggard biographer David Cantwell observed that "Mama Tried" had "the potential to reach beyond the country audience that went unrealized, at least in Merle's version, and the whole album has pop ambition unusual for a late-Sixties country release." [12] Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote: "While 'Mama Tried' stands out among Haggard's original material, 'I'll Always Know' and 'You'll Never Love Me Now' are both solid songs." [9] The song "Mama Tried" won the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999.
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
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1. | "Mama Tried" | Merle Haggard | 2:12 |
2. | "Green, Green Grass of Home" | Curly Putman | 3:14 |
3. | "Little Ole Wine Drinker Me" | Dick Jennings, Hank Mills | 2:38 |
4. | "In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)" | Dolly Parton | 2:45 |
5. | "I Could Have Gone Right" | Mel Tillis | 2:33 |
6. | "I'll Always Know" | Haggard | 2:22 |
7. | "The Sunny Side of My Life" | Haggard | 2:11 |
8. | "Teach Me to Forget" | Leon Payne | 2:24 |
9. | "Folsom Prison Blues" | Johnny Cash | 3:15 |
10. | "Run 'Em Off" | Troy Martin, Onie Wheeler | 2:47 |
11. | "You'll Never Love Me Now" | Haggard | 2:51 |
12. | "Too Many Bridges to Cross Over" | Dallas Frazier | 2:45 |
with
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Year | Chart | Position |
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1969 | Billboard Country albums | 4 |
Merle Ronald Haggard was an American country music singer, songwriter, guitarist, and fiddler.
Same Train, A Different Time is the ninth studio album by American country music artist Merle Haggard backed by The Strangers, released in 1969, featuring covers of songs by legendary country music songwriter Jimmie Rodgers. It was originally released as a 2 LP set on Capitol (SWBB-223).
Country USA was a 23-volume series issued by Time-Life Music during the late 1980s and early 1990s, spotlighting country music of the 1950s through early 1970s.
Branded Man is the fourth studio album by American country music singer Merle Haggard and The Strangers. It was released on Capitol Records in 1967.
Just Because I'm a Woman is the second solo studio album by American singer-songwriter Dolly Parton. It was released on April 15, 1968, by RCA Victor. The album was produced by Bob Ferguson. It peaked at number 22 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart. The album's title track was the only single released and it peaked at number 17 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart.
Okie from Muskogee is the first live album by Merle Haggard and the Strangers released in October 1969 on Capitol Records.
"Mama Tried" is a song written and recorded by American country music artist Merle Haggard and The Strangers. It was released in July 1968 as the first single and title track from the album Mama Tried. The song became one of the cornerstone songs of his career. It won the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999, and was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry due to its "cultural, historic, or artistic significance" on March 23, 2016, just 14 days before Haggard's death. In 2021, it was ranked at #376 on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
I'm a Lonesome Fugitive is the third studio album by Merle Haggard and The Strangers released on Capitol Records in 1967.
The Legend of Bonnie & Clyde is the sixth studio album by American country music artist Merle Haggard and The Strangers released on Capitol Records in 1968. It rose to number 6 on the Billboard country albums chart.
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That's the Way Love Goes is the thirty-eighth studio album by the American country music singer Merle Haggard backed by The Strangers, released in 1983.
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Strangers is the debut studio album by American country music artist Merle Haggard. It was released on September 27, 1965, by Capitol Records.
Just Between the Two of Us is a duet album by country singers Bonnie Owens and Merle Haggard with the Strangers. It was released in 1966 by Capitol Records.
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By 1968, Merle Haggard had made a comfortable niche singing honky-tonk-influenced songs about tough stuff...