Mama Tried
Slickered up and properly packaged, the current crop of country music stars lack-some say-the root experiences that informed the work of George Jones, Waylon Jennings, and the cadre of comrades who defined C+W in the middle years of the 20th century. Even among this earlier crew, however, Merle Haggard stands on separate ground.
His well documented bio includes the loss of his father at an early age, a slide into juvenile delinquency, and ultimately, a series of adult incarcerations that inform Haggard’s writing and add a mournful inflection to his singing. Best known, perhaps for his 1969 hit, “Okie From Muskogee,” a humorous jibe at knee jerk leftists, it was “Mama Tried,” released a year earlier, that brought Merle Haggard his fifth number one hit on the country charts and helped define his public persona.
Recovering from lung surgery, Merle was in fine form in a recent conversation during which he discussed his memories of recording “Mama Tried,” early influences, and his current work schedule.
“Was Bob Wills a big influence? Absolutely. When I was a boy radio was in its prime. There was no television, and going to a movie was a big deal. So radio was the main source of music and entertainment of all kinds. Bob Wills was all over the radio, all day. There was a 100 kilowatt station that broadcast from Rosarita Beach, in Baja, Mexico, just across the border from where my family lived in Southern California. I used to catch their 7 p.m. Bob Wills show with my dad, and then listen to the Lone Ranger. Bob is still the best performer I ever heard or saw.
“My mother was a devout Christian, and she raised me the same way. She was left a widow when I was at the age of nine, and there was nobody in the house but her and I, so I felt over obligated to her. I also felt that she had so much work to do to try and raise me, it probably caused me to leave home early. My mother was the finest lady in the world. There was a real momma. She died in 1985. I’d a’ been 48 years old at the time.
“I think going to prison did make me a better man, in fact I’m sure it did, yes. I was a young guy when I went there, thought I was bullet proof, tough. Maybe I was, I don’t know nobody ever took anything away from me on the inside. I learned a lot about the meaning of honesty in prison. You can’t tell somebody something in prison and not do it, because they’ll see you the next day.. bad dealings on a carton of cigarettes will get you your life.
“As far as the sound of records, there was that whole Bakersfield thing, a reaction against the Nashville sound that was getting so big and lush, but remember, it was only 80 miles from Bakersfield to Capitol Records Studio B, where we recorded “Mama!” The live echo chamber they had-still have- was a big part of the Bakersfield sound.
“We worked in both studios, actually recorded “Mama” in Studio A, the larger room- we had no preference, both were great studios, and each one had access to the echo chambers. Things were done much differently back then. You had three hours to record two or three songs. I’d meet with the Strangers, my band, in a coffee shop at nine o’clock to discuss the arrangements; I sort of hummed the songs to them in the shop.
As I recall, we recorded “Mama” and “Workin’ Man Blues” in one session, and “Today I Started Lovin’ You Again,” and “White Line Fever” in another. Hugh Davies was the engineer. We discussed the mics we’d use, but he was the guy with experience in that area. I worried about the songs and arranging.”
In 1967 Bob Norberg was hired as an assistant engineer and told to report immediately to a session already underway. “The night supervisor sent me to Studio A to assist on a session of Merle’s,” says Norberg. “It wasn’t “Mama Tried” that they were cutting, but I think they were working on that album.
“Capitol was a four track studio at the time, with a pair of Scully 1/2” inch tape decks in each room. The band was taped on two tracks, Merle’s vocal was on the third, and the fourth track was left open for background vocals. Glenn Campbell and Bonnie Owens were the back up singers on that album, and I remember thinking it was kind of funny that Glenn was singing background, because he was already an established solo artist at that time. Ken Nelson produced the album.
Capitol Studios were built in the late 1950’s as a mono facility, but the electronics were modified to three track shortly thereafter. The consoles were built in house by Capitol engineers. In those days they had a lab on Fletcher Drive in Glendale where the boards were built. They used Longevin solid state modules for every mic channel; I think each board had 12 inputs. The studios switched over to four tracks in 1967.
“Most of the country material was recorded in Studio B, but we used Studio A, the bigger room, for Merle’s record and some other country recordings. There were hinged units attached to the walls that were soft on one side and hard on the other, which let you control the acoustics of the room. How noticeable was the change in coloration? To tell you the truth, we didn’t change things around that much. I do remember that if we had a classical session in room A we’d often angle the hard sides out to give the studio a more live sound. Both A and B had this hinged arrangement, and even after the renovations that took place several years ago, Studio B still has them.
“We always cut Merle with a U67. Buck Owens too. Buck was a funny guy-he’d be out in the studio cracking everybody up. I know Merle talked about the echo chambers. There were actually four of them under the parking lot, and about a year after I started working at Capitol we built four more! Many purist engineers and producers love these chambers and still use them to this day. They’re acoustic stereo chambers, two speakers and microphones in each one. Different speakers and mikes will impart a slightly different characteristic to the sound.
“There a little closet-the reverb closet-that houses the patch bays with sends and returns to the chambers. Engineers in every studio, in the disk and edit rooms, all of these people had echo sends and returns. The same work method is in existence today. During my years working with rockers in particular I’d try using digital reverbs, particularly if a producer called and requested one, but I always found myself going back to the live chamber. Al Schmitt works almost constantly in Studio A, and my wife and I stopped down there a few weeks ago while he was doing a Barbara Streisand session. Al had the studio set up for orchestra and was using the live chamber.”
“Mama Tried” features a withering guitar signature from the pick of Roy Nichols, and a rolling Dobro part performed by James Burton. A Lousiana native who still lives in Shreveport, Burton was happy to discuss his time as a member of The Strangers and the Capitol Studios sessions. As every student of the era knows, Burton almost singlehandedly developed and defined the rock lead guitar sound. How did it happen?
“Mother and dad bought me a ’52 Tele, and I got into playing slide and steel guitar early on. I experimented with using banjo strings on the guitar to get a lighter sound, and an unwound third string to get a twangier, funkier sound. I was able to create a whole different sound and technique, using the fingers and finger picks to create banjo-like rolls on both the guitar and dobro. I used this technique on “Mama Tried.”
“Merle wanted a kind of banjo sound, and I thought the dobro would work well. Recording with Merle was a real treat. He was easy to work with, and his singing was so good. Ken Nelson was also a great guy to work with. He liked the simplicity of country music, wanted lyrics that told a good story, and wasn’t into lots of strings or other overdubs.
“Normally, my sound was my sound. I’d have the engineer come in and listen to my amp, and I’d let him know that the tone it was producing was exactly the sound I wanted on record. I didn’t want an engineer to eq my sound at all. I was very
careful to set the treble and bass to work with a specific song and artist. It was all in my ears.
“Merle is a great example of an artist who wrote material that reflected the life he lived. There are a lot of great writers today, but something’s gone out of country music. Maybe it’s the computer, or the marketing. It just seems that we’ve lost something along the way.”
Burton laughs when asked if it’s possible for anyone to ask him a question about Ricky Nelson that he hasn’t already addressed. “Probably not. Ricky was a great person and he had a great talent. Ozzie was a brilliant producer-people don’t always realize that. He was a big band leader and Harriet was a singer in his band. Ozzie wanted to capture the intimacy of a live performance of Ricky and the band, and he got what he was after. I went to work with Ricky shortly after I arrived in LA. We were both 16, and we kind of grew up together in the industry. I was able to come up with ideas quickly, and that helped with him, Merle, Elvis, and others.”
Merle, why did the hippies continue to love you even after you dissed ‘em in “Okie From Muskogee?” “The hippies weren’t dumb! The words from that song can be taken in many ways. There’s a lot of humor in there, and the hippies understood that.
“You know, the difference I had with the hippies on the Viet Nam war was not that I thought they were wrong, or that the war was a good thing. I just didn’t think they knew anymore about it than I did, and they were talking like they were all experts! They’d never lost their freedom. I’d been to prison and was proud to be a free man. I don’t know if the success of that song threatened to turn me into a caricature. It may have taken longer for people to understand me. In the long run that’s an advantage, though. Pride is what America is based on. Whether you agree with the basis of “Okie,” if you’re a man of pride you gotta say hooray about some of it.
“Same thing with “Mama Tried.” I’m proud of the way that song has stayed in people’s minds and hearts, and maybe helped define me. Even today, 40 years after it was released, I’ll play a concert and guys will come up and show me tattoos that say “Mama Tried.” They’ll tell me- sometimes with tears in their eyes- how that song captures what they feel about their own mothers.
“That means a lot to me.”
