纽约时报 | 梅尔·哈加德：乡村音乐的绿林好汉
Merle Haggard, Country Music’s Outlaw Hero, Dies at 79
Merle Haggard, one of the most successful singers in the history of country music, a contrarian populist whose songs about his scuffling early life and his time in prison made him the closest thing that the genre had to a hero, died at his ranch in Northern California on Wednesday, his 79th birthday.
乡村音乐史上最成功的歌手之一、叛逆的平民主义者的梅尔·哈加德——他早年混迹江湖，身陷囹圄，在真实生活中成为与这一音乐类型最相投的绿林好汉——本周三在北加州自家农场中度过79岁生日时辞世。
His death was confirmed by his agent, Lance Roberts. Mr. Haggard had recently canceled several concerts, saying he had double pneumonia.
他的经纪人兰斯·罗伯茨证实死讯。近来，哈加德表示患了双侧肺炎，并取消多场演唱会。
Few country artists have been as popular and widely admired as Mr. Haggard, a ruggedly handsome performer who strode onto a stage, guitar in hand, as a poet of the common man.
在乡村音乐艺术家中，人们对哈加德的喜爱和推崇罕有匹敌，他阔步走上舞台，手握吉他，英武而铮铮然，是平民中的诗人。
Thirty-eight of his singles, including “Workin’ Man Blues” and the 1973 recession-era lament “If We Make It Through December,” reached No. 1 on the Billboard country chart from 1966 to 1987.
1966年到1987年间，包括“Workin' Man Blues”和1973年经济衰退时期的挽歌“If We Make it Through December”在内的38首单曲登顶美国乡村音乐排行榜。
He released 71 Top 10 country hits in all, 34 in a row from 1967 to 1977. Seven of his singles crossed over to the pop charts.
他发布71首“十大乡村音乐金曲”，1967年到1977年连续有34首之多。七首单曲横跨流行音乐榜。
He had an immense influence on other performers — not just other country singers but also ’60s rock bands like the Byrds and the Grateful Dead, as well as acts like Elvis Costello and the Mekons, all of whom recorded Mr. Haggard’s songs. Some 400 artists have released versions of his 1968 hit “Today I Started Loving You Again.”
他对其他表演者影响巨大，不仅有乡村音乐歌手，还包括六十年代的摇滚乐队如飞鸟乐队和感恩而死乐队以及埃尔维斯·科斯特洛和米肯斯乐队等，他们都录制过哈加德的歌曲。大约400名艺术家演唱他1968年金曲“Today I started Loving You Again”。
He was always the outsider. His band was aptly named the Strangers.
他是永远的局外人，他的乐队就叫“陌生人”。
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Unlike his friend Johnny Cash, Mr. Haggard didn’t merely visit San Quentin State Prison in California to perform for the inmates. Convicted of burglary in 1957, he served nearly three years there and spent his 21st birthday in solitary confinement.
和他的朋友强尼·卡什不同，哈加德不仅光顾加州圣昆丁州立监狱为囚犯演出，1957年被控抢劫，他在牢里呆了三年，在幽闭中度过21岁生日。
Mr. Haggard went on to write “Mama Tried,” “Branded Man” and several other candid songs about his incarceration, all of them sung in a supple baritone suffused with dignity and regret. Many of his other recordings championed the struggles of the working class from which he rose.
哈加德后来写了“Mama Tried”、“Branded Man”等表现囚禁生涯的歌曲，感情真挚，婉曲的男中音中充满尊严与悔恨。许多唱片歌颂了工人阶级的奋斗，他就成长在这样的家庭里。
Defying the conventions of the Nashville musical establishment, Mr. Haggard was an architect of the twangy Bakersfield sound, a guitar-driven blend of blues, jazz, pop and honky-tonk that traced its roots to Bakersfield, Calif. In Mr. Haggard’s case the sound defined a body of work as indelibly as that of any country singer since Hank Williams.
哈加德不遵循纳什维尔的老派音乐传统，他是嗡营的贝克尔斯菲之声的建筑师，一把吉他混合了布鲁斯、爵士、流行和以加州贝克尔斯菲下等酒馆为根基的音乐风格。哈加德的声音成就了自汉克·威廉姆斯以来最令人难忘的乡村歌手作品。
Mr. Haggard cited Lefty Frizzell, Elvis Presley, Jimmie Rodgers, Chuck Berry and Bob Wills as among the artists who influenced his sound. “I thought, if I combine all that, maybe I can come up with something sustaining,” he told the magazine LA Weekly in 1999.
哈加德认为勒夫特·弗里兹尔、埃维斯·普里斯利、吉米·罗杰斯和鲍勃·威尔斯等艺术家影响了他的声音。1999年他对洛杉矶周刊说：“我想如果全都结合起来，我能创造一些经久不衰的东西。”
He was fluent in a wide array of musical styles. In 1980, he appeared on the cover of Down Beat, a magazine whose main focus has always been jazz. His 2000 album, “If I Could Only Fly,” was issued on an imprint of Epitaph Records, a label associated with punk bands like Bad Religion and Rancid.
他熟练掌握各种音乐类型。1980年，他登上Down Beat封面，一本爵士乐杂志。2000年发行专辑“If I Could Only Fly”印上了Epitaph Recordings，这一标签与朋克乐队邪教合唱团和腐臭乐队有关。
Much of Mr. Haggard’s cross-genre appeal was attributable to his versatile band, in which he sometimes played fiddle and lead guitar.
哈加德多数跨音乐类型演绎归功于他多才多艺的乐队，在乐队中他时而拉小提琴，时而做主音吉他手。
But a great deal of it was also because of the pliancy of his singing voice, a deeply expressive instrument that lent itself to a variety of tempos, arrangements and emotions.
但他的成功多半要归功于他音色的多样性，极富表现力的嗓音让他驾驭各种节奏、改编和情绪。
He was as convincing singing about drinking and heartbreak as he was performing sentimental and devotional numbers, topical material and novelties.
他演绎那些深情许许的音符、主题音乐和诙谐歌曲时，如痴如醉、令人心碎。
Mr. Haggard was probably best known for his controversial hit “Okie From Muskogee,” a flippant broadside, released in 1969, that defended conservative heartland values against the hippie counterculture:
哈加德可能因他富有争议的金曲“Okie From Muskogee”而闻名，这首轻佻的抨击作品于1969年发行，歌曲与嬉皮反文化针锋相对，捍卫保守的内陆腹地价值观。
We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee
We don’t take our trips on LSD
We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street
We like living right and being free.
He later expressed ambivalence about the song’s message. To prove that he was more open-minded than “Okie” suggested, he had hoped to release “Irma Jackson,” a paean to interracial love, as a follow-up.
后来他就这首歌要表达的意思含糊其辞，为证明他比“Okie”所表达的更开放，他希望后续发行“Irma Jackson”，一首种族间爱情的赞歌。
Instead his record company issued “The Fightin’ Side of Me,” a jingoistic anthem that proved more divisive than its predecessor.
可唱片公司却发行了“The Fightin' Side of Me”，比前者更具争议的鹰派爱国主义歌曲。
“I was dumb as a rock when I wrote ‘Okie From Muskogee,’ ” Mr. Haggard told the Americana music magazine No Depression in 2003. “I sing with a different intention now.”
哈加德2013年对美国音乐杂志No Depression说：“写Okie时，我像石头一样木，现在我演唱它的意旨不同了。”
Mr. Haggard wrote empathetically about poverty; the Great Depression was often his muse. His late-1960s hit “Hungry Eyes” revisited the dignity-starved lives his parents had led on arriving at California’s squalid Hoovervilles after fleeing the Dust Bowl in 1935:
哈加德饱含同情地书写贫困，大萧条总在他脑子里回旋。六十年代末金曲“Hungry Eyes”追忆了父母1935年逃离大风沙后来到加州肮脏的胡佛村时缺乏尊严的生活。
A canvas-covered cabin in a crowded labor camp
Stands out in this memory I revive
’Cause my daddy raised a family there
With two hard-working hands
And tried to feed my mama’s hungry eyes.
Merle Ronald Haggard was born on April 6, 1937, in Oildale, Calif. His first years were spent in the abandoned boxcar that his father, James, a railroad carpenter, had converted into a home for his family.
梅尔·罗纳德·哈加德1937年4月6日生于加利福尼亚州奥伊戴尔，一周岁前和父亲詹姆士生活在一辆废弃的货车车厢里，铁路上的木工詹姆士将车厢改造成家。
James Haggard died of a stroke in 1946, after which Mr. Haggard’s mother, the former Flossie Mae Harp, a strict and pious member of the ultraconservative Church of Christ, took a bookkeeping job to provide for her three children.
詹姆士·哈加德1946年死于中风，后来哈加德的母亲、虔诚的基督教徒弗洛西·梅·哈珀谋了份记账的营生，养活三个孩子。
Chafing against his mother’s yoke, young Merle got into trouble for breaking and entering, shoplifting and passing bad checks. There were repeated trips to reform school, and escapes from it.
年轻的梅尔不服母亲管教，四处惹祸，他入室偷窃，顺手牵羊，恶迹累累。他多次进少管所，多次逃校。
Rebellion and escape, themes steeped more in rock ’n’ roll than in country music, would figure prominently in Mr. Haggard’s songwriting.
叛逆和逃离——更加摇滚而非乡村乐的主题——鲜明体现在哈加德的创作中。
Few would see him as part of the rock ’n’ roll tradition, but Mr. Haggard’s “fightin’ side,” as his 1970 hit put it, was a hallmark of a career that was defined as much by rock’s desire to break free of life’s constraints as it was by country music’s tendency to make peace with them.
很少人认为他该归属于摇滚乐传统，但哈加德的1970年金曲“Fightin' Side”，标志着他的演绎生涯更多体现了摇滚乐要逃离生活桎梏的渴望，而非乡村音乐与之握手言和的倾向。
In 1957, Mr. Haggard was arrested and charged with burglary and, by his account, considered fleeing from police custody with an inmate nicknamed Rabbit.
1957年，哈加德被捕被控抢劫，据他自己说，他曾考虑和一个昵称“兔子”的狱友越离拘留所。
The other man proceeded with the escape without Mr. Haggard and managed to elude capture until he was caught after fatally shooting a state trooper. Convicted of murder, the man was sent to the gas chamber at San Quentin, and Mr. Haggard wrote a song for him, the death-row ballad “Sing Me Back Home.”
兔子逃跑了，没带哈加德，他试图逃脱抓捕，在射杀一名州骑警后被捕。兔子被控谋杀，被送进圣昆丁监狱的毒气室，哈加德为他写了一首歌，死囚歌谣“Sing Me Back Home”。
Mr. Haggard was paroled from San Quentin in 1960. He was granted a full pardon in 1972 by Gov. Ronald Reagan of California.
1960年，哈加德获假释，1972年他获得加利福尼亚州长罗纳德·里根的赦免。
Mr. Haggard was already performing in public before he was sent to prison. He was just a teenager when Lefty Frizzell, his musical idol, invited him to join him onstage after hearing Mr. Haggard singing along with him from the audience.
哈加德入狱前已开始在公共场合演出。当他的音乐偶像勒夫特·弗里兹尔听到哈加德在听众群里和他一起哼唱时，邀请他同台演唱，当时他还是个少年。
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After his release, Mr. Haggard performed in smaller bars in Bakersfield and later in larger rooms like the Blackboard, where he met Bonnie Owens, a cocktail waitress who had been married to the country singer Buck Owens.
获释后，哈加德在贝克尔斯菲的一些小酒吧里演唱，后来转战Blackboard等大场子，在那里他认识了曾嫁给乡村音乐歌手巴克·欧文斯的酒吧侍者邦妮·欧文斯。
A duet that Ms. Owens and Mr. Haggard recorded, “Just Between the Two of Us,” reached the country Top 40 in 1964. They married in 1965.
他和欧文斯女士录制的对唱歌曲“Just Between the Two of Us”打入1964年乡村音乐四十劲曲，两人于1965年结婚。
The year before, Mr. Haggard had received his first big break when he was hired to play bass in the band of Wynn Stewart, an early exponent of the lean, hard-driving Bakersfield sound that Mr. Haggard and Mr. Owens went on to make famous.
一年前，哈加德获得人生首次重要转折，他受雇担任韦恩·史都华乐队的贝斯手，乐队是硬派的贝克尔斯菲之声的早期倡导者，此后哈加德和巴克·欧文斯将之发扬光大。
Mr. Stewart also wrote Mr. Haggard’s first hit, “Sing a Sad Song,” a Top 20 country single released by the independent label Tally in 1963.
史都华还给哈加德写了他的第一首金曲“Sing a Sad Song”，1963年发行后被独立唱片品牌Tally评为二十大乡村音乐单曲。
On the strength of one of that record’s successors, “(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers,” written by Liz Anderson, Mr. Haggard moved to Capitol Records in 1965.
此后凭借后续由利兹·安德森作词的“Strangers”，哈加德于1965年受签国会唱片公司。
There he began a long and fruitful partnership with the producer Ken Nelson, who also oversaw the recording careers of Mr. Owens and Mr. Stewart.
在公司，他开始与制作人肯·奈尔森长期和富有成就的合作，后者见证了欧文斯和史都华的唱片生涯。
Mr. Haggard later recorded for MCA, Epic and a number of other labels, reaching the country chart more than 100 times before radio stations, in the late 1980s, stopped playing his records in favor of those of a younger generation of artists. His recording of “That’s the Way Love Goes” received a Grammy Award in 1985.
此后哈加德灌制了MCA、Epic等诸多唱片，超百次登上乡村音乐榜上，直到八十年代末，电台才转而推崇更年轻的一代艺术家。他的唱片“That's the Way Love Goes”于1986年荣获格莱美奖。
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He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1977 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1994. He received a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement in 2006 and a Kennedy Center award in 2010.
他1977年入主作曲家名人堂，1994年进入乡村音乐名人堂。2006年荣获格莱美终身成就奖，2010年获肯尼迪中心奖。
Survivors include a sister, Lillian; his wife, the former Theresa Ann Lane; their children, Jenessa and Ben, the lead guitarist in Merle’s band the Strangers; and four children from his first marriage, the daughters Dana and Kelli and the sons Marty and Noel, both of whom are performers.
妹妹莉莉安和妻子特雷纱·安·雷恩仍在世，他的子女有詹妮莎和本，本是梅尔“陌生人”乐队的主音吉他手。他第一段婚姻另有四个子女，女儿丹娜和凯丽、儿子马蒂和诺埃尔，两个儿子都是演员。
Though marked by greater stability than he had known earlier in his life, Mr. Haggard’s later years were not carefree. Never the shrewdest of businessmen, he was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1993 and to sell the copyrights to some of his songs to pay off his debts.
尽管比早年更为稳定，哈加德的晚年生活并非无忧无虑。他不是个精明的生意人，1993年被迫申请破产，变卖部分歌曲版权还债。
“I’ve been very bitter, and there’ve been times when I’ve been on the brink of closing down and walking away, disappearing into the woods,” he told LA Weekly in 1999.
1999年，他对洛杉矶周刊说：“我曾经非常悲伤，几度欲罢艺出走，消失在树林中。”
But he added: “I’m still writing good songs. I got a stack of stuff this high up at the house that’ll probably never be recorded.”
他补充说：“可我还在写歌，写好歌。我家里有一大摞好作品，可能永远都没人唱。”