I met Merle once in an old knife store somewhere south of Fairbanks in 1984(ish).
He pulled out $1,000 cash for a custom hand made moose horn hunting knife.
Just as humble as he could be. I think he had had a few. I didn't buy anything. The knife maker and I both had big smiles as Merle went back to his pickup. I have a friend that used to ride around in an old pickup the backroads of Bakersfield drinking scotch and whiskey with Merle, Buck, and Johnny. Sometimes all in the same truck.
In the mid seventies I went country and didn't look back.
Yes. By age 14 I was almost 100% country, and was beginning to hate rock music with every fiber of my being.
But by 1986 country had degenerated so much that I completely quit listening to the radio. (About that time Merle Haggard called the new country music "half- baked rock and roll" as I recall.)
In September 1985 -- when the first Farm Aid concert was happening -- Boxcar Willie visited a nearby town and was interviewed on the local country music radio station.
"Why aren't you at Farm Aid?", the DJ asked him.
Box replied, "Because I wasn't invited."
A little taken aback, the DJ said, "Well, why do you think you weren't invited?"
Without hesitating, Box answered, "Because I don't smoke enough grass."
I remember when country went porno in circa 1982, halfway to going country rock where you can't listen to a station for 15 minutes without hearing some snickering lyric about illicit sex. I collect the "this can't be wrong if it feels so right" genre -- gonna write up a full indictment someday.
The one that specific fraze is from, You Light up my Life, is especially guilty because of its (none too original) soaring anthem-like effect -- it's even been adapted in churches. And isn't it just divine when a "Christian" artist like Barbra Mandrell strikes gold with something like If Loving You is Wrong, I don't Want to be Right?
Alas. Sex sells, and Nashville is all about money. And I suspect that there is some smutty tribal control of the country music industry.
A list of the country entertainers who DON'T have at least one song referring to clandestine copulation would probably be a lot shorter than a list of those who do.
I remember my first pastor -- whom I visited earlier this week, incidentally -- railing against that very Debbie Boone lyric.
Barbara Mandrell was in the smut business several years before If Loving You is Wrong, I don't Want to be Right: her Midnight Oil (1973) was as trashy as anything Conway Twitty ever released.
In view of the Dollymania here, Strait, I guess I'd better not give the sermon I was planning on her Green-Eyed Boy, Confederate flag suppression et al :-O