On April 6, 2016, Merle Haggard turned 79. That same day, he died.
It was not a surprise to the people closest to him. Merle had told them it would happen that way.
“He wasn’t wrong”
Merle had been sick that spring. He canceled a handful of April concerts as his health got worse. His agent, Lance Roberts, said the cause of death was complications from pneumonia. Merle died at his home in Northern California.
The news came first from his son, Ben Haggard, on Facebook. His words were plain, the way his father’s songs often were:
“A week ago dad told us he was gonna pass on his birthday, and he wasn’t wrong.”
Ben wrote that his father took his last breath surrounded by family and friends.
Willie Nelson answered the news the way a lot of old friends do. He did not write a long tribute. He posted a black-and-white photo of the two of them with one short line:
“He was my brother, my friend. I will miss him.”
One last record, made in a few days
Ten months before that, on June 2, 2015, Willie and Merle released Django and Jimmie. It was their sixth and final album together. Their first, Pancho & Lefty, had come out back in 1983.
The new album did not come together in a rush. Merle told Rolling Stone the two of them had been talking about it for a long time.
“We’ve been talking about it for about 18 months. We’ve been back and forth on the phone about what kind of song we needed to find.”
Once they finally walked into the studio, the work went fast. “When we got into the studio, it was probably three or four days, max,” Merle said.
Buddy Cannon produced the record and wrote five of its 14 songs. There was a Bob Dylan cover, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” Merle sang Willie’s 1957 song “Family Bible.” Willie joined in on a new recording of Merle’s “Somewhere Between.” Jamey Johnson showed up on the lead single, “It’s All Going to Pot.”
Willie, who has written more songs than most people could count, had nothing but praise for his partner. “I’m a songwriter, and I really appreciate other songwriters,” he said. “Merle’s one of the best.”
Two heroes, and one friend already gone
The title song was a tribute to two men who shaped both of them long before either was famous: Django Reinhardt, the Belgian-born jazz guitarist, and Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman. Jimmy Melton and Jeff Prince wrote it. Merle said that song hit him hard. “It pulled my heart right out,” he said.
Another track carried a different kind of weight. “Missing Ol’ Johnny Cash” brought in Bobby Bare, one more veteran of the same generation. Three men in their seventies and eighties, singing about a friend who had died in 2003.
Nobody knew then that the album would be the last time Merle and Willie made a record together. But the songs on it were already looking back.
The fans showed up. Django and Jimmie went to No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart and reached No. 7 on the Billboard 200. Two men who had been making records since the 1960s were back on top.
A song for his brother
Willie did not stop at that one short line.
On April 6, 2017, on what would have been Merle’s 80th birthday, Willie released a song called “He Won’t Ever Be Gone.” Gary Nicholson wrote it. Willie said he knew he had to record it the moment he heard it. It became the closing track on his album God’s Problem Child.
Talking about his old friend, Willie kept it simple again. “It was one of those really good friend things,” he said. “I was really proud of Merle.”
Willie Nelson is 93 now and still out on the road. Merle has been gone for ten years. But every time someone puts on Django and Jimmie, the two of them are in the same room again, trading verses like they did for more than three decades.
Do you remember where you were when you heard Merle Haggard had passed?