Original Sound In A Day Of Merle Haggard Wannabes, The Real Man Brings His Sound To Town

Merle on the mountain.

Haggard on the heights.

That’s what true country fans are looking forward to this week, as country music great Merle Haggard rides the great gondola into the sky at Silver Mountain Sunday.

As he approaches his 60th birthday, Haggard can look back at a career that spans decades and bridges musical generations. Though his music no longer rises to the top of the charts, it remains fresh and important.

Haggard is a visionary who welded the honky tonk music of Bakersfield, Calif., to Bob Will’s western swing and forged a new branch of country music. His limber, jazzy vocals flow effortlessly along the mix as trumpets flirt with fiddles and a lonely pedal steel line eases up against a sax riff or a rowdy honky tonk piano.

His newest CD, “1996,” finds the Hag relaxed and playful and taking the kinds of chances that imply he’s no longer consumed with having another No. 1 hit.

Of local interest, that record leads off with “Sin City Blues,” a swinging pedal-steel-and-trumpet blues tune in which Haggard fantasizes about moving to Coeur d’Alene to “make myself a home in the rain.”

He also tackles Iris DeMent’s “No Time to Cry.” DeMent is a young singer/songwriter whose version of Haggard’s “Big City” on the “Tulare Dust” tribute CD seemed to breathe new life into the veteran. He and Willie Nelson appeared with DeMent on a recent “Austin City Limits.”

Someone noted not long ago that it’s more profitable these days to sound like Merle Haggard than to be Merle Haggard, a point driven home by the popularity of Alan Jackson and at least a half-dozen other contemporary stars who owe their licks to the Hag.

But when all is said and done, there will be just one Haggard, and that’s the one who’ll play Sunday at Silver Mountain.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CONCERT Merle Haggard will perform at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Silver Mountain Amphitheatre. Tickets are $29.50 and $22.50, available at G&B Select-a-Seat outlets or call 325-SEAT.