08 Oct
472: Merle Haggard helps create the Bakersfield Sound
As a performer and a songwriter, Merle Haggard was one of the most important country artist to emerge in the 1960s. He became one of the leading figures of the Bakersfield country scene, a genre of country music developed in the mid- to late 1950s in and around Bakersfield, California. It started as a reaction against the slickly-produced, string orchestra-laden Nashville Sound, which was becoming popular in the late 1950s. The music featured electric instruments and added a backbeat, as well as some other stylistic elements borrowed from rock and roll.
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