"Somehow, by the grace of God and Ronald Reagan, I'm out of [jail]"

Sorry this is late, got a little bit sidetracked by Johnny Horton.

But I'm going for Merle Haggard this evening. Merle, we loves ya, dude. And I went a-youtubing for some of your stuff.

A fave (I think I've linked it before but I'm too lazy to look):


Many, many moons ago, I did a Merle Haggard trivia post at 'Pints. I mentioned that one of the songs made me cry every time I hear it. This is the one. Unfortunately, embedding is disabled by the fascist pig who posted it. But here's another version. Oh wait, that's also disabled. Fascist Pig. But please click through and have a listen. The second is the source of the post title. Do listen, pretty amusing. "I'm out of jail and probably should be in jail but somehow by the grace of God and Ronald Reagan..." and "As you can hear, I'm starting to sound like Kenny Rogers" and "Bla-bla-bla-ba-da-ba-da-bala-ba-doo-doo-dawng... Hey, Roger Miller showed up! [Hand to sky] Hey, Roger!". Heh.

Okay, here's an embeddable version with Johnny Cash:



And here's what is probably Merle's most well known song:



And as much as I rag on hippies and Deadheads and the like, the Grateful Dead did some great stuff, including a great cover of "Mama Tried". I don't recall specifically which album, and I'm too lazy to go over to the album stash to look it up, but I heard it in concert twice. Once in San Francisco at Winterland (1977) and once in San Bernardino at the Orange Showgrounds (1977 also). Pretty cool. Here they are performing it in 1978 at Duke University:



And speaking of the Grateful Dead, at one of the above-mentioned concerts, they did a great version of "El Paso". Much more countrified than this version embedded but this is the best I could find:



And it, like the album track, is the long version with the lost verse. You rock, guys. And RIP Jerry, many years too late.