Country legend Merle Haggard has died, the Associated Press reports, according to confirmation from the singer-songwriter’s manager, Frank Mull. Today is Haggard’s 79 birthday.
Mull said Haggard died in Palo Cedro, Calif., of pneumonia. He had kept up an ambitious touring schedule, but the pneumonia in both lungs had forced him to cancel several shows this year. The news comes a week after Haggard canceled his April concert dates. The “Okie From Muskogee” singer had also battled lung cancer back in 2008. H
“I want to thank my fans for their prayers and well wishes,” the musician said in a statement to the AP at the time. “I hope to be back on the road in May, but I’m taking it one day at a time.”
Haggard — along with fellow California country star Buck Owens — was a founder of the twangy Bakersfield Sound, a direct contrast to the smooth, string-laden country records popular in Nashville, Tennessee, in the 1960s. Haggard was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1994, and has been celebrated throughout the decades for his songs championing the downtrodden.
