Before he died, Merle Haggard had already chosen the trusted friend who would lead his private farewell and the song that friend would sing with his wife. He asked Marty Stuart to officiate the service in Palo Cedro, California and to join Connie Smith on Silver Wings.
He would leave the world on the exact calendar day he had entered it
Haggard made that prediction a week before his death while weakened at his Shasta County ranch. He had spent his final months fighting health complications dating back to a 2008 lung cancer surgery and had been forced to cancel tour dates through the winter and spring. At about nine twenty in the morning on April 6, 2016, surrounded by his wife Theresa and his family, he died of double pneumonia on his 79th birthday, the same calendar date he had been born at ten in the morning in 1937.
Three days later on Saturday, April 9, a small circle of family, bandmates and lifelong friends gathered beneath a canopy under the trees on his Palo Cedro property. His customized tour bus, the Silver Chief, sat parked near the service, not far from a pond and an old railroad boxcar resembling the converted Santa Fe freight car in Oildale where his father James Haggard had raised the family during the Great Depression.
When Stuart learned after the passing that Haggard had preplanned the ceremony and placed him in charge of officiating, he flew west immediately with his wife, fellow Country Music Hall of Fame member Connie Smith. Haggard had personally requested that the service open with a recording of Lefty Frizzell singing I Love You a Thousand Ways, followed by Smith singing the gospel standard Precious Memories.
The trust that brought Stuart to that place in Shasta County had been built over thirty-five years of road miles and shared musical standards. The two men first grew close in the early 1980s while Stuart was a young guitar and mandolin player touring in Johnny Cash backing band.
Haggard kept his distance from Music Row flatterers, yet he recognized a kindred spirit in the Mississippi born sideman who treated the records of Jimmie Rodgers, Bob Wills and Lefty Frizzell as sacred history. After Stuart launched his solo career, the two teamed up across the country on the 1996 Electric Barnyard Tour.
Over the next two decades Haggard became both a mentor and a family anchor for Stuart and Smith. In 2003 Haggard lent his voice to Farmerโs Blues, a duet on Stuart album written by Stuart and Smith about rural survival. Four years later Stuart helped bring Haggard, Willie Nelson and Ray Price together for the 2007 Last of the Breed tour and album, and in 2012 Haggard stood onstage in Nashville to formally induct Smith into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
During the Palo Cedro service Stuart stood before Theresa, Haggard daughters Dana and Kelli, his sons Marty, Noel and Ben and guests including Kris Kristofferson and Billy Bob Thornton. Having already officiated or spoken at the funerals of mentors Johnny Cash in 2003, Earl Scruggs in 2012 and George Jones in 2013, Stuart read from the Bible and spoke about Haggard devotion to his family, his band the Strangers and the working people who filled his concert halls.
Stuart also honored two late pillars of Haggard early Bakersfield sound, lead guitarist Roy Nichols and singer Bonnie Owens. Picking up his 1954 Fender Telecaster that had originally belonged to California country rock pioneer Clarence White, he accompanied Smith as they fulfilled Haggard request and harmonized on Silver Wings.
Kristofferson stepped up to sing Sing Me Back Home and joined Willie Nelson son Micah Nelson for a rendition of Pancho and Lefty. To close the afternoon, Haggard three sons Marty, Noel and Ben stood together with guitars and sang their father signature ballad Today I Started Loving You Again under the California trees near the Silver Chief tour bus.