Â鶹Éç

Available for over a year

American country music legend Merle Haggard has died of pneumonia on his 79th birthday. Born in California in 1937, he lived in a converted boxcar with his family and left school at a young age to hop freight trains across the south western part of the US. Rolling Stone magazine described him as "the backbone of one of the greatest repertoires in all of American music, plain-spoken songs populated by the kinds of working people Haggard grew up with: farmers, hobos, convicts, widows, musicians and drunks". Newsday's Bola Mosuro spoke to musician Kinky Friedman. (Photo: Merle Haggard Credit: Reuters/Kevin Bartram)