The Roots Of My Raising

About

The Roots of My Raising is the 21st studio album by country music singer Merle Haggard and The Strangers, released in 1976. It was his third release in 1976 and his last on the Capitol label until his return in 2004. It reached #8 on the Billboard country albums chart. The album includes Haggard's last #1 hit of the decade, "Cherokee Maiden," a song written by Cindy Walker. It spent 11 weeks on the charts, reaching #1. The Tommy Collins-written title track had also gone to #1, Haggard's ninth consecutive chart topper stretching back to 1973 and 23rd #1 overall. The album also features material originally recorded by Jimmie Rodgers and Lefty Frizzell, two of Haggard's biggest musical influences. Thom Jurek of AllMusic enthuses that Haggard's final Capitol album was "a hell of a way to go out" and calls "What Have You Got Planned Tonight, Diana," "one of Haggard's most overlooked gems." In his essay for the 1994 Haggard box set Down Every Road, music journalist Daniel Cooper observes, "While the #1 hits had not dried up for Merle, and while he still had the power to slay on isolated non-hits like 'What Have You Got Planned Tonight, Diana,' his overall output the last years on Capitol had started to sound a bit uninspired.".

via Last.fm