"Misery & Gin"

"'Country music for decades was poor-people music, made by poor people and bought by poor people,' Jennings writes. 'It sprang from the heart and the gut, and, like R&B and soul, it was a music of exile, meant to make being banished to the margins, if not a matter of pride, then at least more tolerable.' Those are the opening sentences of a chapter called 'Hungry Eyes,' taking the title of one of Haggard's most beloved songs as a guide to country's long connection to Americans who were going hungry, scrambling to keep their heads above water and not always succeeding. 'Of all the great country singers of the 1950s and '60s,' Jennings writes, 'Haggard articulated rural blue-collar life best, explaining to his listeners what their lives meant and making them understand that those lives counted.' Run your eyes over just about any list of Haggard's songs, and you'll see the entire country canon in miniature: 'Misery & Gin,' 'Workin' Man Blues,' 'The Bottle Let Me Down,' 'Ramblin' Fever,' 'Mama Tried,' 'The Roots of My Raising,' 'Sing Me Back Home,' 'Always Wanting You.'"
"It's all there: love, hunger, work, the road, booze, family, faith, infidelity, prison, loneliness, nostalgia."

Jonathan Yardley reviews Dana Jennings's Sing Me Back Home: Love, Death, and Country Music in The Washington Post.