Stricken with pneumonia for months prior to his untimely passing, country legend Merle Haggard had one goal: write and record as much music as he could.
And that’s exactly what he did.
Beyond the seemingly endless collection of recorded works that spanned the entire length of his career, Haggard was working on completing as many songs as possible. That collection, dubbed “The Archive” by Haggard, has not seen a release to date, but those will come in their own time.
Haggard tragically passed away on April 6, 2016 and in the time since, his family has had to make a decision on what would be his first posthumous single. Instead of releasing something buried in “The Archive,” they chose to release the very last song he recorded, “Kern River Blues.”
