Living Right and Being Free

Merle Haggard was born in a boxcar. Literally. His parents—James and Flossie Haggard—left Checotah, Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl and headed west, like thousands of other families with nowhere else to go. They settled in Oildale, California and converted an old boxcar into a home. That’s where Merle came into the world in 1937.

He didn’t grow up easy. His father died when Merle was nine. From there, things fell apart as he ran away, got in trouble and spent time in juvenile detention and eventually tried to rob a Bakersfield tavern. In 1957 he was convicted of burglary, and, after a failed attempt to escape from a county jail, he was caught and sentenced to San Quentin where he served two years before being paroled in 1960.

After he was released, he started playing small clubs and Capitol Records noticed. He signed a record deal with them, and by the late 1960s he had a string of country hits and a national following. His songs had edge, and he sang about real life: prison, regret, labor, family, loss.

In 1965, he married Bonnie Owens, a Blanchard, Oklahoma native and his second wife.

In 1969, the country was deeply divided. Protests against the war in Vietnam were happening around the country. The counterculture was in full swing. Traditional values and institutions were under fire, and the tension was everywhere—from college campuses to living rooms.

Released on September 29, 1969, Okie from Muskogee entered Billboard’s country chart on October 11, and by the November 15 listing, it was starting a month at No. 1. Its impact was immediate—the band traveled to Muskogee’s Civic Center that same week to record a live album. After a set featuring many of Haggard’s best-loved songs to that point, he closed with the song named after the town.

The song made its position clear right away:

We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee /
We don’t take our trips on LSD /
We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street /
'Cause we like living right, and being free.

The message was the full line: living right, and being free. It was about staying grounded in the values you were raised with, not giving in to what was popular, believing in the American Dream, and refusing to let anyone else tell you what should matter. The song became an anthem for people who felt overlooked—those who weren’t marching in the streets or dropping out of school, but still believed their way of life was as valid as anyone’s.

“The main message is about pride,” Haggard said of the track in 2012. “My father was an Okie from Muskogee when ‘Okie’ was considered a four-letter word. I think it became an anthem for people who were not being noticed or recognized in any way—the silent majority. It brought them pride. And today the song still speaks to conditions going on in this world.”

The song hit number one and stayed there for a month. It won awards. It got national press. Haggard became a face for the silent majority, even if he didn’t ask for it. His own life didn’t line up with the narrator—he drank, used drugs, smoked, broke rules. But he understood the frustration behind the lyrics.

He didn’t always explain the song’s meaning the same way. Sometimes he said it was serious. Other times he said it was satire. Sometimes both. He said it reflected what his dad would’ve thought. The truth shifted depending on when you asked him.

For Oklahoma, the song meant something more. Even though Haggard hadn’t lived in Muskogee, the song tied the town—and the state—to a particular identity: patriotic, traditional, rooted. For some Oklahomans, it was a point of pride.

Still connected to Oklahoma, in 2003, Haggard and his sister Lillian donated a number of their family belongings to the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American History to represent the migrating Okies in an exhibit on Route 66.

In 2025, we still think a lot of Okies are about living right and being free—maybe now more than ever. This shirt is for them.

Every shirt tells a story. See the shirt here.