{"id":3173,"date":"2017-11-25T01:00:20","date_gmt":"2017-11-25T06:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=3173"},"modified":"2025-09-08T13:13:51","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T17:13:51","slug":"swinging-doors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/swinging-doors\/","title":{"rendered":"Swinging Doors (Merle Haggard\/a honky-tonk gig)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Swinging Doors\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_KeMsNFsCQc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>My first trip through the South was in the fall of 1985. I started hitchhiking from Chapel Hill, planning to hug the coast till I reached Mexico. That afternoon I saw my first roadkill armadillo while <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-3215\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Southport-sign-e1757351468878.jpeg?resize=244%2C216&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"244\" height=\"216\" \/>walking the last five miles into Southport, North Carolina. On the edge of town I passed a gas station and a skinny old guy came running out, gestured to the guitar I had slung over my shoulder, and asked, &#8220;Can you play that thing?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I averred as to how I could, and he hired me to play at his bar that night. Actually, &#8220;hired&#8221; is a bit of an exaggeration, but he said if I wanted to play he&#8217;d fix me up with a band and give me a few bucks along with a meal and a place to sleep. So that was my first country bar gig. The band was a local guy who played Chet Atkins style guitar and his son on drums, and there may have been a bass player as well by the end of the night. They were all pretty good, and I sang every country song I knew, then got out a harmonica and played &#8220;Bright Lights, Big City,&#8221; and that tore up the room&#8211;apparently they&#8217;d ever seen anybody play amplified harp live in a bar.<\/p>\n<p>It was a kick for a kid from Cambridge, Massachusetts &#8212; I was way out of my home turf, but they treated me like a country singer, I played the part, and it worked fine. A bunch of guys were there from the military base, an older man offered to take me out fishing on his boat the next day, and sometime around midnight the waitress gestured at the half-dozen tired-looking forty-something-year-old women at the bar <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-3216 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Merle-Haggard-Swinging-Doors-300x293.jpg?resize=300%2C293\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"293\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Merle-Haggard-Swinging-Doors.jpg?resize=300%2C293&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Merle-Haggard-Swinging-Doors.jpg?w=345&amp;ssl=1 345w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>and said, &#8220;You could have any of them, if you want&#8230;&#8221; Which I didn&#8217;t, but it felt honky-tonk.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d gotten into Merle Haggard thanks to Bill Morrissey, who considered Merle one of the greatest songwriters around, and his songs were the foundation of my country repertoire. I&#8217;d picked up a greatest hits set, and it was a thrill to play songs like &#8220;Swinging Doors&#8221; in their native habitat and be accepted as legit. This was Merle&#8217;s first top five country hit back in 1966, and I also recall playing &#8220;Silver Wings&#8221; and &#8220;Emptiest Arms in the World,&#8221; along with some Johnny Cash, and maybe a couple of Lefty Frizzell numbers.<\/p>\n<p>I crashed on the waitress&#8217;s couch that night and considered sticking around a few days, but figured I&#8217;d had the best time I was likely to have in Southport, so the next morning I said my goodbyes and hitched on down the coast to Myrtle Beach.<\/p>\n<p>A few years later, I got to meet Merle when we were filming a segment on Jimmie Davis for <em>River of Song, <\/em>a documentary about music along the Mississippi River. By that time I was a hardcore fan&#8211;<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-3217\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/me-and-merle.jpg?resize=272%2C202&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"272\" height=\"202\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/me-and-merle.jpg?w=500&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/me-and-merle.jpg?resize=300%2C223&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 272px) 100vw, 272px\" \/>I&#8217;d actually cemented a multi-year relationship by responding to my date&#8217;s query, &#8220;What do you think about Merle Haggard?&#8221; by saying, &#8220;Merle Haggard is God.&#8221; And I&#8217;d amassed a pretty fair collection of his LPs. But nothing prepared me for how good he was live. It was a comfortably loose show, with great playing and singing, and Merle doing imitations of other singers, and Bonnie Owens adding harmony, and since the gig was in Shreveport, James Burton was hanging out backstage. It was a night to remember, and he&#8217;s still one of my all-time favorites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My first trip through the South was in the fall of 1985. I started hitchhiking from Chapel Hill, planning to hug the coast till I reached Mexico. That afternoon I saw my first roadkill armadillo while walking the last five miles into Southport, North Carolina. On the edge of town I passed a gas station &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/swinging-doors\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Swinging Doors (Merle Haggard\/a honky-tonk gig)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Swinging Doors (Merle Haggard\/a honky-tonk gig) - Old Friends: A Songobiography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/swinging-doors\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Swinging Doors (Merle Haggard\/a honky-tonk gig) - Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My first trip through the South was in the fall of 1985. I started hitchhiking from Chapel Hill, planning to hug the coast till I reached Mexico. That afternoon I saw my first roadkill armadillo while walking the last five miles into Southport, North Carolina. 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I've mostly played it for myself, remembering old guys I knew in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Eddie-Balchowsky.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3746,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/hey-now-baby\/","url_meta":{"origin":3173,"position":1},"title":"Hey Now, Baby (Professor Longhair)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 2, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I first heard Professor Longhair on a terrific album of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival -- also the first place I heard Allen Toussaint and Earl King -- and it was love at first listen. So I began acquiring his albums, and the more I heard, the more\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/jazzfest-lp.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3254,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wining-boy\/","url_meta":{"origin":3173,"position":2},"title":"Winin&#8217; Boy \/ Winding Ball (Jelly Roll Morton)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"December 9, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I learned this from Dave Van Ronk, who got it from Jelly Roll Morton, and it's at this point in the Songobiography because my trip south in 1985 included a brief stint with a trad jazz band in Charleston, SC. I hitched down from Southport via Myrtle Beach and don't\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Michael-Tyzack.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6115,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/nine-pound-hammer\/","url_meta":{"origin":3173,"position":3},"title":"Nine-Pound Hammer (Merle Travis)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 12, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"I have no idea where I learned this -- definitely not from Merle Travis's recording, which I only heard much later. My guess is that I just heard it around, which is something a lot of people don't seem to understand about the folk revival and folk music in general.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Travis-Songs-from-the-Hills-e1780771015746.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":861,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/john-hardy\/","url_meta":{"origin":3173,"position":4},"title":"John Hardy (Carter Family)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 5, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The ballad of John Hardy, hanged for murder in 1894, with some mention of the Carter Family and my acquaintance with the autoharp.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"autoharp book","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/autoharp-book-230x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2170,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/long-as-its-green\/","url_meta":{"origin":3173,"position":5},"title":"Long as It&#8217;s Green (George Gritzbach)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 5, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I've rarely found songs that give equal play to my political and musical tastes, so I was thrilled to hear this one from George Gritzbach. I spent a weekend opening for George at the Caffe Lena in 1982 or thereabouts, and when I played Leon Rosselson's \"We Sell Everything,\" he\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Gritzbach-lp.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3173"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5951,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3173\/revisions\/5951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}