{"id":6137,"date":"2026-10-24T09:51:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T13:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=6137"},"modified":"2026-10-24T09:53:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T13:53:14","slug":"emptiest-arms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/emptiest-arms\/","title":{"rendered":"The Emptiest Arms in the World (Merle Haggard)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Emptiest Arms in the World (Merle Haggard)\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LdhHHaJFKjI?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>For info on my upcoming tour, hitting Brooklyn NY, Bethlehem PA, Philly, State College, Pittsburgh, Marietta OH, and Cleveland, go to <a href=\"https:\/\/elijahwald.com\/concertdates.html\">https:\/\/elijahwald.com\/concertdates.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Yup, another Merle Haggard song. I love his singing and have listened to a lot of it, and his songwriting is up there with the best. I wouldn&#8217;t say the songs I&#8217;ve learned are necessarily his greatest work; they&#8217;re all from relatively early in his career, and unlike most of my favorite songwriters, he actually got better as he aged. His voice, too. He was always good, but his voice on things like &#8220;Kern River&#8221; has a depth and soul the young outlaw hadn&#8217;t yet grown into.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3217\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3217\" style=\"width: 269px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3217\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/me-and-merle.jpg?resize=269%2C200&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"269\" height=\"200\" 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: 269px) 100vw, 269px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3217\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The one time I got to hang with Haggard &#8211; and no, we didn&#8217;t coordinate our shirts.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Which isn&#8217;t to say he didn&#8217;t have plenty of depth and soul in the early years. He had the gift, along with Lefty Frizzell, Hank Williams, Jerry Lee Lewis, Loretta Lynn&#8230; and hell, all my favorite country singers&#8230; of being able to get drunk and sorrowful without ever losing the edge that made the songs come alive. It was real blues, the kind you sing not to wallow in misery but to make yourself feel better.<\/p>\n<p>As I&#8217;ve written in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/swinging-doors\/\">an earlier post<\/a>, I learned a bunch of his songs before a hitchhiking journey through the southeastern US, and promptly got a one-night gig in a honky-tonk bar where that repertoire served me well. I&#8217;ve already posted a few favorites &#8212; &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/swinging-doors\/\">Swinging Doors<\/a>,&#8221; &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/pride-in-what-i-am\/\">I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am<\/a>,&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/mama-tried\/\">Mama Tried<\/a>&#8221; &#8212; but in general I haven&#8217;t sung them much. As I say, he could make this kind of doleful lyric come alive, but I can only do that in just the right room, right situation, right company, and right level of alcohol, so I tend to steer clear of them, except for my own pleasure.<\/p>\n<p>For a while I wasn&#8217;t even going to try to film and post this one, but then I started fooling around with a guitar part &#8212; treated it as a kind of blues, put it in the key of E &#8212; and got to liking it.<\/p>\n<p>The lyric is classic late-night drunken loneliness: &#8220;I only call when I&#8217;ve had that one too many&#8230;&#8221; with a touch of physical specificity to bring it home: &#8220;Last night I couldn&#8217;t even find my pillow\/ I&#8217;ve got the emptiest arms in the world.&#8221; That could be a funny line, but it isn&#8217;t. Or shouldn&#8217;t be. Damn good writer.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-6138 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Merl_Haggard_I_Love_Dixie_Blues-e1781304521363.jpg?resize=222%2C222&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"222\" height=\"222\" \/>I&#8217;d forgotten that he recorded this on the\u00a0<em>I Love Dixie Blues <\/em> album, since I associate that record with the horn-powered Emmett Miller songs. But there it is, along with &#8220;Everybody&#8217;s Had the Blues,&#8221; another favorite that I&#8217;ve never attempted. I&#8217;m listening to it now, and man, I love that man&#8217;s voice. And the arrangement, with Roy Nichols at his absolute best on guitar, and Norm Hamlett on steel, and someone playing quiet harmonica in the background, and Johnny Gimble coming in toward the end, perfect, as always&#8230; all of it framing that voice. Damn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For info on my upcoming tour, hitting Brooklyn NY, Bethlehem PA, Philly, State College, Pittsburgh, Marietta OH, and Cleveland, go to https:\/\/elijahwald.com\/concertdates.html Yup, another Merle Haggard song. I love his singing and have listened to a lot of it, and his songwriting is up there with the best. I wouldn&#8217;t say the songs I&#8217;ve learned &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/emptiest-arms\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Emptiest Arms in the World (Merle Haggard)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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-6137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Emptiest Arms in the World (Merle Haggard) - 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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\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\/09\/me-and-merle.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5211,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/cigarettes-and-coffee\/","url_meta":{"origin":6137,"position":1},"title":"Cigarettes and Coffee Blues (Lefty Frizzell)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 8, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"I have Bill Morrissey to thank for turning me into a Merle Haggard nut, and making me realize how close country\u00a0 music -- especially the strain popularized as \"honky tonk\" -- is to blues. Of course, to a large extent it came out of blues; Jimmie Rodgers was primarily a\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\/05\/Leftys-Greatest-Hits.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5946,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/mama-tried\/","url_meta":{"origin":6137,"position":2},"title":"Mama Tried (Merle Haggard)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"October 4, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"As noted in the posts for \"Swinging Doors\" and \"I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am,\" I'm a big Merle Haggard fan, and this has always been one of my favorites. It's one of his most autobiographical songs -- pretty much straight-up life story except that 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\/2026\/09\/Killers-Three-poster.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3220,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/pride-in-what-i-am\/","url_meta":{"origin":6137,"position":3},"title":"I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am (Merle Haggard)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"December 2, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"This is another I learned for my trip south in 1985-86, though I particularly remember playing it after getting back to Cambridge, at one of my all-time favorite bar gigs. The venue was Jack's on Mass Ave., and I know I played this because one of the local folkies asked\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\/10\/Elijah-Wald-Jacks-poster.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2779,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/lovesick-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":6137,"position":4},"title":"Lovesick Blues (Hank Williams\/Emmett Miller)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 29, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Like virtually everybody, I first heard this as a Hank Willams song, though I'm not sure when or how. As I've mentioned, my Cambridge folk scene upbringing initially made me resistant to mainstream Nashville country music, Williams included, but by\u00a0 the early 1980s I was gradually coming to my senses\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\/2017\/04\/HankWilliams1952-286x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1753,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/columbus-stockade-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":6137,"position":5},"title":"Columbus Stockade (Woody and Cisco)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 8, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the pleasures of playing on the street with Rob was that I had a second voice on the choruses of my favorite Woody Guthrie - Cisco Houston duets. I'd spent the previous couple of years learning blues and other stuff that lent itself to fingerstyle guitar,\u00a0 but I\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\/07\/woody-and-cisco-300x270.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6137","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=6137"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6400,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6137\/revisions\/6400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}