Okie From Muskogee

Haggard and his band started writing this song when their tour bus passed through Muskogee, Oklahoma. It started out as a joke making fun of small town rural folks, but took on new meaning when people took it seriously; the song was a #1 Country hit for four weeks, and it quickly became clear that many listeners really did despise the liberal, elite hippies in San Francisco and heard the song not as a commentary on the folly of intolerance, but as a song about southern pride. Said Haggard: "We wrote it to be satirical originally. But then people latched onto it, and it really turned into this song that looked into the mindset of people so opposite of who and where we were. My dad's people. He's from Muskogee."

The Vietnam protests were an inspiration for this song - Haggard was protesting the protesters. Haggard was imprisoned several times in his younger days for various crimes, and during a 2010 interview with The Boot, he explained: "When I was in prison, I knew what it was like to have freedom taken away. Freedom is everything. During Vietnam, there were all kinds of protests. Here were these [servicemen] going over there and dying for a cause - we don't even know what it was really all about. And here are these young kids, that were free, bitching about it. There's something wrong with that and with [disparaging] those poor guys.We were in a wonderful time in America and music was in a wonderful place. America was at its peak and what the hell did these kids have to complain about? These soldiers were giving up their freedom and lives to make sure others could stay free. I wrote the song to support those soldiers."

Muskogee is a city in Oklahoma. In 1969, after this song was released and became a hit, Haggard went to Muskogee and recorded a live album called Okie From Muskogee.