On Jelly Roll's 'Beautifully Broken'

In his 1999 autobiography My House of Memories, Merle Haggard marveled at his stardom, knowing it’d be a pipe dream by the standards of the day. “Can you imagine what would happen today if I were 24, just out of prison, and trying to get a record deal in Nashville?” wondered the working man’s poet, who spent much of his youth incarcerated before becoming one of country music’s most beloved voices. “Today’s sanitized country music is produced by a bunch of artists who sound like each other. No label would take a chance on my sound, especially with my background, if I were trying to start over.”