I gotta make you think I’m happy everywhere I go

Many years ago I started looking for great breakup songs and, of course, spent a lot of time digging through Country records for material. I spent hours digging through crates of records at a used record store, listening to dozens of songs and taking requests from the staff. I found a lot of great material but the best part of the experience was a gentleman who was buying records at the store that day when I was talking to one of the guys behind the counter about material. It turned out the gent had been a bartender more than a handful of bars over the years and had often been requested to put something on the jukebox to help someone forget someone else and make the beer go down easier.

His advice was simple. “You need to go dig up a handful of Merle Haggard records if you’re looking for great songs. The man almost invented the drinking breakup song. It breaks my heart to listen the crap Garth Brooks and the rest of these idiots do to those kinds of songs now. Go dig up ‘Drink Up and Be Somebody’ and you’ll realize every one of these kids in crisp new shirts and hats that ain’t never been knocked off in a fight are copying his songs.”

I wandered down to the “H” section and sure enough one of the first albums in the bin was I’m a Lonesome Fugitive. I slapped it on the turntable, dropped the needle on “Drink Up and Be Somebody” and nodded to the gent as he finished his purchase. The album came home with me and has been played numerous times over the years when the mood was dark and the hour late. (For some reason it doesn’t work for me if there’s daylight around.)

[NOTE: I also see Amazon's selling the remastered version of the album as an mp3 for $5. Can't go wrong there.]

PLAY:

DOWNLOAD: Merle Haggard - Drink Up and Be Somebody