Merle Haggard & Kris Kristofferson: A Country Music Battle Royale in Beverly Hills

Jonny Whiteside

Several years before Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson kicked over the table to ignite the Outlaw movement, Merle Haggard and Kris Kristofferson, two of country’s most unorthodox practitioners, sent shock waves through late 1960’s Nashville with their mixture of exquisitely crafted lyrics, unusual content, controversial messages and a defiant disregard for the strictly upheld conventions that ruled the idiom.

Haggard had established himself as one of honky tonk’s infamous rebels, an ex-con whose gritty, hard-bitten catalog frequently focused on prison life, escape, execution, the Great Depression and the bitterness and anger of failed romance; while his 1969 smash “Okie From Muskogee” established the singer as a redneck icon, the song was a gag—he was smoking weed while writing the lyric—and Haggard’s intended follow up single, “Irma Jackson” was a sympathetic look at an interracial love affair, but was deemed so controversial that Capitol records refused to release it. That same year, Johnny Cash’s proposed version of Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down” came under fire from Columbia execs who demanded Cash change the line “On a Sunday mornin’ sidewalk, wishin’, Lord, that I was stoned . . . .”  Of course Cash refused, and when the record went to number one it established Kristofferson as a bold, new, undeniable country voice.

When this powerhouse twosome hit the stage at Beverly Hills’ Saban Theatre, it will be a dazzling retrospective of modern country music’s greatest songs.  Their chosen format is ideal, with both taking the stage accompanied by Haggard’s always superb band, the Strangers. As they trade off songs, it’s an impressive display, and with material like Kristofferson’s forlorn lament “Help Me Make it Through the Night” juxtaposed against Haggard’s grim Death Row dirge “Sing Me Back Home” or the humble spiritualism of “Why Me, Lord,” followed by the soul-baring self-examination of Haggard’s classic “Footlights,” the pairing creates an electric atmosphere you’ll find nowhere else.

Merle Haggard and Kris Kristofferson have been rescheduled to Feb. 11 at Saban Theatre.