Merle Haggard Movies

On the heels of his 2006 release Last Man Standing, seventy-something rock-and-roll piano man Jerry Lee Lewis stages a rollicking series of concerts featuring special guest appearances by such musical superstars as Tom Jones, Merle Haggard, Kid Rock, John Fogerty, Kris Kristofferson, Chris Isaac, and Norah Jones. Recorded live in New York and Los Angeles, this intimate collection of concert clips proves that while rock-and-roll may age, it truly never dies. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Academy of Country Music Entertainer of the Decade Loretta Lynn is joined by country outlaws Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard, the late great June Carter Cash, Ernest Tubb, and a whole host of iconic country music luminaries who take the stages of the Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas Texas, the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas, and the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee in order to celebrate fifty years of unforgettable music in this once-in-a-lifetime concert extravaganza. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The celebrated singer and songwriter Steve Earle once said "Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that." Earle was hardly the only artist of note who loved Van Zandt's poetic, elliptical songs of love and dashed hopes -- Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Norah Jones, the Cowboy Junkies, and Nanci Griffith are among the many performers who have recorded his work, and he was a key inspiration for much of the Texas singer/songwriter community, including Guy Clark, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, and Lyle Lovett. However, while Van Zandt was greatly admired by his peers and a small cult of passionate admirers, it was other artists who had hits with his songs, not him, and this gifted but troubled man was haunted by drug and alcohol addiction much of his life. Van Zandt also had difficult relationships with his family and three wives, and at the age of 20, he was given shock treatments which wiped out nearly all of his childhood memories. In the 1990s, Van Zandt's public profile began to grow larger, and he was signed to a major record label for the first time in 1996, but as often happened in his songs, fate stepped in, and Van Zandt died following hip surgery on New Year's Day, 1997. Filmmaker Margaret Brown, a longtime fan of Townes Van Zandt, examines both his life and his art in the documentary Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt, which includes interviews with many of his close friends, family members and collaborators, including Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris, Steve Shelley, Guy Clark, and many more. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This Land Was Made for You & Me follows the development of American roots music from the 1930s to the 1950s. During the '30s, a number of folklorists began collecting traditional music in field recordings. John and Alan Lomax "discovered" African-American folksinger Huddie Ledbetter, known as Leadbelly, at Angola Penitentiary in 1933. Leadbelly's vast repertoire of original material convinced many that American traditions existed separately from European ones. Other folksingers began writing material from their own experiences. Woody Guthrie wrote about the Dust Bowl, labor unrest, and migrant workers as he traveled throughout Depression-era America. After WWII, new roots genres grew rapidly. Ernest Tubb spread the gospel of honky tonk, while the meteoric career of Hank Williams wrote a new chapter on how to "live fast and die young." Mountain music also evolved after the war when Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs married high-lonesome vocals to speedy banjo picking to create bluegrass. This Land Was Made for You & Me includes footage of Woody Guthrie, Lefty Frizzell, and a rare color clip of a Leadbelly performance. There are also interviews with Merle Haggard, Sam Phillips, and Kitty Wells. ~ Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr., All Movie Guide

This Merle Haggard concert features special guest appearances by such country music icons as Willie Nelson and Johnny Paycheck. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Haggard performs 16 songs in this concert film recorded live in Concord, California. ~ All Movie Guide

The original "Okie from Muskogee" takes a trip to Austin, Texas to perform on the wildly popular Austin City Limits in this re-mixed and re-mastered hour-long concert that was originally edited down to thirty-minutes for it's original television broadcast. The next best thing to seeing Haggard do his thing live, this release offers the popular country singer performing a fifteen song set that includes such classics as "Thank You for Keeping My House", "Misery and Gin", and "I Wish Things Were Simple Again". ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The longest (26-1/2 hours), most expensive ($25 million) and most complicated (four directors, five producers, five cinematographers, almost 100 speaking parts, several hundred extras) project made for television up to that time, Centennial was shown in two- and three-hour installments over a period of four months. An adaptation of James Michener's best-selling novel, it told the story of the settling of the American West by looking at the founding of the fictional town of Centennial, Colorado, from the settling of the area in the late 18th century to the present. Emmy-nominated for film editing and art direction, it boasts of sterling performances from Richard Chamberlain as frontiersman Alexander McKeag, Robert Conrad as the French-Canadian trapper Pasquinel, and a surprisingly powerful performance from former football star Alex Karras as compassionate but iron-willed immigrant farmer Hans Brumbaugh. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide

It's still the same old story...but what a story. This umpteenth filmization of the classic Mark Twain novel stars Ron Howard as Huck and Donny Most as Tom Sawyer. After faking his own murder to escape his brutish Pap (played by Howard's real-life father Rance), Huck and fugitive slave Jim (Antonio Fargas) fashion a raft and head off down the Mississippi. The darker elements and sociological commentary of the Twain original are carefully excised from this version, the better to allow more time for the antics of those "royal" rapscallions, the King (Jack Elam) and the Duke (Merle Haggard). Mark Twain himself makes a guest appearance, in the person of Royal Dano. Filmed along the Sacramento River in California (a frequent movie "stand-in" for the Mississippi), Huckleberry Finn was first broadcast March 25, 1975. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A video review of the music of the seventies. There are twenty-four songs in the one-hour nostalgia program. They include "Stoned Soul Picnic," "Wedding Bell Blues," and "Superstar." Hosted by Warwick, The Carpenters and Haggard. ~ All Movie Guide