50 Years Ago, Merle Haggard Scored His Third Straight No. 1 Album, Featuring a Dolly Parton Cover and Songs From a Shelved 1973 Project

May 2, 2026 9:33 am

April 6 marked 10 years since we lost country music giant Merle Haggard on his 79th birthday. With a career lasting more than five decades, Haggard brought the Bakersfield, California country sound to a national audience, racking up 38 No. 1 hits. On this day (May 2) in 1976, the “Okie From Muskogee” singer was back on top of the country albums chart for the third straight time with It’s All in the Movies.

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Released in February 1976, It’s All in the Movies followed the trajectory of its chart-topping predecessors, Merle Haggard Presents His 30th Album (1974) and Keep Movin’ On (1975).

The album’s title track gave the Hag his eighth straight No. 1 single, spending 13 weeks on the country chart. But that’s all in the movies / It won’t happen to you and I, Haggard sings in the chorus.

The project also featured two tracks—”Stingeree” and “Hag’s Dixie Blues, No. 2″—that Haggard recorded for a scrapped 1973 project titled, I Love Dixie Blues.’ He shelved the album in favor of a live recorded project, I Love Dixie Blues, So I Recorded Live In New Orleans.

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Merle Haggard Covers Dolly Parton

While he had a hand in writing seven of the album’s 11 tracks, Haggard also put his own spin on a few time-tested country classics, including Hank Cochran’s “I Know an Ending When It Comes” and “The Seeker”, from Dolly Parton’s 1975 album Dolly.

Merle Haggard and Dolly Parton had a friendship dating back to the 1970s, when the “Jolene” singer opened for him after leaving Porter Wagoner in pursuit of a solo career. They often took the same bus to shows, and those long conversations blossomed into something like love for the “Okie From Muskogee” crooner.

At the time, Haggard was married to his second wife, Bonnie Owens. And Parton, of course, remained fiercely loyal to her husband, Carl Dean, until his death in March 2025. Haggard channeled his feelings of unrequited romance into the 1975 song “Always Wanting You”: Always wanting you, but never having you / Makes it hard to face tomorrow.

While Parton didn’t reciprocate Haggard’s feelings, the 11-time Grammy winner certainly treasured their friendship.

“Merle Haggard was a special, special person,” she wrote in her 2020 book, Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics. “I heard he had a crush on me. All I knew was that we had a great relationship… We never had an affair or anything like that. We were just buddies, as far as I was concerned. He reminded me of my brother Denver, so I really related to him. We had a good time, and we loved each other’s music.”

Featured image by Frank Edwards/Fotos International/Archive Photos/Getty Images