Merle Haggard Was Reduced to Tears When His Then-Wife Shared a “Personal Statement” to Him Through Song

To really get through to someone on an emotional level, you have to speak in a language they understand. Business people understand business. Carpenters understand how to build. Musicians understand music, which is likely why Leona Williams was able to elicit such a teary-eyed reaction from Merle Haggard when she first played him the song that would take Haggard to the top of the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart in 1983.

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According to the liner notes for a 1994 Haggard compilation called Down Every Road, Haggard and his then-wife, Williams, were traveling on their tour bus when she debuted “You Take Me For Granted”. She began, “My legs and my feet have walked ‘til they can’t hardly move from tryin’ to please you / and my back is sore from bendin’ over backwards to just lay the world at your door.” The lyrics were pointed, and Haggard knew why.

Haggard and Williams had just had a row after the “Okie From Muskogee” singer pushed Williams to tears during a recording session. “You Take Me For Granted” was Williams’ musical response, and that seemed to hit harder than anything she could have said to her then-husband face-to-face.

Merle Haggard Had an Emotional Reaction to “You Take Me For Granted”

Music journalist Daniel Cooper wrote in the Down Every Road liner notes that Merle Haggard’s eyes started to well up that day on the tour bus. After Leona Williams finished singing her song, Haggard asked her if she really felt that way about things. She said she did. As painful as that might have been for Haggard to hear, he knew the song’s authenticity would make it a hit. And he was right. “You Take Me For Granted” from Going Where the Lonely Go hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.

In the end, Williams’ song was just foreshadowing what the couple knew was waiting on the horizon. The musicians had begun collaborating in the early 1970s, when Haggard was still married to his first wife-slash-collaborative partner, Bonnie Owens. After Haggard and Owens split up and he and Williams started seeing one another romantically, traditional Haggard fans criticized Williams and made her feel like a homewrecker. This tension, paired with Williams’ own professional ambitions and Haggard’s tendencies as a partner, became too much for the co-writing couple.

Williams left her soon-to-be ex-husband with one more musical message, “Someday When Things Are Good”, before they officially broke up. Williams and Haggard divorced in 1983, after five years of marriage. In a real “Fleetwood Mac goes country” situation, the ex-couple recorded and released Heart to Heart mid- and post-divorce.

The album peaked at No. 44 on the Billboard Country Music chart, which we’d imagine is right on the cusp of feeling worth it (or not) to record an album with your ex in the middle of a divorce.

Photo by Jerry Telfer/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images