On This Day in 1958, a Failed Escape From Jail Landed Merle Haggard in This Infamous Prison

On New Year’s Day 1959, outlaw country legend Johnny Cash performed for an audience of incarcerated men at California’s most infamous correctional facility—San Quentin Prison. That day marked a turning point for one particular inmate—Merle Haggard, who arrived there on this day (Feb. 21) in 1958 to serve a maximum 15-year sentence.

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How Did Merle Haggard End Up in San Quentin?

Long before he sang stirring anthems for the desperate and downtrodden, Merle Haggard’s life trajectory sounded an awful lot like those he was singing about. Just before Christmas 1957, a 19-year-old Hag—broke and married with an eight-month-old daughter—attempted to rob a Bakersfield, California roadhouse.

Unfortunately, the scheme does not go as planned, and Haggard ends up behind bars. Later, he escapes by slipping out undetected among a group of prisoners headed to court. Haggard’s escape attempt is only slightly more successful than his botched robbery, and 30 hours later, he’s back in custody. That’s how—just two months shy of his 21st birthday—the future “Okie From Muskogee” singer finds himself at San Quentin Prison, known for housing such notorious names as Charles Manson and Rodney Alcala, the “Dating Game Killer.”

While Haggard credits his stint at San Quentin for setting him on the right path, it didn’t happen immediately. A side hustle brewing bootleg booze landed him in solitary, right beside the area of San Quentin that housed the death row prisoners. That, he said, was when his revelation came.

“I realized what a mess I made out of my life, and I got out of there and stayed out of there,” Haggard told NPR in 2010. “Never did go back. And went and apologized to all of the people I wronged and taken money from. I think when I was 31 years old, I paid everyone back, including my mother.”

[RELATED: Merle Haggard Was Sitting on Unreleased Poetry at the Time of His Death, According to an Unearthed Interview From 2010]

He Didn’t Stay Gone Completely

Vowing to never return to a life behind bars, Merle Haggard kept his word—sort of. Following in Johnny Cash’s footsteps, he returned to San Quentin “three or four times” to play a show for the inmates in whose shoes he’d once walked. He’d play at other prisons, too, in Kansas, Texas, and Wyoming.

“You kind of let them direct you,” Haggard told Rolling Stone of performing for prisoners. “They sometimes are adamant about an area of your career that you might not even be aware of. They want something that you might have forgot about. They’re in charge of their show and they know it and I let them know it. They just kind of help me along.”

Featured image by Richard E. Aaron/Redferns