Two for Tuesday 5/23/2023 Two songs with a similar theme – Merle Haggard and Johnny Paycheck #twofortues #music – Kaye Spencer

On Two for Tuesday, I share two songs with similar themes.

Today’s comparison is two classic country music songs:

Mama Tried by Merle Haggard
(April 6, 1937 – April 6, 2013)
[written by Merle Haggard]

The Only Hell My Mama Ever Raised by Johnny Paycheck
(1937-2003)
[written by Bobby Borchers, Wayne Kemp, and Mack Vickery]

Both songs tell the lamentable story of grown men looking back on the bad choices they made in their younger lives despite the best guiding efforts of their mothers to raise them right and keep them on the ‘straight and narrow’.

Both narrators have gotten sideways of the law. While it seems what they are sorriest about is simply getting caught, there is a hint of guilt for the sadness and grief their wayward ways have caused their mothers. But the dirty deeds they’ve done in their lives can’t be undone, so Que Sera Sera.

Mama Tried was released in July 1968 as the first single and title track from Merle Haggard’s album, Mama Tried, and it became one of the cornerstone songs of his career. The song entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. Two weeks before Merle died in 2016, the song was preserved in the National Recording Registry due to its “cultural, historic, and/or artistic significance”. While this song is not autobiographical, Merle did serve time in San Quentin, and he did lament the pain it caused his mother. Merle was among the “Outlaw Movement” artists of the 1970s. The song was his fifth Number 1 hit. It made to the top of the Billboard magazine Hot Country Single chart in August 1968.

The Only Hell My Mama Ever Raised is one of Johnny Paycheck’s signature songs. He was also considered one of the members of the “Outlaw Movement” artists. He received an Academy of Country Music Career Achievement award in 1977. The song is on the album Slide off of Your Satin Sheets. As a single, it reached Number 8 on the U.S. Country charts in 1977.