Sing Me Back Home (song)
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| "Sing Me Back Home" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Single by Merle Haggard and The Strangers | ||||
| from the album Sing Me Back Home | ||||
| B-side | "Good Times" | |||
| Released | November 1967 | |||
| Genre | Country | |||
| Length | 2:51 | |||
| Label | Capitol | |||
| Songwriter | Merle Haggard | |||
| Producer | Ken Nelson | |||
| Merle Haggard and The Strangers singles chronology | ||||
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"Sing Me Back Home" is a song written and recorded by American country music artist Merle Haggard and The Strangers. It was released in November 1967 as the first single and title track from the album Sing Me Back Home. The song was Merle Haggard and The Strangers third number one. The single spent two weeks at number one and a total of 17 weeks on the country chart.[1] In 2019, Rolling Stone ranked "Sing Me Back Home" No. 32 on its list of the 40 Saddest Country Songs of All Time.[2]
The song was among several notable Haggard songs that touched on a common theme of his 1960s and early 1970s recordings—prison. Haggard himself spent three years at San Quentin State Prison in California for his role in a botched robbery.[3]
"Sing Me Back Home" draws upon Haggard's relationships with two fellow inmates: Caryl Chessman, the "first modern American executed for a non-lethal kidnapping";[4] and James "Rabbit" Kendrick, who was executed in 1961 for killing a California Highway Patrolman after escaping from prison.[3][5][6]
Here, the singer takes the role of an inmate at a state penitentiary, where a condemned prisoner is being led toward the death chamber. The inmate, who regularly plays guitar and sings in his jail cell to pass the time, is asked to perform a final song at the condemned prisoner's request before he and the guards continue on. As the song is completed, he reflects on a church choir's visit to the prison just a week earlier, where members performed hymns for the inmates; one of the songs evoked the soon-to-be-executed prisoner's memories of his mother and carefree childhood ... before his life went wrong.
