Kern River is the fortieth studio album by American recording artist
Merle Haggard backed by
The Strangers, released in 1985. It reached number 8 on the Billboard country albums chart.
Background
The album is best remembered for its title track, which hit the
Top 10 in the summer of 1985. The song also played a part in Haggard's souring relationship with his record label. In his 1999 memoir My House of Memories, the singer recalls being summoned to CBS in Nashville with
Ray Benson in tow where an executive casually remarked, "Well, I still don't like 'Kern River,'" and suggested, despite Haggard's run of hits in the first half of the decade, that he listen to songs by a group of assembled young songwriters[1] Haggard exploded, saying to the executive, "Go over there and pick up one of those guitars. Show me a chicken claw D. Sing me your latest song," and later recalled, "To this day, my blood pressure rises when I tell the story."[1] The LP alternates between smooth, country/pop melancholy, such as "
You Don't Love Me Anymore" and "There's Somebody Else On Your Mind," and nostalgic nods to big band western swing like "Old Watermill" and his cover of
Louis Armstrong's "
Big Butter and Egg Man." The
LP also contains a rendition of the 1980
Dolly Parton #1 "
Old Flames Can't Hold a Candle to You." The version of "Natural High" found on this album differs from the one on Haggard's previous album It's All in the Game in that it features
Janie Fricke on background vocals. Haggard had originally recorded "I Wonder Where I'll Find You at Tonight" on his 1972 album It's Not Love (But It's Not Bad).
Stephen Thomas Erlewine of
AllMusic states that while the LP "isn't his best record of the '80s, it's possibly the best example of Haggard's far-reaching, varied tastes as he settled into his veteran status."[2] In the 2013 book Merle Haggard: The Running Kind, biographer David Cantwell calls the title track "a scary record" that "screamed quiet and startled you alive."[3]
[2]