High School:<\/strong> Highland High School<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yearbooks:<\/strong> 1976<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yearbook photos of Merle Haggard from Highland High School<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Merle Ronald Haggard<\/strong> (April 6, 1937 \u2013 April 6, 2016) was an American singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist. Having grown up in California, he had ties to his community, even sponsoring the 1976 Highland High School<\/a> yearbook. Haggard, a country musician, was instrumental in helping to create the \u201cBakersfield sound\u201d (a rougher-edged style of country music that ran counter to the highly polished Nashville sound of the time) in the 1950s. With a career that spanned six decades, he ended up as a prolific and much-honored talent. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1977 and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in 1994. Haggard was recording until just months before his death, with his last song (\u201cKern River Blues\u201d) being released to the public in May of 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Awards (partial list):<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Related Celeb Yearbook Blogs<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Source: Wikipedia<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Merle Haggard Singer, Songwriter & Instrumentalist Birthdate: Apr 06, 1937 High School: Highland High School Yearbooks: 1976 Yearbook photos of Merle Haggard from Highland High School Merle Ronald Haggard (April 6, 1937 \u2013 April 6, 2016) was an American singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist. Having grown up in California, he had ties to his community, even sponsoring the 1976 Highland High […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2766,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrity"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.classmates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.classmates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.classmates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.classmates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.classmates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2750"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.classmates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8265,"href":"https:\/\/www.classmates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2750\/revisions\/8265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.classmates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.classmates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.classmates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.classmates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Merle](\"https:\/\/aboutclassmates.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/merle-haggard-yearbook-photo-1.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Highland](\"https:\/\/aboutclassmates.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/highland-high-school-bakersville-1976.jpg\")
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