Theresa was standing in the wings at the Oregon venue when her husband turned around and winked at her — that same wink he’d given her for thirty-some years. What she didn’t know was that Merle had asked the band earlier that afternoon to drop the key down a full step. He couldn’t reach the high notes anymore. The pneumonia had taken too much from him.He made it through nine songs before his knees buckled. A roadie caught him. He waved everybody off and finished the set sitting on a stool.In the truck on the way back to the bus, he looked at her and said, “Honey, that’s the last one. They got everything I had left in there.”Six weeks later he was gone.
The Last Song Merle Haggard Gave the Crowd Theresa Ann Lane was standing in the wings at an Oregon venue…