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Nashville

Vince Gill, Paul Franklin cover Merle Haggard

Brian Mansfield
Special for USA TODAY
Vince Gill, left, and Paul Franklin have recorded a new album, 'Bakersfield,' that honors California country greats Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.
  • %27Bakersfield%27 pays tribute to the music of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens
  • %27Branded Man%27 was Haggard%27s second No. hit%2C in 1967
  • %27Bakersfield%27 comes out July 30

On Bakersfield, two of Nashville's most respected musicians pay tribute to a pair of legends associated with another great country-music city.

The album, out July 30, features Vince Gill and Paul Franklin, perhaps the most-recorded pedal-steel player of the past 30 years, playing the songs of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.

Branded Man, premiering at USA TODAY, originally was Haggard second No. 1 hit, in 1967.

"You had to do one good prison song," says Gill. "That was one I've always loved and Paul's always loved. It's probably not the most familiar in that catalog. We tried not to do just the biggest hits of the biggest hits."

Bakersfield includes remakes of other Haggard hits, among them The Fightin' Side of Me and The Bottle Let Me Down. The pair also covered five songs associated with Owens, including Together Again and Foolin' Around.

Gill and Franklin's shared history spans decades. Franklin played on some of Gill's earliest hits, including When I Call Your Name and Never Knew Lonely, as well as one more recent albums. They also play together in the Time Jumpers, a Western-swing band that has a regular Monday night gig at Nashville nightclub 3rd & Lindsley.

The Bakersfield project grew out of Gill wanting to find more ways to make music with Franklin.

"It really didn't start as a singing record," says Gill, who's also considered one of the finest guitar pickers in Music City. "I thought about a guitar-and-steel record, but we both said we weren't that keen on instrumental records."

Both Owens and Haggard were closely associated with prominent sidemen who helped define their sound — Owen with Don Rich and Haggard with Roy Nichols. Both Rich and Nichols were guitar players, which presented Franklin with some challenges as he and Gill created new arrangements.

"In the beginning of Buck's career, there wasn't a lot of guitar playing, but he had the steel guitarist Ralph Mooney," Franklin says. "When you listen to Merle Haggard's first records, like (My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers and Days of Wine and Roses, the steel guitar carries the thing. I remembered those elements, so even though a song like Fightin' Side of Me didn't really have any steel guitar on the original, I still played the solo in it. I tried to remember the emotional element and the dominance from the early period and incorporate that."

The results were successful — at least according to Haggard, who wrote liner notes for the album.

"Vince and Paul offer a great new touch on a great old sound," Haggard writes. "It was great, certainly to hear my music done with the great touch of Vince and Paul. I feel highly complimented. But it was especially great to hear what they did with Buck's stuff. Some may not notice, but I for one knew how great Buck really was, first as a musician, then as an artist."

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