Consumer Guide Album

Merle Haggard: Serving 190 Proof [MCA, 1979]
Its impeccable simplicity and sensitivity gives Haggard's fourth and best album for MCA an autumnal feel reminiscent of recent comebacks by Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. Granted, autumnal country music is easier to come by than autumnal rock and roll. But for Haggard, a mere forty-one but feeling it, the effect has thematic repercussions--and he's written a batch of wise songs to flesh it out. B+