Arthur Penn's movie about Bonnie and Clyde had been showing on America's movie screens since August of the previous year when Merle Haggard's album "The Legend of Bonnie & Clyde" arrived in music stores 50 years ago today.
Haggard was on a real hot streak in the 1960s, and "The Legend of Bonnie & Clyde" just added to it.
Other than being inspired by the movie, though, there was no real link between the two. Haggard collaborated with Bonnie Owens on the title track, but they are better known for another composition of theirs from the same album — "I Started Loving You Again."
The title track went on to become a No. 1 hit, but the flip side, "I Started Loving You Again" (with "Today" added to the title later) went on to become a standard — and may well be Haggard's most covered song.
Reportedly, the song's title originated at a time when Haggard, who had married Owens a few years earlier, believed he had fallen out of love with her. Then, when they were walking through an airport, Haggard looked at Owens and told her, "You know what? I think I started lovin' you again today."
At Owens' suggestion, today was moved from the end of the original sentence to the beginning of the song title.
The A side of the single, as I mentioned, was the LP's title track. Ironically, while "I Started Loving You Again" never charted as a single ("The Legend of Bonnie & Clyde" was Haggard's fourth No. 1 single), it was one of Haggard's most popular songs.
The album was not, as Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic.com observed, a concept album, no matter what its title might imply. It was mostly an album in which Haggard covered songs written by others. In addition to the two compositions he penned with Owens, Haggard was credited with writing two other songs on the album, leaving seven that were written by other songwriters.
It was noteworthy that Glen Campbell, who had already enjoyed chart–topping success with "Gentle on My Mind" and was about to do so again with "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," played guitar and banjo on the album.
