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Merle Haggard, the Grammy Award-winning singer whose autobiographical prison songs and populist political anthems, notably “Mama Tried” and “Okie From Muskogee,” made him one of country music’s most formidable and celebrated entertainers, died Wednesday at his home in Palo Cedro, Calif. He died on his 79th birthday.

The cause was complications from pneumonia, said his manager, Frank Mull.

Haggard was widely regarded as one of the most moving singers in the country genre. John Rumble, senior historian for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, called him “country music’s greatest songwriter, with the arguable exception of Hank Williams.”

Along with singers Buck Owens and Wynn Stewart, Haggard typified country music’s “Bakersfield sound” of the 1960s. The California city, home to many who fled the dust bowls of the 1930s and worked in its oil fields, was a thriving center of country music. Whereas Nashville producers pressured their singers to adopt a “countrypolitan” style with choirs and string sections, Bakersfield built its reputation on a grittier sound and twangy guitars.

Haggard was best known for his 1969 song “Okie From Muskogee,” which protested the counterculture of the time with such lines as “We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee/We don’t take our trips on LSD” and “We don’t burn our draft cards down at the courthouse.”

The song won him an audience at the Nixon White House in 1973. Haggard later said that he did not intend the song as a political anthem; in fact, he acknowledged his own drug use by stating that he often smoked marijuana before going out on stage.

Between 1966 and 1987, Haggard had 38 No. 1 country hits, including several drawn from his experiences in the California penal system. Haggard once described his career in music as a “35-year bus ride,” and a theme of restlessness runs through such compositions such as “The Running Kind” and “Ramblin’ Fever.”

Other songs, such as “Hungry Eyes” and “If We Make It Through December,” were filled with empathy for the working poor. “Today I Started Loving You Again,” a plaintive love song about obsession co-written with Bonnie Owens, became one of the country genre’s most covered songs.

Merle Ronald Haggard was born in Bakersfield on April 6, 1937, in a makeshift home that his father built from an abandoned boxcar.

Haggard’s parents left a barren farm in Oklahoma as part of the exodus from the Dust Bowl.

His father, a Western swing fiddler and carpenter, died when Merle was 9. While his mother struggled to support the family, Haggard spent his childhood in a reckless pattern of petty crimes, truancy and narrow escapes from the police, once running away to Texas by hopping freights and stealing cars. By 14, he had escaped from three juvenile facilities.

For Haggard, the one bright spot in this youth was music. After hearing country singer Lefty Frizzell at a local dance hall, Haggard took up singing and guitar.

Prison curtailed these activities. In 1957, he was sentenced to five years in California’s San Quentin State Prison for car theft and burglary.

While in San Quentin, Haggard sold home brew to other inmates, an activity that landed him in solitary confinement.

Haggard was paroled in 1960 and was pardoned by then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1973.

Haggard received a Grammy for lifetime achievement in 2006 and a Kennedy Center Honor in 2010.

He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1994.