While the striking image is staged, the back-story is not.
Haggard had plenty of cause for remorse, having troubled his mama no end following the death of his father when Merle was aged 9.
He turned to petty crime and truancy, his off-the-rails behaviour culminating in a three-year stretch in San Quentin prison for the attempted robbery of a tavern.
While inside, the troubled youngster witnessed three of Johnny Cash's prison performances.
Cash proved both inspiration and mentor when Haggard pursued a career in music on his release in 1960.
Mama Tried and its chart-topping title track dwells on what it is to be a man cornered by the pressures of social and financial hardship.
Several of its tragic tales are related from the confines of a prison cell.
But throughout, the protagonist knows he had choices and made the wrong ones, the flaws in his character running as deep as the solidarity he feels for his blue-collar buddies and fellow Okies.
A set that includes covers of Green Green Grass Of Home, Little Ol' Wine Drinker Me and Folsom Prison Blues is delivered in typical Haggard style: His rich, clear vocals are straight down the line for the most part but reveal a Sinatra-like skill for timing; the music is quintessential Bakersfield Sound, all honky-tonk rhythms, twanging guitars and pedal steel flourishes.
Teach Me To Forget speaks eloquently of troubles of the romantic kind but it's the Dolly Parton-penned In The Good Old Days that best captures the album's conflicted essence:
No amount of money could buy from me
The memories that I have of then
No amount of money could pay me
To go back and live through it again.
