1 It wasn’t Merle himself, but his parents who were from Oklahoma, and according to most accounts, he wrote the song on a tour bus with drummer Roy Burris after spotting a sign for Muskogee on Interstate 40.
2‘Okie’ was reclaiming a derogatory term aimed at poor refugees from the dustbowl in the 1930s, such as his parents. Biographer David Cantwell argues that if you’d called Merle an ‘okie’ in the 40s or 50s he’d have probably “kicked your teeth in”.