This year marks Hank Williams’ 100th birthday. I was seven years old when he died at the age of 29 on New Year’s Eve, 1953.
I have liked Hank Williams’ music for most of my life, and have a hard time passing up any of it. I buy his records. I buy his discs. If the music industry repackages his songs, even if I have them, I usually buy those, too. Live performance tapes and performances on radio transcriptions have been discovered over the years. I buy those, too. The most amazing discovery occurred when a person was cleaning the WSM radio recording studio in Nashville.
A staff photographer happened to walk by a cart full of transcription discs on its way to the dumpster and noticed a huge pile of Hank Williams transcriptions. He retrieved those, and after legal wrangling they were finally released to the public in 2010, doubling overnight the amount of Hank Williams music available. The transcriptions were made to promote Mother’s Best Flower on a 15-minute weekday radio program featuring Hank Williams on Nashville’s WSM broadcast station. Because he was touring and not available for the live performances most of those mornings, when they were in town Hank Williams and his Drifting Cowboys would record several programs in the studio on transcriptions for later use on the radio programs. These transcriptions are shellac discs meant to be used once, as they lose quality after several plays. These transcription discoveries include Hank singing many newly available songs he did not write, as well as previously unavailable performances of some of his songs. The Mother’s Best Flower release is viewed by Hank Williams fans as Beatles fans would view a discovery doubling the amount of Beatle performances.
Hank Williams was blessed in his profession, but had a tough life. He was raised by his mother, as his father was in an institution with a brain injury from World War I. Hank had a volatile marriage and bouts with alcohol that were severe. He skyrocketed to stardom with a song he did not write called Lovesick Blues, and stayed on the music charts with multiple entries of his own songs until he died, after which he had a few more hits with songs he wrote and recorded a few months prior to his death. He also was born with spina bifida that caused him much pain throughout his life. Trying to rid himself of that pain with a combination of chloral hydrate and alcohol is what killed him. Thousands flocked to his funeral, experiencing personal loss due to their connection with him through his music.
You can see some of the books I have read about him in a video my friend Darrel Stillwell made as background for a live cut of me singing Hank Williams’ song Your Cheatin’ Heart, from 2017 at the last live gig Dr. Fry’s Texas Medicine Band played. I invite you to look at my Hank Williams collection.
My first memory of Hank Williams was hearing Jambalaya on the radio when I was of elementary school age. The song has a line, “Son-of-a gun, going to have big fun on the bayou.” I remember asking my mother what a “son-of-a gun” was. I received no satisfactory answer.
When I was in the 9th grade in Kingsville, TX, a guy I knew had an older brother who had been in a country band. When the older brother moved out of the house, this younger brother started selling everything that remained in his older brother’s room. Not considering at the time if I was buying abandoned or stolen property, I bought a large stack of Hank Williams 45 RPM records, including some 45 RPM albums containing 4 songs that you can see in the video. Hank Williams was esteemed in country music circles, but I did not know much about his music up to that time.
I was learning to play guitar, and I learned to strum and practice changing chords quickly by playing along with those Hank Williams records. I played for many hours to all those records, and more that I could later find.
Learning country music as boy can lead to amusing aspects. For example, I could play and sing Honky Tonkin’ having no real understanding of what honky tonkin’ was, other than it was something I knew I was not doing. I played and sang of excruciating heartache with an intact heart. I sang of wife squabbles as a perfectly single high school student.
To this day, Hank Wiliams is revered in country music. I will try to explain why.
It is hard to imagine now, but on the heels of the popularity in country music of people like Roy Acuff, Hank was the first sexy country singer. This is before Elvis, so you did not have to have much performance movement to attract attention. Hank evidently had his share of charisma. I invite you to check out a Roy Acuff video called “Glory Bound Train.” By viewing the first minute of it you can see that Hank Williams moved very differently than the others. He dominates the video, despite Roy Acuff leading the song.
Rare Hank Williams, Carter Family, Acuff Video – 1952 – Glory Bound Train – YouTube
Another reason for Hank Williams’ continued popularity is that he is respected as a great singer. Some undefinable aspect to his singing is just “right on.”
When he sang, people who have seen him live say it seemed there was no one else that he was singing to. This cost him a lot of fights with jealous boyfriends in those bars in Alabama on the “blood bucket circuit”. His band members are on record as saying that in the early days when a musician joined his band the first thing he did was take him to the store to buy a blackjack saying, “Boy, you’re going to need this if you play with me.”
Check out his “courting” of Anita Carter in this song.
Anita Carter & Hank Williams – I Can’t Help It (Live 1952) IN COLOUR! – YouTube
Most people aware of Hank Williams today likely view him as a songwriter. In his short career he left us songs that have been recorded by artists from his time to the current period, by Frankie Lane, Linda Ronstadt, Nora Jones, Jerry Lee Lewis, George Jones, The Mavericks, Charlie Pride, and a host of others. More than any other country artist before him, Hank Williams brought country music into the mainstream of pop music. Tony Bennett launched his career with Hank Williams’ Cold Cold Heart. At one time this Hank Williams’ song topped every song chart there was. Other artists took notice and searched his songs for other pop hits, and they found them. Just to list a few, You Win Again, Cold Cold Heart, Your Cheatin’ Heart, Jambalaya, Kaw-Liga, I Saw the Light, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, Hey Good Lookin’, I Can’t Help It, among a host of others. Hank wrote sad songs, blues songs, love songs, novelty songs, and he wrote at times with an underpinning rhythm of what was later known as rockabilly, such as with Move It On Over.
The lyrics in Hank Williams’ blues songs differ from the style in black blues. Black blues usually repeats the first line in each verse. Hank Williams’ blues songs rarely do this (I cannot think of one). This makes Hank Williams’ blues more interesting to me lyrically than black blues, if the lines are well written, and Hank’s always are.
Consider Long Gone Lonesome Blues.
Hank Williams – Long Gone Lonesome Blues – YouTube
Hank Williams’ blues can be humorous in a rich way. Hank is in despair, “..so lonesome I wanted to die”, then he jumps in the river to end it all and there is no water. Consequently, he is still alive, has the darn blues to contend with, then tells you why he has the blues, and, of course, it has to do with his woman leaving him. He doesn’t just tell you he has the blues, he MOANS the blues.
Oh well, I had to share my love for Hank Williams on this 100th birthday anniversary. Happy birthday, Hank. I hope to meet someday down the line, and I hope it is not too hot where you are.
Leave a Reply