Few figures in country music can claim a legacy to match that of Hank Williams. His musical contribution and legendary life—and death—have consecrated Williams as country’s pre-eminent artist. The original role-model for the rock’n’roll myth, Williams lived fast and died young, singing of the overwhelming joy and inconsolable sorrow of his personal life. He sang with a voice limited in range but strong in expression, breaking into tremolo effects and yodels that perfectly embodied the emotions expressed in his songs.
Hiram Williams was born on September 17, 1923, in rural Georgiana, Alabama, suffering from a spinal defect that would torment him throughout his short life. His father was confined to a veterans’ hospital, leaving Hank’s mother, Lilly, with the impoverished family. She gave Hank a cheap guitar when he was seven, and local bluesman Rufe “Tee-tot” Payne taught him to play. Other early influences were the gospel music of local churches and the country music he heard on the radio. By his early 20s, he was playing regularly on the Alabama dance-hall circuit.
In December 1944, Hank married the feisty Audrey Sheppard. Their tumultuous marriage provided material for many of Williams’ songs, defining modern country music’s “can’t-live-with-’em-can’t-live-without-’em” vision of male-female relationships.
Williams moved to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1946 in pursuit of a recording contract. Audrey arranged a meeting with Fred Rose of the newly formed Acuff-Rose Publishing. Rose was taken with the young singer, getting Williams signed to MGM, and becoming his mentor and songwriting partner. Williams had a hit with “Move It on Over” in 1947, and joined the Louisiana Hayride radio show a year later. He then had a major hit with a revival of Emmet Miller’s minstrel number “Lovesick Blues.” When he performed the song at his debut at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry in June 1949, the crowd called him back for six encores, and Williams had become a star. Soon Williams was churning out the country hits that would become standards: “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “You’re Cheatin’ Heart,” “Hey, Good Lookin’,” “Cold, Cold Heart,” “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You),” “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive,” and many more. Pop crooners such as Tony BENNETT, Pat Boone, and Jo Stafford went on to score hits with Williams’ material.
As his fame increased, Williams’ personal life spiralled out of control. His mercurial personality and constant physical pain led to binges of alcohol and painkillers, and his erratic, often violent, behaviour became the stuff of legend around Nashville. He trashed hotel rooms and fell off stages, aggravating his back injury further and sending him in search of stronger relief. Then, in 1952, Williams suffered a series of personal and professional disasters. He was fired from the Opry, Audrey divorced him, and his backing band quit. His life became one long bender, barely slowed by a hasty wedding to Billie Jean Jones in October of the same year. On New Year’s Day in 1953, Hank lay on the back seat of a Cadillac, en route to a show in Ohio. When his driver checked on him in Oak Hill, West Virginia, he found the 29-year-old Williams dead, killed by a lethal combination of pills and booze. Legend has it that the lyrics for a new song were in his hand.
Like his life, Williams’s legend is a messy thing. His songs, however, are simply written country laments, wrought with humour and heartache. They still resonate with an undeniable power, offering a window into the soul of their troubled creator and inspiring countless musicians and songwriters in many genres. Nearly fifty years after his death, Williams’s work pervades American country music.
Greg Bower
SEE ALSO:
COUNTRY; GOSPEL; ROCK’N’ROLL; SINGER-SONGWRITERS.
Escott, Colin, et al. Hank Williams: The Biography (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1994).
Moanin’ The Blues; Live at the Grand Ole Opry, The Complete Hank Williams.