week of 1/8/03
 
 
 

Remembering the legacy of Hank Williams
By Bruce Steinbicker

New Year’s Day 2003 is a time for this retiree and grandfather to think back a half century to the dawning of 1953 when a teenage boy cried upon hearing that Hank Williams had died. I predicted that, while the great country singer and composer was dead, his music would live forever. A half century has proven me a prophet. His work, arguably the most significant body of American music ever written, has stood the test of time.

It wasn’t popular for a teenager in Pennsylvania to admit liking this hillbilly music back then. I took quite a ribbing from kids who told me Hank died because he was a drunk and drug addict. I insisted that he died of a heart attack. The published works on his life, including the recent Hank Williams ... Snapshots From The Lost Highway by Colin Escott and Kira Florita (Da Capo Press, 2001), pull no punches on the troubled life this man led. It makes one wonder how Hank could possibly have written his beautiful songs while living 29 years in his personal hell.

His domineering mother and first wife are easy to heartily dislike. Yet it is unlikely that the unambitious Hank would have gotten beyond being a street singer in Montgomery, AL, without their constant prodding. One of the great snapshots in the book shows them sitting on Hank’s bed boo-hooing after he died. Bitter fighting between these women had broken out soon after the wedding and continued until his death. Colin Escott details this in his excellent Hank Williams, The Biography (Little, Brown, 1994).

Hank Williams’ brief life in the spotlight was timed just right. The period just after World War II was a boom time for the introduction of radios and phonographs into many homes. Electricity came to thousands of homes in the rural south. Nashville was just getting established as a music publishing and recording center and the Grand Ole Opry was growing from a regional show to national status with a slot on the NBC radio network. Had he come along a decade earlier, the climate for radio and record exposure would not have been favorable. Had he arrived a decade later, Hank would have found the rock’n’roll explosion launched by Elvis Presley would have no room for someone with his haunting, lonesome, nasal voice.

Hank didn’t realize he was among the pioneers of rock’n roll. His first charted hit in 1947, “Move It On Over,” had the beat that would come roaring out of Memphis seven years later. An amazing 39 of the 66 singles he recorded made the charts reflecting sales and airplay. It is even more amazing when you consider that in Hank’s lifetime there were only 15 slots available on the charts, not the 100 of today. He wrote 28 of these 39 hits. Ten of his records were double hits with both sides appearing on the charts.

To truly appreciate this man’s work, you must listen to the obscure ballads that didn’t make the charts.This poorly educated man could find just the right simple phrase to create a beautiful song. Those who are serious about following his career should purchase “The Complete Hank Williams.” This 10-CD set contains 225 tracks that include all of the sessions recordings and numerous demos and live performances. There is an excellent book included which features a 17,500 word essay by Colin Escott and a detailed discography.

The official date and place of death is Jan. 1, 1953, in Oak Hill, W.V. There is evidence to support the argument that Hank died in another year in another state. Some believe he died late on Dec. 31, 1952, in or near Knoxville, and that his death was not discovered until his driver reached West Virginia. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Hank Williams’ music lives on a half century later.

Something else that matters is that Hank Williams, like Bill Monroe and Elvis Presley, was strongly influenced by the black music of the rural south. Blacks living in rigidly segregated Alabama knew this. A large number of blacks mourned Hank at his funeral at a time when they usually avoided public appearances with whites in Alabama.

Daniel Cooper, in another essay included with the 10-CD box, said that “at some level, one can hear Hank’s long-gone-lonesome blues as sounding the penultimate death-knell of southern romanticism, his poor boy’s vision of Armageddon as a worried man’s repudiation of the past.”

As a teenaged admirer, I simply loved the beauty of Hank’s music. It never occurred to me then that there was a connection between his music and the marching feet of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and his followers who would fill the streets of Montgomery less than two years after Hank’s death. Because of this connection, Hank not only left us music to enjoy, he left us a message to help us overcome the social ills of his native region.

(Bruce Steinbicker lives in Western North Carolina and can be reached at bsteinbicker@yahoo.com)