New Years Day 2023 rung in the 70th anniversary of the death of one of the most prolific, enigmatic and tragic American music icons.
January 1st was a “cold, cold” start to 1953 for music lovers.
It gets mighty chilly up around Cleveland in the dead of winter and that’s where the inimitable Hank Williams, Sr. was headed in a chauffeur-driven Cadillac on New Year’s Eve, 1952.
Williams was en route to Ohio to play the historic Palace Theatre in Canton, when he slipped out of this life and into the place of legends.
“He was scheduled to fly out of Knoxville, TN, on New Year’s Eve, but the weather was so bad he had to hire a chauffeur to drive him to Ohio in his new Cadillac. Before they left for Ohio, Williams was injected with two shots of vitamin B-12 and morphine by a doctor. Williams got into the backseat of the Cadillac with a bottle of whiskey, and the teenage chauffeur headed out for Canton. When the driver was stopped for speeding, the policeman noticed that Hank looked like a dead man. Williams was taken to a West Virginian hospital and he was officially declared dead at 7:00 a.m. on January 1, 1953…” —Allmusic.com
Hank Williams died in a manner befitting his tragic life. Born in 1923, he was just 29 years old on that fateful New Year’s Day, his last.
But in his oh-too-short lifetime, Hank was a shooting star and one of the most influential artists in all of American history.
He has been called “the father of country music,” and indeed Hank Williams played a major role in defining modern country music.
But Hank’s place on the landscape of American popular music goes far beyond country. Born into poverty in Alabama and raised mostly father-less during the Great Depression, Williams suffered a debilitating birth defect to boot.
“Hiram Williams (his name was misspelled ‘Hiriam’ on his birth certificate) came from a rural background. His parents were probably strawberry farmers when he was born, although his father, Lon, later worked for logging companies around Georgiana in south Alabama. Hank was born with a spinal deformity, spina bifida occulta, that would later have a deleterious impact upon his life. Lon entered a Veterans Administration hospital in 1930 when Hank was six, and Hank rarely saw him until the early 1940s. Hank’s mother, Lillie, moved the family to Greenville, and then to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1937. Hank’s musical career was already underway by the mid-1930s, and he formed the first of his Drifting Cowboys bands around 1938.” —Country Music Hall of Fame
Given this back-drop of physical depravity that defined Hank’s youth, it is no wonder that essentially his music was born of the blues.
Hank was living with his mother in Greenville (AL) when he got his first guitar. He was just eight years old.
“Local influences shaped Hank’s music more profoundly than the big stars of the day. The gospel songs of both the black and white communities taught him that music, whether sacred or secular, must have a spiritual component. He learned traditional folk ballads and early country songs from neighbors and friends, and blues from a local African-American street musician, Rufus Payne (also known as Tee Tot). Payne not only taught Hank how to play the guitar, but helped him overcome his innate shyness. The blues feel that suffuses much of Hank Williams’ work is almost certainly Tee Tot’s legacy.” —PBS.org
Hank Williams synthesized the music of his time like no other American composer. Incorporating the hillbilly music of the Appalachians, the gospel and blues emanating from the deep south, Williams was a populist.
Hank’s influence can be heard and felt throughout all genres of popular music: In Tony Bennett (who first crossed-over Hank’s music to pop in 1951 with his cover of “Cold, Cold, Heart”; in the gospel and R&B-fused soul of Ray Charles who recorded “Hey, Good Lookin’, “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” and several other Williams-penned tunes on two of the biggest genre-busting records of all time, Modern Sounds In Country and Western Music (Vol. 1 and 2); in American classic blues/rockers like George Thorogood, who helped define his career in 1977 with a remake of Hank’s first hit record, “Move It On Over”; and in the sultry, sophisticated Adult Contemporary sounds of the Grammy-winning Nora Jones who demonstrated the uncanny versatility of Hank Williams’ songs with her own elegant spin of “Cold, Cold, Heart” released on her 2002 multi-platinum Come Away with Me album.
“‘Move It On Over,’ released in 1947, became Hank’s first single for MGM. It was an immediate hit, climbing into the country Top Five. By the summer of 1948, he had joined the Louisiana Hayride, appearing both on its tours and radio programs. ‘Honky Tonkin” was released in 1948, followed by ‘I’m a Long Gone Daddy.” While neither song was as successful as ‘Move It On Over,’ they were popular, with the latter peaking in the Top Ten. Early in 1949, he recorded ‘Lovesick Blues,’ a Tin Pan Alley song initially recorded by Emmett Miller and made popular by Rex Griffin. The single became a huge hit upon its release in the spring of 1949, staying at number one for 16 weeks and crossing over into the pop Top 25. Williams sang the song at the Grand Ole Opry, where he performed an unprecedented six encores. He had become a star.” —Allmusic.com
If the music of Hank Williams was eclectic, which it was, his personality was down-right split. As Hank Williams he was a hard-drinking, womanizing, tough-living son-of-a-gun. As his gospel-singing alter ego, “Luke the Drifter,” he preached righteousness.
“The fourteen ‘Luke the Drifter’ recordings were narrations and talking blues. Luke the Drifter walked with Hank Williams and talked through him. If Hank Williams could be headstrong and willful, a backslider and a reprobate, then Luke the Drifter was compassionate and moralistic, capable of dispensing all the sage advice that Hank Williams ignored. Luke the Drifter had seen it all, yet could still be moved to tears by a chance encounter on his travels. Although little known in comparison with the hits, the ‘Luke the Drifter’ narrations were the closest Hank Williams came to bearing his soul.” —PBS.org
“Though his professional career was soaring, Hank’s personal life was beginning to spin out of control. Before he became a star, he had a mild drinking problem, but it had been more or less controlled during his first few years of fame. However, as he began to earn large amounts of money and spend long times away from home, he began to drink frequently. Furthermore, Hank’s marriage to [first wife] Audrey [Mae Sheppard] was deteriorating. Not only were they fighting, resulting in occasional separations, but Audrey was trying to create her own recording career without any success. In the fall of 1951, Hank was on a hunting trip on his Tennessee farm when he tripped and fell, re-activating a dormant back injury. Williams began taking morphine and other pain killers for his back and quickly became addicted.” —Allmusic.com
The end came quickly for Hank Williams, and for most of his friends, not unexpectedly. His bandmates in the Drifting Cowboys were finding other work and his long-time champion, producer and publisher, Fred Rose, had thrown in the towel. While the radio hits kept mounting, he had been fired from the Grand Ole Opry and his appearances were fewer and less lucrative. He was on a road to ruin.
And so it was that somewhere near Oak Hill, West Virginia, sometime between midnight and daybreak on New Year’s Day, 1953, Hank Williams gave up the ghost he surely was chasing…and became one himself.
“On a record released after his death, Williams sang of being pursued by the ‘Pale Horse and His Rider.’ On a home recording made shortly before his death, he directly addressed ‘The Angel of Death.’ It’s impossible to escape the feeling that he lived with the spirits every day, and drank in part to escape them.” —PBS.org
Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, the last single released during Hank’s lifetime was “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive.”
I’m not gonna worry, wrinkles in my brow
Hank Williams Sr.
cause nothin’s ever gonna be alright no how
No matter how I struggle and strive
I’ll never get out of this world alive