"I don’t write ‘em. I just hang onto the pen and God sends ‘em
through.”
– Hank
Williams
Hiram “Hank” Williams
ranks among the most powerfully iconic figures in American music. As
Williams became one of America's first country music stars, he set
the bar for contemporary country songcraft. No one has eclipsed his
great influence in the genre, and it's likely no one ever will.
Williams composed
thirty-one of the singles he released during his six-year career; as
well as posthumous work including: singles, compilation albums, and
previously unreleased material. During his lifetime, he placed thirty
songs on Billboard's Top C&W Records, while he had seven number
one hits. Almost 100 of his songs came into national prominence.
Of Williams' many songs,
these are just ten of the more memorable works:
"I'm So Lonesome I
Could Cry"
"I Saw the Light"
"Your Cheatin'
Heart"
"Ramblin' Man"
"Moanin' the Blues"
"Kaw-Liga"
"Move It On Over"
"Cold, Cold Heart"
“I Can't Help It (If
I'm Still in Love With You)”
“Lovesick Blues”
The incredible simplicity
and stark emotional impact of Hank's music has been long noted as the
alchemy of a musical genius. Andrew Romano, senior writer for
Newsweek and The Daily Beast wrote ...
“His (William's) work
was a perfect storm of sorts. Individually, every element of a
Williams record – his lyrics, his music, his voice – was
memorable. But it's the way those parts combined into a seemingly
inevitable whole – the way they reflected and amplified each other
– that made him great, rather than merely good.
“Hank's music—a
blend of the blues he learned from a local busker and the Appalachian
hill songs he heard at home—served as a kind of musical
onomatopoeia for heartbreak; his lyrics put that feeling into words.
They locked together like puzzle pieces: note by note, syllable by
syllable.
And then there was
Williams's voice: a seismic instrument that registered every
shockwave of sadness or rage as it reverberated outward from
somewhere inside him. He wasn't just singing about heartbreak; he
actually sounded heartbroken. That's why "I'm So Lonesome
I Could Cry" seems indivisible: like all the best pop records,
it convinces the listener that only this voice could sing
those words over that melody. It couldn't exist in any other
form.”
(Andrew
Romano. “The Ghostwriter.” GQ. October 3, 2011.)
With an $8 guitar and a
melancholy voice, Williams, a poor Alabama country boy, set out on
his meteoric rise to fame and fortune. Reflecting his own troubled
experiences, most his songs portrayed the love and loss of sad and
lonesome souls. Although he left an incredible body of songs, it is
notable that upon departing his brief life, he left no in-depth
interviews and just a few letters. According to songwriter Danny
Dill, Hank held a fascination for the dark side of life.
“Did
you ever see a robin weep
When leaves began to die?
Like me,
he's lost the will to live
I'm so lonesome I could cry”
“I'm So
Lonesome I Could Cry” Hank Williams
In 1952 alone, despite
physical deterioration, he recorded 89 songs. In the same year, his
public drunkenness led the Grand Ole Opry to fire him. Williams had
missed an appearance two days earlier, and it wasn’t the first
time. A heavy drinker caught up in a barely-understood addiction to
painkillers, the singer’s behavior had becoming increasingly
erratic – something especially troubling to the music
establishment.
“I
can settle down and be doin' just fine
Til' I hear an old train
rollin' down the line
Then I hurry straight home and pack
And
if I didn't go, I believe I'd blow my stack”
“Ramblin'
Man” Hank Williams
The Opry has always said
they never intended Williams’ removal to be permanent. The Mother
Church of Country Music claimed it was meant as a wake-up call for
the troubled artist. A psychiatrist once described Hank "as the
most lonesome, the saddest, most tortured and frustrated of
individuals."
Hank’s life was a series
of contradictions. Rush Evans writes in Goldmine …
“He was an alcoholic
who could undergo long periods of sobriety. He sang songs of the wild
life and songs of faith. He was a reckless playboy and a devoted
family man. He was an upbeat guy with mean old miseries in his soul.
He was an uneducated hillbilly and a creative genius. And most of
all, he was a man with a carefree attitude about life who also had a
remarkable ability to articulate any human feeling with depth and
despair at the Shakespearean level.”
“When
you are sad and lonely and have no place to go
Call me up, sweet
baby, and bring along some dough
And we'll go Honky Tonkin', Honky
Tonkin'
Honky Tonkin', Honey Baby
We'll go Honky Tonkin' 'round
this town.”
"Honky
Tonkin'” Hank Williams
Williams was born with a
mild undiagnosed case of spina bifida occulta, a disorder of
the spinal column, which gave him lifelong pain – a factor in his
later abuse of alcohol and other drugs. To make matters worse, in
1951 Williams fell during a hunting trip in Tennessee, reactivating
his old back pains and causing him to be dependent on alcohol and
prescription drugs.
By the end of 1952,
Williams had started to suffer heart problems. He met Horace Raphol
"Toby" Marshall in Oklahoma City, who claimed to be a
doctor. Marshall had been previously convicted for forgery, and had
been paroled and released from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in
1951. Among other fake titles he claimed to be a Doctor of Science.
He purchased the DSC title for $35 from the "Chicago School of
Applied Science.” Under the name of Dr. C. W. Lemon he prescribed
Williams with amphetamines, Seconal, chloral hydrate, and morphine.
“I
was just a lad, nearly twenty two
Neither good nor bad, just a kid
like you
And now I'm lost, too late to pray
Lord I paid a cost
on the lost highway”
“Lost
Highway” Hank Williams
One of Hank’s band
members, Tommy Hill, described the daily routine as they toured the
country playing one-nighters:
“Me and a bunch of
the pickers talked about how [Hank’s manager] Clyde Perdue and Toby
Marshall were just in it for what they could get out of Hank cause he
was making pretty fair money. But Hank never saw any of it. You see,
if Hank took one shot of whiskey, he was drunk, so they’d get a
six-pack and allot him so many beers after he woke up until the time
of the show and that kept Hank happy. Then the doctor would give him
a shot so he’d lose all his beer, throw it all up, then they’d
put black coffee down him, let him do the show, then give him a
six-pack and put him to bed. Same thing every day. I said, ‘They’re
killing him.’ The booker and the doctor.”
(Robert
A. Waters. “Last Ride down the Lost Highway.” November 12, 2011.)
The story of Williams'
tragic death at age 29 has been the subject of a multitude of books,
songs, and personal accounts. Lore began growing around the event
from day one. H.B. Teeter, newspaperman for the Nashville Tennessean,
published an article one day after Williams' death claiming Williams
had told him months before in an interview – “I will never live
long enough for you to write a story about me.”
“If
it was rainin' gold I wouldn't stand a chance
I wouldn't have a
pocket in my patched up pants
No matter how I struggle and
strive
I'll never get out of this world alive”
"I'll
Never Get Out Of This World Alive" Hank Williams
The Last Journey of
Hank Williams
Note: Much of the evidence
for the report of Hank Williams' last days here are excerpted and
paraphrased from Hank: The Short Life and Long Country Road of
Hank Williams (2017) by Mark Ribowsky.
Ironically Williams'
single, “I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive,” was scaling the
top-ten at the time of his demise. On Monday, December 29, 1952, Hank
is reported to have made a rare and unexpected visit to church, St.
Jude’s Hospital chapel, to pray with the nuns. “Ol’ Hank needs
to straighten up some things with the Man,” his wife Billie Jean
said he told her. It was his last full day in Montgomery.
“I
wandered so aimless life filled with sin
I wouldn't let my dear
savior in
Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night
Praise
the Lord I saw the light”
"I
Saw The Light" Hank Williams
Williams was booked to
play two venues – one in Charleston, West Virginia, and one in
Canton, Ohio. Before he left, Williams came into his cousin Marie
McNeil’s room and handed her forty dollars, which he wanted used to
help pay the doctor who would deliver Bobbie Jett’s baby. As he
left the room, Marie said, Hank told her, “Ol’ Hank’s not gonna
be with you another Christmas. I’m closer to the Lord than I’ve
ever been in my life.”
Note – Bobbie Jett
had a brief relationship with Hank Williams between his two
marriages. Their baby, Antha Belle Jett (Jett Williams) was born on
January 6, 1953, in Montgomery, Alabama, five days after her father's
death on January 1.
Jett was adopted by
Hank's mother Lillie Stone. But when Stone died herself just two
years later, Jett was put into foster care. After a lengthy court
battle in the 1980s, she was ruled to be one of her father's legal
heirs and due to half of the family fortune. In 1990, Jett told her
story in the memoir Ain't Nothin' as Sweet as My Baby.
The next morning, December
30, Hank's travel plans still in limbo, he chartered a flight to
Charleston for early afternoon. But because of the horrendous weather
– a snow-storm had blanketed Montgomery, one of the few to ever hit
the city – he had hired a driver days before. Because of his
reputation for missing shows he couldn’t afford more bad publicity.
Williams hired 17-year-old
Charles Carr, son of Dan Carr, owner of Lee Street Taxi, to drive him
on the four-day, two show, round trip. Although Billie Jean expressed
her desire to go with him, Hank left alone. According to Billie Jean,
Hank had spent a restless night in bed with excruciating back pain.
She feared something more was wrong.
Around 11:30 a.m. Hank and
Carr loaded up his baby blue ’52 Cadillac convertible. He had Carr
buzz the airport to check on a plane before they left, but all
flights were canceled well into the day. Hank settled in, his back
already hurting, for what would be hours on the road.
“Oh,
the blues come around
Oh the blues come around
Lawd, the blues
come around
Ev'ry evenin' when the sun goes down”
“The
Blues Come Around” Hank Williams
Before they left, Williams
also had the driver stop by a doctor, identified in one account only
as a man named “Black,” who shot him up with morphine. After
buying some sandwiches, coffee, and a six pack of Falstaff beer at
the Hollywood Drive-in Diner, Hank headed north on Highway 31.
“I'll
gas up my hot rod stoker we'll get hotter than a poker
You'll be
broke but I'll be broker tonight we're settin' the woods on
fire
We'll sit close to one another up one street and down the
other
We'll have us a time oh brother settin' the woods on
fire
We'll put aside a little time to fix a flat or two
My
tires and tubes are doin' fine but the air is showin' through
You
clap hands and I'll start bowin' we'll do all the laws
allowin'
Tomorrow I'll be right back plowin' settin' the woods on
fire”
“Settin'
the Woods on Fire” Hank Williams
The itinerary covered
nearly a thousand miles, from Montgomery to Charleston to Canton.
Because Hank had gotten out of Montgomery late, he decided to stay
the night in Birmingham, where they got a decent night's sleep at the
Redmont Hotel. They were off early the next morning, New Year's Eve
day, and they made a stop in Fort Payne, where Hank bought a bottle
of bourbon. The duo made it to Chattanooga by lunchtime and ate in a
diner.
By 1:00 p.m. they were in
Knoxville, still three hundred miles from Charleston. In Knoxville,
Williams found his way to St. Mary’s Hospital, where, in mysterious
circumstances Carr never explained, he was able to have a doctor give
him another morphine shot.
By then, as Carr learned
when he phoned Lillie, Hank's mother, the two Charleston shows had
been canceled due to the storm. Meanwhile, stuck back in Knoxville,
Carr and a dog-tired Hank checked into the Andrew Johnson Hotel.
Hank, who had drained the bourbon, could barely stand, and two
porters all but carried him to his room.
“Well
I stopped into every place in town
This city life has really got
me down
I got the honky tonk blues,
Yeah the honky tonk
blues
Well Lord I got em,
got the ho-on-ky tonk blues.”
“Honky
Tonk Blues” Hank Willliams
At the hotel, Hank was
laid out on his bed, but was kept awake by nagging hiccups that
seemed to approach convulsions. Carr notified the front desk to
summon a doctor. Minutes later, Dr. Paul Cardwell rushed to the hotel
and, possibly having conferred by phone with Marshall, injected Williams with two more morphine shots along with vitamin B-12.
Williams dozed off fully
clothed, but about 10:30 p.m., Carr got a call from the concert
promoter telling him they had to leave right away and drive through
the night to make the Canton show.
The show’s promoter,
A.V. “Bam” Bamford, was particularly peeved, knowing he’d be
refunding two sellout houses of 4,000 people if Hank didn't show. Bam
instructed all of them to get going to Canton for the next night’s
shows. One other interested party had made it to Charleston as well –
Toby Marshall, who called Lillie for his marching orders.
Note: Reportedly at the
request of Hank Williams’ mother, Jessie Lillybelle Skipper
Williams, Toby Marshall had flown to Charleston to look after Hank
and to accompany him back to Montgomery following the Canton show.
Marshall had been supplying Williams with the powerful sedative
chloral hydrate, and appeared to have gained the trust of both Hank
and his mother.
(John
Lilly. “Hank Williams’ Lost Charleston Show.” Native Ground.)
"There was some kind
of penalty clause in his contract . . . so we had to be there for the
New Year's Day concert or else, " Charles Carr remembered.
"When we left the
room, they sent a wheelchair, " Carr said. "They rolled him
(Williams) down to the car and Hank got in on his own. I clearly
remember that."
(Jim
Tharpe. “At 17, Charles Carr was the only witness when a legend
died, and myths were born.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
December 30, 2002.)
The roads were bad due to
the weather and the traffic was slow. Carr got a ticket about an hour
later in Blaine, Tennessee, when he almost ran into a patrolman while
trying to pass another car. He paid a fine and got back behind the
wheel with Williams asleep in the back. It was after midnight by this
time – already New Year's Day – and Carr had been behind the
wheel since early that morning.
“Like
a bird that's lost its mate in flight
I'm alone and oh, so blue
tonight
Like a piece of driftwood on the sea
May you never be
alone like me”
"May
You Never Be Alone" Hank Williams
The tired teenager stopped
in a small town in the dead of night – maybe Bristol or Bluefield
as Carr remembers – to gas up and get a bite to eat. He
specifically remembers a service station on one side of the highway
and a diner and a cab stand on the other.
"I remember Hank got
out to stretch his legs and I asked him if he wanted a sandwich or
something, " Carr said. "And he said, 'No, I just want to
get some sleep.'
"I don't know if
that's the last thing he said. But it's the last thing I remember him
telling me."
At the cab stand, Carr
picked up a relief driver who helped him drive for a few hours before
getting out somewhere in rural West Virginia.
Carr drove on, but became
increasingly concerned about the eerie silence in the back seat. He
pulled off the road to check on Williams, who was lying with his head
toward the passenger seat and had his left hand across his chest.
“Won't
you redeem; your poor wicked soul
You can't pay your way; with
Silver and Gold
If you're not saved; you'll be lost in the
night
When the Pale Horse and his rider goes by?”
“The
Pale Horse and His Rider” Hank Williams
From this point on,
mysteries abound that have never been solved, mysteries with plenty
of clues but a lot of doubt.
Carr would later say Williams had spent time writing songs and chugging some beer, and noted that
the last song they sang was Red Foley’s “Midnight,” a song that
may have matched the mood he was in as he sang for the last time:
“Midnight,
oh what a lonely time to weep, I ought to know
Midnight, I should
have been fast asleep hours ago …”
"He had his blue
overcoat on and had a blanket over him that had fallen off, "
Carr said. "I reached back to put the blanket back over him and
I felt a little unnatural resistance from his arm."
Panicking, Carr rushed
into the restaurant it’s unknown whether Surface and came back out
with an older man who took a look at Hank Williams and summed up the
situation with classic understatement.
“I think you got a
problem,” he said.
Police reports would
indicate that Carr, knowing they had a famous corpse in the back and
needing to get it to a hospital, asked for directions to one at
Burdette’s Pure Oil gas station. Carr asked the owner, Peter
Burdette, to call the local police station and tell them a dead man
had been driven into his place. Within minutes, a police car arrived,
and Officer Orris Stamey confirmed Hank was dead.
The official cause of
death, which was declared at Oak Hill Hospital, has also been
reported several ways, both accurate, with the death certificate
saying that the cause of death was “acute rt. ventricular dilation”
and a later coroner’s jury declaring that he “died of a severe
heart condition and hemorrhage.”
Because of the uncertainty
about where Hank died and the fact that the West Virginia coroner
ruled his death a heart attack, charges against Toby Marshall were
never filed.
Defending his position,
Marshall claimed that Williams possibly committed suicide. Marshall
stated that Williams told him that he had decided to "destroy
the Hank Williams that was making the money they were getting".
He attributed the decision to Williams' declining career:
"Most of his
bookings were of the honky-tonk beer joint variety that he simply
hated. If he came to this conclusion (of suicide), he still had
enough prestige left as a star to make a first-class production of it
… whereas, six months from now, unless he pulled himself back up
into some high-class bookings, he might have been playing for nickels
and dimes on skid row."
A scrap of paper found on
the floor of the car that carried Hank Williams to his death on New
Year's Day, 1953, is reported to have read …
“We
met we lived
And dear we loved
Then came that fatal day
The
love that
Felt so dear fades far
Away
Tonight we both
Are
all alone and here’s
All that I can say
I love you still
and
Always will
But that’s the price
We have to pay”
Fifty-seven years after
his death, Hank Williams received a special Pulitzer Prize citation
for lifetime achievement in music. The Pulitzer board praised him as
“a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant
simplicity.” Of his own life, Hank once told a reporter that the
“people who has been raised something like the way the hillbilly
has, knows what he is singing about and appreciates it.”
Whether you call him
“Hillbilly Shakespeare” or “Luke the Drifter,” Hank Williams
left an incredible body of brutally honest songs about his life in
the language of the common man – he brought country music into the
modern era, and his influence spilled over into the folk and rock
arenas as well.
