Hank Williams

• Genre: Honky-Tonk
• Hometown: Mount Olive
• Hank Williams Website

About

Hank Williams was perhaps the most important country & western performer of his time, and the most influential country artist in the development of rock & roll. His 36 Top 10 C&W hits - including the Number Ones "Lovesick Blues," "Why Don't You Love Me," "Long Gone Lonesome Blues," "Moanin' the Blues," "Cold, Cold Heart," "Hey, Good Lookin'," "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)," and "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive" — and magnetic stage presence were instrumental in country music's rise in popularity during his lifetime. ("Kaw-Liga," "Your Cheatin' Heart," and "Take These Chains From My Heart" were posthumous Number One C&W hits in 1953.) But it is as a songwriter that Williams' influence most profoundly changed country music and touched virtually every popular style emanating from it, especially rock & roll. In compositions such as "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," for example, Williams expressed intense, personal emotions with country's traditional plainspoken directness, a then revolutionary approach that through the works of George Jones, Willie Nelson, and countless other country artists has come to define the genre. As a singer, Williams mastered a range of styles, from gospel to the pre-rockabilly playfulness of "Hey, Good Lookin'."

Hiram "Hank" Williams was born in a two-room sharecropper's shack in southeastern Alabama. His father was shell-shocked from World War I and committed himself to a veterans' hospital when Hank was seven, leaving Williams' mother to support him and his sister. She played organ in the local Baptist church, where Hank sang in the choir, and she bought him a guitar for $3.50. When he was 11, Williams moved in with relatives in a railroad camp and began frequenting the Saturday-night dances, where he learned about country music and moonshine. The following year, he moved with his family to the larger town of Greenville and began learning blues songs from a black street singer named Rufe "Tee-Tot" Payne. Williams played on streetcorners with Tee-Tot, sold peanuts, and shined shoes.

In 1937 the family moved to Montgomery, Alabama. Hank won an amateur contest by performing his "W.P.A. Blues" and, dubbed the Singing Kid, he secured a twice-weekly radio show on local station WSFA. Soon after, he formed the Drifting Cowboys and began playing the Alabama roadhouse circuit, with his mother as booking agent and driver.

By December 1944, Williams had played nearly every roadhouse in Alabama and had married Audrey Mae Sheppard. Two years later, he signed a songwriting contract with Nashville publishers Acuff-Rose, and he recorded in Nashville on the small Sterling label. Soon after, he got a recording contract with newly formed MGM and began his successful collaboration with producer/arranger Fred Rose. That summer (1948), Williams joined the popular KWKH country music radio program Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport. His records started making the C&W charts, and he finally hit big with "Lovesick Blues," which became the Number One country record of 1949.

On June 11, 1949, Williams played at the Grand Ole Opry for the first time and received an unprecedented six encores. His fame grew along with his touring schedule of one-nighters across the country. Besides recording his bluesy C&W records, he also recorded gospel-influenced songs under the name Luke the Drifter. By 1952 his drinking had gotten out of hand, his health had deteriorated, and his marriage ended in divorce. Williams' chronic back problems had resulted in his dependence on painkillers, and in August he was fired from the Grand Ole Opry because of frequent no-shows. Four months later, at the age of 29, he died of a heart attack in the back of his Cadillac en route to a show in Canton, Ohio. (Many years later reports were issued that he actually died in a Knoxville, Tennessee, hotel room after excessive alcohol and drug consumption.)

After his death, Williams' records sold more than ever, and have continued to do so in the nearly 50 years since. His oft-covered catalogue has produced hits for artists ranging from Fats Domino and John Fogerty's Blue Ridge Rangers to Ray Charles and B.J. Thomas and has been the inspiration for a whole new generation of alt-country artists. In the late '90s Mercury Records began reissuing Williams' music on lavish CD sets. The 1998 box set The Complete Hank Williams won two Grammys.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)