Country Connections y James and Ellen Perry
As I sit here on my front porch in the late evening afterglow on a cool December day, I see a robin in my front yard.
Immediately my memory goes back to a beautiful soul-searching song by Hank Williams from 1949. This line was in that song: “Did you ever see a robin weep when leaves began to die, that means he’s lost the will to live.”
This tribute began on September 17, 1923, with a simple country family in Mount Olive, Alabama, as a son was born to Elonza and Lillie Williams. He was named Hiram Williams and a short 24 years later changed country and pop music forever. His common name was Hank Williams.
Now let’s take a trip through the short life, music and contributions made by the most gifted master of country music.
Hank’s father Elonza Williams was a soldier in the U.S. Army during WWI. Lon, as he was called, suffered from injuries during WWI, fighting in the trenches in Europe. Lillie Williams, Hank’s mother, had Lon committed to a VA hospital in Louisiana for years during Hank’s early life.
In 1930 Lillie Williams moved her family to Georgiana, Alabama, where she worked as a practical nurse at the Tippins Hospital. Lillie had her family attend the Mt. Olive West Baptist Church where three-year-old Hank would sit next to his mother while she played organ and sang.
Hank said later that he didn’t sing but hollered. As a youngster Hank shined shoes and sold peanuts on the streets to be able to pay a black singer called Tee-Tot for guitar lessons.
In 1937 Lillie again moved her family, this time to Montgomery, Alabama, where she operated a boarding house for young ladies. Hank quit high school during the 10th grade and began singing on Montgomery radio station WSFA AM and doing shows in Montgomery and central Alabama at beer joints, armories, schools and ballparks with his band the Drifting Cowboys.
Lillie drove Hank and the Drifting Cowboys to their venues in her station wagon and kept most of the money. This was in the late 1930s and early 1940s. It cost 15 to 25 cents to see these early Hank shows.
Hank tried to enlist in the army in October 1942 but was rejected for service because of his bad back, caused by spinal bifida from birth. Hank then decided to go to Mobile, Alabama, and help the war cause by working for the Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company, which had started building Merchant Marine and Naval vessels. While working in Mobile, Hank met Don Davis who also worked there.
Don Davis later went to work for Pee Wee King and the Golden West Cowboys touring and on the Grand Ole Opry. Don was 16 years old when he started as a steel guitar player touring with Pee Wee King.
I interviewed Don Davis twice on WCXZ radio at LMU. He told me that Audrey Shepard and Hank met at work as Audrey was separated from her husband and noticed that Hank was very talented; and while playing and singing in beer joints in Mobile that Hank was well liked by the workers that stopped by these joints after work to relax.
By the way, Hank and Don Davis were both being paid 66 cents per hour at the shipyard. Hank and Audrey worked side by side and moved in together when in Mobile with Audrey pushing Hank to move back to Montgomery and form a band and get another radio show and start touring in Alabama with Audrey as his manager.
During the 1930s and 1940s, having a radio show was more useful to the entertainers for advertising their upcoming show locations and dates than for the money that they received from the radio stations for their weekly or daily radio shows.
As a young boy Hank was enamored by the famous cowboy illustrator and author Will James. Hank liked the supposed easy carefree lifestyle of the cowboys written about by Will James. This is where Hank’s naming his band The Drifting Cowboys came from.
Upon Hank and Audrey returning to Montgomery, Audrey and Hank’s mother Lillie locked horns as each were take-charge, headstrong, controlling women. Their competition for control of Hank continued even after Hank became the superstar of country or hillbilly music, as it was called, until the late 1940s. Hank and his band did radio shows in Montgomery and Hank would pop in small radio stations on their way to their show dates and be put on the air, as he was becoming very popular in Alabama.
In 1946 Audrey finally convinced Hank to go to Nashville, Tennessee, and had an appointment set up with Fred Rose, who was a partner with Roy Acuff in the Acuff-Rose Music Publishing Company. Fred Rose interviewed Hank and, having already been told of Hank’s popularity and his ability to completely take over an audience, signed Hank to a contract as a songwriter for Acuff-Rose.
Fred Rose set up Hank’s first two recording sessions at WSM Studios, backed up by the Willis Brothers. The first for December 11, 1946, and the second on February 13, 1947.
Hank’s next session was at the Castle Studio in Nashville on April 21, 1947. Fred Rose convinced MGM Records to sign Hank to a recording contract and had Red Foley’s Band to back Hank on the session. Red Foley was known to have the best musicians in Nashville at the time. Hank recorded four songs at that session as that was the musician’s union rules at that time.
Hank’s first song, “Move It On Over,” skyrocketed to #4 on the hillbilly charts (later in 1949 renamed Country-Western.) This put Hank on his way to superstardom as a (at the time) hillbilly recording star.
This first MGM session by Hank opened the way for MGM to be successful in hillbilly music. Another well-known band leader and person responsible for the amazing success of western swing music was Bob Wills with his Texas Playboys who signed with MGM at almost the same time as Hank. These two entertainers made MGM successful in Nashville.
Audrey was right about Hank’s talent, but she craved to be a hillbilly singing star on her own—but desire can’t replace talent.
She harangued Hank continuously to press Fred Rose to let her record. Hank did her bidding and Fred Rose arranged recording with Hank and her recording solos, but Audrey had no voice or stage presence.
After Hank’s first MGM session on April 21, 1947, he was a very busy man. He started touring, joined the Louisiana Hayride at Shreveport, Louisiana, with the help of Fred Rose, and then later the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.
Between all these show dates, appearing Saturday nights on the Hayride, and later on the Saturday night Grand Ole Opry, 25 recording sessions from December 11, 1946, to his last session on September 23, 1952, Hank had to write songs to be recorded—and not just the ones that were recorded, but many that Fred Rose would not let be recorded because of many proposed reasons.
Like I said, Hank was a very, very busy man. He assumed the position as the first superstar of now Country-Western music when Lovesick Blues started climbing the newly-named country music charts in the spring of 1949.
Lovesick Blues went to #1 on the country music charts and stayed there for 16 weeks (four months). This song was recorded in 1928 by Georgia minstrel singer Emmett Miller. I have a copy of Miller’s 1928 recording and it is quite different from Hank’s re-written recording. This song recorded on December 22, 1948, by Hank probably brought Audrey Shepard Williams back into her marriage with Hank as the two had been separated for months and were about to divorce. Audrey saw Hank was on his way to heights that no other country music star had achieved.
Hank’s next career change started at his June 14, 1950, recording session, as it was his first with his new licks by Don Helms on steel, Jerry Rivers on fiddle, Sammy Pruitt on electric guitar and Ernie Newton on bass. These great musicians started the sound that as soon as they kick off you immediately knew that it was Hank Williams with the Drifting Cowboys.
Hank’s next trademark song was “Cold, Cold Heart.” This song started as Hank returned to Nashville from a tour, learned that Audrey was in the hospital with infection. Hank bought her presents, gathered up the two kids, Lycrecia from Audrey’s first marriage and Hank, Jr. and went to the hospital.
Upon entering her room Audrey started berating Hank and threw the gifts at him. Later he wrote “Cold, Cold Heart” and recorded it first on his recording session December 21, 1950, with the Drifting Cowboys and Chet Atkins playing electric guitar.
Hank’s “Cold, Cold Heart” went to #1 on the Country-Western charts. Tony Bennett recorded it and had a #1 on the pop charts. By this time Big Band, Pop Artist and other Country-Western singers were all trying to cover songs by Hank Williams.
In the summer and early fall of 1951 Hank and the Drifting Cowboys were entertaining on the Hadacol Train along with Hollywood and New York based stars of movies and the stage.
Hadacol, for you youngsters, was a patent medicine with 24% alcohol and vitamins added.
Grandmas, aunts, fogey uncles, teachers and preachers could buy Hadacol and take doses of it without being known as drinkers, but get the same results. The train would stop at large and small cities and the entertainers would entertain.
Milton Berle began to mock and make gestures behind the country acts. Hank’s bass player heard about the rude antics of Milton Berle and told Hank that if he came up on their set and started he would bust a xx0##!!! guitar over his head. Hank told him if he did that he would buy him a new guitar that day. Milton Berle got the message and did not show up on Hank’s set.
Hank and Audrey’s final divorce came on July 10, 1952. They had been separated since Hank came from the hospital after back surgery in Vanderbilt Hospital in late 1951. Hank started sliding both physically and mentally after their last separation. Hank was 6 ft. 1 in. in height and weighed 140 lbs. at his death.
His last recording session was on September 23, 1952, and of the four songs, three became #1 hits. This session ran from 1:30 to 3:40 p.m.—only two hours and 20 minutes.
Today that would take 3 months with probably no song that would reach #1.
See you in February with more on the life of Hank.