17. September 2013
The Day of Hank Williams Sr.
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| Hank Williams |
If you had to take a guess, what do you think Uncle Tupelo, Tim Hardin, The The, The Mekons, Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond, Wayne Hancock, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Wilco, Willie Nelson, Eddie Cochran, Cowboy Junkies, Chuck Berry & Elvis have in common?
They all have had their music, in part, influenced by the original alternative music star, Hiram King Williams.
Today The GTC would like to celebrate what would have been the 90th birthday for one
Hank Williams was born on this day in Mount Olive, Alabama in 1923. By the time he was 25 years old he was a music star the likes no one had seen before. The songs he wrote in his short career have been the works that have inspired thousands of performers in every genre of music to this day.
I must be a geek man, because I truly think everything Hank recorded was a grand statement in music. But if I had to pick three songs I’d go with “Jambalaya (On The Bayou)”, “Move It On Over” and, my down-right favorite of all “Lonesome Whistle” (Written by Stonewall Jackson).
Hank was scheduled to play a concert in Canton, OH, on January 1, 1953. He was scheduled to fly out of Knoxville, TN, on New Year’s Eve, but the weather was so bad that 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 (allegedly 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 Virginia hospital and he was officially declared dead at 7:00 a.m. on January 1, 1953. He had died in the back of the Cadillac, on his way to a concert. Ironically, the last single released in his lifetime was “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive.” (From hir Biography at CMT.com)
If you’d like to learn everything there is to know about Hank Williams Sr., click here.
Now, lets all hear something from this phenomenal artist…
“I was a pretty good imitator of Roy Acuff, but then I found out they already had a Roy Acuff, so I started singin’ like myself” – Hank Williams Sr.
“You got to have smelt a lot of mule manure before you can sing like a hillbilly.” – Hank Williams Sr.
“If a song can’t be written in 20 minutes, it ain’t worth writing.” – Hank Williams Sr.
“I don’t know what you mean by country music. I just make music the way I know how.” – Hank Williams Sr.
Also Born Today: Jim Hodder – Steely Dan (1947-1990) & Fee Waybill – The Tubes (1950)