Hank Williams Caricature

Hank Williams Caricature, illustrated here in 1950, Nashville, age 26.

Williams was an American singer-songwriter and musician. Regarded as one of the most significant and influential American singers and songwriters of the 20th century, Williams recorded 35 singles (five released posthumously) that reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Country & Western Best Sellers chart, including 11 that ranked number one (three posthumously).

Williams was born in Butler County, Alabama and as a child, he was nicknamed “Harm” by his family and “Herky” or “Poots” by his friends.
He was born with spina bifida occulta, a birth defect, centered on the spinal column, which gave him lifelong back pain – a factor in his later abuse of alcohol and drugs.

In 1935, Williams met Rufus “Tee-Tot” Payne, a street performer. He taught Williams chords, chord progressions, bass turns, and the musical style of accompaniment that he would use in most of his future songwriting.

In 1938 he started his own band, which he dubbed the Drifting Cowboys and began playing around Georgia and Florida in honky-tonks.

On December 15, 1944, Williams married Audrey Sheppard. It was her second marriage and his first. Their son, Randall Hank Williams, who would achieve fame in his own right as Hank Williams Jr., was born on May 26, 1949.

Williams signed with MGM Records in 1947 and released “Move It on Over”; considered an early example of rock and roll music, the song became a massive country hit.

After a few more moderate hits, in 1949 he released his version of the 1922 Cliff Friend and Irving Mills song “Lovesick Blues”, made popular by Rex Griffin. Williams’ version became a huge country hit; the song stayed at number one on the Billboard charts for four consecutive months, crossing over to mainstream audiences and gaining Williams a place in the Grand Ole Opry. On June 11, 1949, Williams made his debut at the Grand Ole Opry, where he became the first performer to receive six encores.

Years of back pain, alcoholism and prescription drug abuse severely compromised his health. In 1952 he divorced Sheppard and was dismissed by the Grand Ole Opry because of his unreliability and alcohol abuse.

On New Year’s Day 1953, he died suddenly while riding in a car to a concert in Canton, Ohio, at the age of 29. The autopsy found alcohol and morphine in his system along with hemorrhages in the heart and neck and pronounced the cause of death as “insufficiency of the right ventricle of the heart”.

Greatest hits: “Move It On Over”, “Lovesick Blues”, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”, “Cold Cold Heart”, “Hey Good Lookin'”, “Crazy Heart”, “Ramblin’ Man”, “Honky Tonk Blues”, “I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive”, “Lost Highway”, “I Can’t Help It”, “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “I Saw The Light”, to name a few.

Considered the “King Of Country Music”, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1961.