by Colin Escott
They decided I was gonna do it, and me and Red went up there — a sanatorium somewhere. Audrey was up there and Hank was propped up in bed. They knew where to take him. Hank said, “How you fellas doing? What’s happening down at the club?” I said, “Well the owner’s fixin’ to get another band.” Hank said, “Oh?” I said, “Well, he’s offered us the job, and we thought we’d go ahead and take it.” He said, “Well, do what you want to,” and he got kinda surly.
Hank never held down another regular gig or assembled another band in Montgomery. His life was a series of peaks and troughs. During the downward spirals, Hank would go to the brink, then pull himself back in the nick of time. He did it so many times that he probably made the fatal mistake of thinking he could always do it. The spring of 1948 was one of his deepest troughs, but he slowly came around. On April 12, he finally signed Fred Rose’s contracts, and Rose placed him on a fifty-dollar-a-month retainer. The first check came through on April 30. Audrey, though, had decided to file for divorce, and it was too late to change her mind. “Hank Williams my husband is twenty-four years of age,” she said in her complaint. “He has a violent and ungovernable temper. He drinks a great deal, and during the last month, he has been drunk most of the time. My nervous system has been upset and I am afraid to live with him any longer.” On May 26, after three and a half years of marriage, Hank and Audrey were divorced.
In Audrey’s complaint and in Rose’s letters we can sense the frustrations involved in dealing with Hank Williams. He was manipulative, selfish, violent, and indiscriminately unfaithful when drunk. Audrey saw Hank’s talent and saw him shooting himself in the foot. He seemed to be damning himself to the joints of south-central Alabama, and she railed against it. Like Lilly, she saw the alcoholism in terms of self-control, a view that was reinforced by the fact that there were times when Hank could control it.
After the separation, Hank moved back to Lilly’s boardinghouse. His old band members would see him there sometimes sitting on the swing, wearing his hat and his suit. He and Audrey reconciled, although the divorce remained in effect. The bridge to Acuff-Rose was mended. Rose inserted a clause into the contract that he subsequently crossed out: “During the three-year period from the date of this contract, the said Hank Williams agrees to conduct himself in a manner not detrimental to Acuff-Rose Publications.” The contract also stated that Acuff-Rose could “accept as liquidated damages all future royalties to which…Hank Williams may be entitled.” Rose’s faith in Hank clearly had boundaries.
Everyone but Lilly knew that Hank had to get out of Montgomery. “Aunt Lilly had mixed emotions about Hank leaving Montgomery,” said Hank’s cousin, Walter McNeil. “She felt that he could stay here and eventually make the Grand Ole Opry. But Audrey knew better.” Fred Rose shared Audrey’s opinion that Hank must move to a bigger market or at least a station with more wattage. Hank, though, was tainted with the twin curses of unreliability and drunkenness. The industry was small, and even though Hank hadn’t been far outside south-central Alabama, his reputation had. The Opry was out of the question, but Saturday night jamborees were proliferating.
Down in Shreveport, Louisiana, radio station KWKH had started a Saturday night jamboree while Hank was on his springtime bender. It didn’t have any big-name acts yet, and it was the best Fred Rose could get. On Thursday, July 29, 1948, Hank signed off WSFA. One way or another, he had to get out of Montgomery, and Shreveport seemed to be the place to take a stand.
Chapter 6
I’ll tune up my fiddle, rosin up my bow, I’ll make myself welcome wherever I go.
“Rye Whiskey” (unknown)
THE HAYRIDE
SHORTLY after signing off WSFA, Hank and Audrey loaded Lycrecia and a few possessions into an old Chrysler and set off for Shreveport, Louisiana. They stopped in Houston on July 31 so that Hank could make an appearances at Pappy Daily’s Record Ranch and Daily’s jukebox distributorship, Southern Amusements. Daily would someday have the thankless task of managing and producing George Jones, but in 1948 he was still a retailer and distributor. His young son, Donald, shot some photos before Hank drove on to Shreveport.
Hank Williams spent just ten months in Shreveport, but during those months he became a star. Country music was localized, and cities like Shreveport were self-contained scenes. Artists would usually work a city until they’d “played it out,” and it’s a testament to Hank’s appeal that he’d worked Montgomery on and off for ten years without coming close to playing it out. Every artist’s goal was to join one of the premier radio barn dances, such as WLS’s National Barn Dance in Chicago, WLW’s Boone County Jamboree (later known as the Midwestern Hayride) in Cincinnati, the Renfro Valley Barn Dance (also in Cincinnati), and of course Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry. Hank had a lot to prove before one of those would touch him.
The Louisiana Hayride was a minor-league jamboree when Hank joined, but, between 1948 and 1954, it gave the all-important first break to Webb Pierce, Faron Young, Johnnie and Jack, Kitty Wells, Johnny Horton, Slim Whitman, Jim Reeves, the Browns, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Tommy Sands, Claude King, Billy Walker…and Hank Williams. One by one, they left, together with a crew of backing musicians that included James Burton, Floyd Cramer, and Jerry Kennedy. If only a few had stayed, Shreveport might have taken a run at Nashville’s preeminence, which was newly established and vulnerable. As it was, the Hayride simply became an Opry farm club, or, as it called itself after everyone had left, the Cradle of the Stars.
Just as WSM was the key to Nashville’s preeminence, so KWKH could have made Shreveport’s hillbilly music business achieve critical mass. The station’s long and tangled history began with a local businessman, W. K. Henderson, whose initials it bore. Henderson conducted quixotic crusades against chain stores, and his abuse of clear-channel wattage made him an early target of the Federal Radio Commission (the forerunner of the FCC). Not content to own the station, Henderson went on the air with his trademark greeting, “Hello world, doggone ya!” Jimmie Davis was one of the station’s early mainstays. Twice governor of Louisiana and the man who popularized (and claimed to have written) “You Are My Sunshine,” Davis made his first recordings for Henderson’s short-lived “Doggone” label.
Henderson sold KWKH in September 1932 to a Shreveport consortium that brought the station into the CBS network, and then, in 1935, it was purchased by John D. Ewing, owner of the Shreveport Times. In 1939, KWKH became a fifty-thousand-watt clear-channel station. Fifty thousand watts (compared with WSFA’s one thousand) was the maximum allowable in the United States, and the clear channel meant that the frequency was assigned to just one station. The only stations with more power were the five-hundred-thousand-watt border stations that operated from Mexico, with a signal so powerful that it obliterated everything within fifty kilocycles of the stations’ frequency path. Fifty thousand watts was enough for Hank Williams, though. It would bring him to a larger audience than he’d ever known.
As far back as 1936, KWKH hosted a radio jamboree, the Sunday afternoon Hillbilly Amateur Show with Bob and Joe Shelton (the Sunshine Boys). The following year, the Sheltons’ show became the Saturday Night Roundup, but it was discontinued during the war. Immediately after the war, John Ewing’s daughter, Helen, married a naval pilot from Atlanta named Henry Clay, and Clay was handed KWKH as part of Helen’s dowry. He’d managed a radio barn dance, the Dog Patch Jamboree, in Florence, Alabama, before the war, and now he decided to start another. The new show’s producer would be Horace Logan, who’d been in and around KWKH since 1932. Logan, whose stories usually demand close scrutiny, claimed to have started the Louisiana Hayride. “They were toying with the idea of starting another show like the Saturday Night Roundup but hadn’t reached a decision,” he said. “Then after I came back, they decided that they would go with it because I had worked with the prior show.” Contemporary reports downplay Logan’s role, giving credit for the show’s structure to Dean Upson, the station’s commercial manager, who’d worked for the Grand Ole Op
ry’s parent station, WSM. “Prior to starting the Hayride, we had a lot of talent on daily,” Clay once said. “Dean Upson knew a lot of hillbillies, and that helped too.”
Louisiana Hayride was a name that carried connotations of the state’s infamous governor Huey P. Long; one of the first books about Long was Harnett P. Kane’s Louisiana Hayride: The American Rehearsal for Dictatorship, published in 1941. There had also been a pop hit in 1932 called “Louisiana Hayride” from the Broadway show Flying Colors, so it was a far from original name, but Logan says he decided upon it because “I wanted something that would connote country music — and then localize it.” Logan also takes credit for the show’s presentation. He went to the Opry for what he claims was his first and only visit, and came away with a rival vision:
With the Opry, they’d bring a guy on, and you’d have to suffer through him for a half hour whether you liked him or not. He’d bring on some guests, but essentially you had the same guy, say, Roy Acuff, for a half hour. If you liked him, it was great; if you didn’t, it wasn’t. My idea was to put the artists in extreme competition with each other. If they were going to be stars, they had to establish themselves and then reestablish themselves every Saturday night. When one of my artists came onstage, he did two numbers. If he encored, he came back later and did another two numbers, and that was all for the evening. It forced the artists to reestablish their eminence; it was a terribly difficult show to work.
The first Louisiana Hayride was held on Saturday, April 3, 1948, in Shreveport’s Municipal Auditorium. That was the day Hank sold his house in Montgomery, and tried hard to blow the proceeds. The Bailes Brothers headlined the first Louisiana Hayride. The Baileses were on Columbia Records and they’d been Grand Ole Opry stars before their enforced exile to Shreveport in December 1946. In October 1946, Johnnie Bailes’ girlfriend had stabbed herself three times, then jumped to her death from his room in Nashville’s Merchants Hotel. The Opry immediately canceled the Baileses’ contract, and five weeks later they were in Shreveport; that’s how quickly the Opry blackballed its transgressors. Hank almost certainly knew what happened to Johnnie Bailes and should have paid attention. The Baileses’ supporting acts included Johnnie and Jack, together with Johnnie’s wife, Kitty Wells, and another Nashville act, Wally Fowler’s Oak Ridge Quartet. The other acts were mostly local, but within weeks of launching the Hayride, Henry Clay attracted Curley Williams and his Georgia Peach Pickers, still featuring Hank’s former sideman, Boots Harris, on steel guitar. It was the beginning of a great lineup.
Hank arrived in Shreveport four months after the Louisiana Hayride started, but it’s still unclear exactly how he came to be there. Horace Logan’s account strains credibility:
When we started the Hayride, we publicized it through Cash-box and Billboard and the like, and we immediately started getting deluged with audition tapes to be on the show. Hank was one of the fellows who phoned in, but [it was] Fred Rose [who] decided to try and get Hank on the Hayride. He called KWKH and talked to Henry Clay, and Henry talked to me about it. I’d heard of Hank Williams, heard his records on some little ol’ label. I’d also heard that he was a drunk. I suggested that we tell Fred Rose if Hank could stay sober for six months and prove it, we’d put him on the Hayride. Hank called me every week, and almost invariably he would have the manager of his radio station with him. “Mr. Logan, Hank has been sober, he’s been here every morning, he hasn’t missed a single morning. He’s sober as a judge,” and Hank’d say, “That’s right! I’m sober.” And at the end of six months, we told him to come on over.
It’s just possible that Hank tried to get on KWKH before Rose got into the picture, but what are the chances that the manager of WSFA would smile benignly while his star tried to secure a job elsewhere? And, of course, Hank was anything but sober during the six months before he joined the Hayride. The key factor was probably Dean Upson’s longstanding relationship with Fred Rose. Upson had sung in a pop quartet, the Vagabonds, who were on WSM when Rose had first come to Nashville in the 1930s. They’d written songs together, and it’s likely that Rose prevailed upon Upson to give Hank a chance. To confuse the issue, though, Johnnie Bailes insisted that he had known Hank for several years, and told people that he arrived at KWKH one day to find Hank leaning disconsolately against a parking meter. Hank told him he had been turned down by KWKH, and Bailes says that he went to see Upson to insist that Hank be hired.
It’s possible that Hank’s reputation was already so bad that it took Bailes, Rose, and Upson to prevail upon Henry Clay. What is clear, though, is that KWKH wasn’t mortgaging the farm to acquire him. Like the Opry, the Hayride paid only American Federation of Musicians scale. Financially, Hank was going to be in worse shape than if he had stayed in Montgomery; only KWKH’s fifty thousand watts made the move attractive.
Hank and Audrey appear to have made a brief preliminary trip to Shreveport to meet Henry Clay. They also met the KWKH regulars at the Bantam Grill opposite the studio. Hank was wondering how he could supplement his meager income from the station. Homer Bailes went to get Tillman Franks. At one time or another, Franks has been a bass player, booking agent, songwriter, song plugger, producer, and manager. He managed and booked Johnny Horton, Claude King, David Houston, Faron Young, Webb Pierce, and Elvis Presley. Hank’s WSFA paycheck had amounted to around $120 a month, but he was so well known around Montgomery that he could fill his datebook. Remebered Tillman,
Hank said Henry Clay had offered him fifty dollars a week. He said he couldn’t live on that, but if I booked him into schools, he’d stay. I said I’d do my best, but people didn’t really know him. I told him, “If you can get a program on the radio and announce a few times that you’re open for bookings I’ll take a crack at it.” I was starvin’, and me and my wife was living with my mom and daddy, and I invited Hank and Audrey out for Sunday dinner. We had a catfish supper and Hank and Audrey really put it away. After the meal, Hank sat down at this old upright piano and played “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” chording the piano like a guitar, and Audrey was singing with him. After he’d finished playing my daddy got me in a corner and he said, “Son, I hope you ain’t thinking of making any money with him, ’cause he just cain’t sing.”
Hank then launched into one of his set pieces, said Tillman.
He was talking about how he had to leave Montgomery ’cause he owed ever’body in town. He said, “I bought this stove and bed on credit at this furniture store, and ever’ month they’d send me a nasty note, and ever’ month they was getting nastier. I went down to see the owner of the place, and said, ‘I’m Hank Williams. I thought I’d come by and tell y’all how I pay my bills.’” The guy said, “Good,” and Hank said, “Ever’ month I take ever’one I owe, I write their names on a little bit of paper, put them all in a hat, shake ’em up real good, and I pull out one name and that’s the one I pay. You write me one more nasty note and even if I pull your name out, it’s going back in the hat.”
On August 7, 1948, Hank made his first appearance on the Louisiana Hayride. He was the fifth act on the opening 8:00–8:30 p.m. segment. Merle Kilgore was a starstruck teenager hanging around the Hayride that night. Later, Kilgore was a performer and composer ("Ring of Fire” and “Wolverton Mountain"); later still, he was an opening act for Hank Jr., and after that, vice president of Hank Williams Jr. Enterprises. “Hank had the same look in his eye that Elvis had,” said Kilgore. “That ‘I know somethin’ you don’t know’ look. Hank was cocky. That first night, the Baileses were on before him and he said, ‘How did they do?’ I said, ‘Real good. I hate that you have to follow ’em.’ He said, ‘I’ll eat ’em alive.’” In fact, Johnnie and Jack separated Hank and the Bailes Brothers that first night, but clearly Hank wasn’t suffering from stage fright. He sang “Move It on Over,” then gave way to a commercial for the Asco Loan Company. Johnnie and Jack launched the second half with a gospel song, followed by a comedy sketch. Next, Curley Kinsey’s band played
an instrumental, “Red Wing,” then Hank and Audrey came out to sing an old wartime song, “I Want to Live and Love.” Hank was through for the night, and the show was rounded out by the Four Deacons, the Mercer Brothers, and Johnnie and Jack.
Three days earlier, Hank had started his regular fifteen-minute show at 5:15 a.m. He arrived in Shreveport with a band he’d recruited in Montgomery. Lum York dutifully rejoined, and Hank recruited a fiddle player, George Brown, and guitarist Chris Criswell. He tried to get Don Helms to join him, but Helms was earning more money in a band with Boots Harris’ brothers. Boots had briefly quit Curley Williams to join his brothers at a skating rink in Andalusia before moving back to California to rejoin Curley. Helms was brought in to replace him. The skating rink gig paid well, so when Hank called, Helms turned him down. “I’m gonna let you off this time,” Hank told him, “but one of these days I’m goin’ to the Opry and I ain’t gonna take ‘no’ for an answer.” Helms wouldn’t have bet much on the chance, but he told Hank he would go with him when that day came.
Hank rented a garage apartment at 4802 Mansfield Road and the band lived in a trailer, but the arrangement didn’t last long. He meant nothing in Shreveport, and couldn’t get enough gigs to support the band. Most of them drifted back to Alabama. “He said he’d let me stay out at the house, and he’d feed me and buy me cigarettes,” said Lum York, “and as soon as he got started again, we’d start playing, but I went back to Montgomery to work with Uncle Bob Helton.”
By late September 1948, Hank was picking up some work in school-houses and honky-tonks around Shreveport on weeknights, pulling musicians from the Hayride staff band as needed, or booking out with other Hayride acts so that he could share their band. Tillman Franks’ diary for September shows Hank working doubleheaders with Johnnie and Jack in little towns like Plain Dealing. Tillman booked school auditorium shows, and remembers Hank preferring schoolhouse dates to honky-tonks. “I think he’d got beat up a few times,” he says. “In school-houses and auditoriums he could really put on a show.” Staying away from the joints was probably part of Hank’s sobriety program too.