Hank Williams

by Colin Escott

  Just days after the house purchase, Hank joined an Opry troupe led by Ernest Tubb on a tour of the Northwest, and on September 13, he made his first appearance in Canada when the troupe played in Vancouver, British Columbia. Later that month, Hank was back on the West Coast with the same troupe, this time in California. On one of those trips, he outfitted himself at Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors in Los Angeles. When he had arrived in Nashville, his principal stage outfit was still the poorly fitting western suit that Tillman Franks had sold him, but now he had something more flamboyant in mind. Nudka Cohn, better known as Nudie Cohen, was born in Russia in 1902, and came to the United States in 1913. He was a boxer and a bit-part actor before finding his calling in western apparel. There were several other western outfitters in Los Angeles, but Nudie became the most lurid of them all. Tex Williams, chiefly remembered these days for “Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette),” was Nudie’s first country music client, and Hank was one of his first Nashville clients. Hank and Nudie became close friends, and Nudie later told friends that Hank would be sent to his house to dry out. In 1957, Nudie tailored Elvis’ gold lamé outfit and designed Webb Pierce’s silver-dollar-encrusted Pontiac. Staying abreast of the times, he tailored the infamous rhinestones-inlaid-as-marijuana suit for Gram Parsons of the Flying Burrito Brothers.

  Audrey bought outfits for herself, clearly signaling that Hank and Audrey were back in business. She hired a nurse / housekeeper, Audrey Ragland, in September 1949, telling her that she would be on the road with Hank. Evidence of what a Hank and Audrey radio show was like comes from Hank’s first syndicated radio series, the Health and Happiness show, in October 1949. It was an ironic title, as Hank never had much of either. Eight fifteen-minute shows were recorded on two successive Sundays that October. They were the brainchild of Mack Hedrick, advertising manager at WSM. Hedrick pitched Louisiana state senator Dudley J. LeBlanc, inventor of a foul-tasting patent medicine called Hadacol, on the notion of sponsoring Hank. LeBlanc had seen Hank in Lafayette, and was reaping the benefit of having Bill Nettles’ “Hadacol Boogie” in the charts, so he leaped at the idea.

  LeBlanc had little direct involvement with the Health and Happiness shows except to underwrite them, and for once in his life, he was outscammed. Hedrick made sure that Hank never mentioned Hadacol; in that way, he had a set of generic shows he could resell to other sponsors. His philosophy was that you had some pickin’ and singin’ and then, as he put it, a commercial right after the “Come to Jesus” number. The transcriptions were duplicated onto banded sixteen-inch discs that played at 33 rpm. After almost every song, Hank made an all-purpose pitch, like “Here’s someone with some news that’ll make you mighty glad you tuned in.” At that point, the engineers on the local stations would stop the disc, a local announcer would read the pitch, then the discs would be restarted.

  Hank was the new boy in town with something to prove. The frightening conviction of his singing was strangely offset by his molassified between-song patter. Audrey was on the first four shows, joining Hank on the closing hymn and taking her own solo spots. She followed “I’m a Long Gone Daddy” with “I’m Telling You,” a song that appears to be a self-composed riposte, but, as always, she shot herself in the foot by singing off-key and breaking meter. It was probably at LeBlanc’s request that she was dropped when the last four shows were recorded. Hank was, if anything, in even better form on the four shows without her. He out-Acuffed Acuff on “The Prodigal Son,” then invested “Mind Your Own Business” with even more damning sarcasm than the record, throwing in a fresh couplet after the break: “If I get my head beat black and blue / Brother that’s my wife and my stove wood too.” The shows also included Hank’s only surviving recording of “Tramp on the Street,” the song that had earned him his break.

  The Health and Happiness shows were the first recorded evidence of Hank’s new Drifting Cowboys. In the three months they’d worked together they had clearly been schooled in what he wanted. Hank hated pickers who were too busy. When he was singing, he didn’t want the impact undermined by cute fills, and he wanted the solos as simple and direct as his vocals. He would spin around and glare at any musician who got too close to jazz. “I know a lot of good guitar players,” he once said, “who’ve educated themselves right out of a job.” Later, when Hank Garland came to town and proved himself the most technically adroit picker in country music, Hank was dismissive. “Aw,” he said, “he’s still searchin’ for it. I’ve found it.” Hillous Butrum occasionally got too fancy for Hank. “Mostly I’d play two-four time,” said Hillous. “Hank come to me one night and he said, ‘Hillous, you play as good a bass as anyone I ever heard. At times. Then all of a sudden you’ll take off on that thing and I don’t know where you’re going.’ When we’d do ‘Move It on Over’ I’d switch to four-four on the break and Hank never understood what I was doing. You wasn’t supposed to hear a bass note except ever’ other one.”

  Plain and simple — that was Hank’s philosophy. It had taken him to the Grand Ole Opry, and he wasn’t about to try for sophistication now. He’d fought the Willis Brothers on his pronunciation during his first session, and he wasn’t about to change now. If he sang “perhaps,” it would be “pre-haps.” “Picture” was “pitcher.” When he sang “Armageddon” in “The Battle of Armageddon,” he pronounced it “Am-be-gotten.” If he contributed to the social transmission of illiteracy, he didn’t care, and Fred Rose learned not to care, either. “Vanilla, boys,” Hank had told his band back in the mid-’40s, and that was still his credo.

  Right after the Health and Happiness shows, Hank and his band hit the road on a tour that took them up into Ontario, Canada, in late October 1949. On November 11, he returned in triumph to Montgomery for a show with Bill Monroe, and then on November 13, he flew to Europe as part of the Prince Albert Opry revue. The Opry troupe was to play U.S. Air Force bases on a two-week tour sponsored by R. J. Reynolds. In Air Force–speak, it was deemed a “non revenue mission,” and according to the protocol of the day, the Russians were informed. Hillbilly music was immensely popular among servicemen overseas. Hillbilly Gasthaus was the highest-rated show on Armed Forces Radio (AFRS), and the Opry came over at the request of the enlisted men. Hank was issued with a sheet of instructions in Russian in case he mistakenly wandered into the Russian zone. He looked at the Cyrillic script and said, “Aw, they ain’t gonna win the next war. They cain’t even spell.”

  Red Foley led the troupe, backed by Roy Acuff, Jimmy Dickens, Minnie Pearl, and Rod Brasfield. Another Opry act, Radio Dot and Smokey, were cleared by the Department of the Air Force, but don’t appear in any photos from the tour. Harry Stone, Jim Denny, and announcer Grant Turner joined the show, and Acuff took his daughter, Thelma, who did a tap-dance routine. They were all allowed to bring their spouses because they would be away for Thanksgiving. Acuff and Foley brought their own bands, but Hank was to work with Foley’s band.

  The troupe left Nashville on what had been General Eisenhower’s private plane. They went to Washington, flew on to Newfoundland to refuel, then hunkered down for the night flight across the Atlantic. Hank snuggled next to Audrey and put his coat over them. The next morning, they arrived in Paris, France, to refuel, then went on to Wiesbaden, Germany. A German oompah band played “Dixie” to welcome them. They visited all the base hospitals, playing a few numbers for the patients, and put on shows in Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, and Vienna. The Berlin and Frankfurt shows were recorded for transmission back home on the Prince Albert portion of the Opry. Hank and Red Foley had two of the most popular records of the day, “Lovesick Blues” and “Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy,” and they were called back for encore after encore at every hall they played.

  Hank was straight as an arrow and so careful to avoid alcohol that he sniffed his glass at mealtimes to make sure that it contained water — not wine — but that didn’t stop him from yelling, “Hey, Herman, bring me the ketchup” any time he was faced with a dish he didn’t recognize. Aside from brief forays into Cana
da and Mexico, this was Hank’s first and last experience of foreign lands.

  On the way back across the Atlantic, the plane hit an air pocket, and dropped precipitously. The performers clung to their seats, and some flew up to the roof of the plane. Nearly everyone had bought cuckoo clocks in the Black Forest, and the clocks fell from the overhead racks, going “cuckoo, cuckoo” as they hit the floor. The plane touched down to refuel in Bermuda and the troupe boarded a bus to a hotel. The roads were narrow and windy, and, because it was a British colony, oncoming vehicles would suddenly appear on what Hank and the others regarded as the wrong side of the road. On arrival back in Nashville, Hank bent over gingerly and kissed the tarmac.

  Oscar Davis had dropped all his other clients to handle Hank exclusively, and now Hank was beginning to understand what real pressure was like. He came home to a full date book and a punishing itinerary. In Montgomery or Shreveport, he’d played within driving distance of home, and if he missed a show date or two, he would do a “make-good” later if he felt like it. Now he was working with structured itineraries that took him away from home all week. Too often, he would arrive home on Friday night and leave again on Saturday night or Sunday morning.

  Hank arrived back from Europe to see “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It” climbing the charts. It had reached number two by the end of December. Among the records that kept it from the top spot were the Delmore Brothers’ “Blues Stay Away from Me” and Red Foley’s “Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy.”

  After successful tours out west, through the Southwest, and up the Ohio valley into Canada, Oscar Davis had decided to promote Hank on the eastern seaboard during the period leading up to Christmas. On December 8, Hank was to star for a week at the Hippodrome Theater in Baltimore, and was scheduled to follow it with a Potomac River Cruise show and a headline appearance at the Roosevelt Hotel in Washington. He started drinking in Dayton, Ohio, after losing some money in a craps game, and by the time he got to Baltimore he was drunk. It was the first time the new Drifting Cowboys had seen Hank on a bender. They checked into the hotel behind the Hippodrome with everyone on edge because Hank, although drunk, still thought himself able to perform. The band was watching him closely, but when he needed a drink Hank was more resourceful than anyone gave him credit for. He bribed a bellhop to bring up whiskey miniatures hidden inside a pitcher of ice and arranged for one of the girls in the square dance troupe to hide minatures in her skirts for him.

  The rule of thumb that people came to use with Hank was that it would take about three days for him to get good and drunk and then three days to get over it. At first, he would make the shows, swaying precariously but always somehow managing to remain upright. “Here I am in Baltimore,” he told the audience. “I ain’t never been in Baltimore. If I come back, it’ll be twice I been here.” He said that every show, four shows a day. Oscar Davis eventually took him off the bill and brought in old-time yodeler Elton Britt as the headliner. Audrey was flown up from Nashville for her expertise, and Helms and McNett went to pick her up at the airport. Later, as she sat disconsolately in the hotel lobby, Audrey turned to McNett and said, “I’m so upset and discouraged, I think I’ve lost the love I had for Hank.” But, since she was there, she decided she would do some shows with him after he’d straightened out.

  By December 16, Hank was back on track. He and Cowboy Copas set an attendance record at the Victory Room in the Hotel Roosevelt in Washington. Nine hundred were admitted and five hundred turned away, but Audrey’s insistence upon performing led to another rift. Finally, Hank refused to let her sing, so she stormed back home. Hank came into the room that McNett and Butrum were sharing, put his foot up on the window ledge and said, “Boys, it’s heck to have a wife in the business that wants to sing, but it’s worse’n that to have one that wants to sing and cain’t.”

  A few days later, Hank was home for Christmas. It was his first in Nashville, and his first with Hank Jr. When Hank went downtown to buy a copy of Billboard, he saw in the year-end tallies that he had shot from nowhere to become the second-best-selling country singer of the year. Only Eddy Arnold was ahead of him. Hank had placed eight songs in the country charts in 1949, but Arnold had placed thirteen and was still the man to beat.

  It wasn’t until December that Hank and Audrey finally sold their house in Shreveport, getting back the $9,500 they paid for it and thus drawing a line under that phase of Hank’s career.

  What was Hank thinking as he wriggled uncomfortably in his Oriental furniture that Christmas? Did he wonder what would have happened without “Lovesick Blues,” that “nothing song” that Fred Rose had disparaged? Without its catalytic effect, Rose might have lost interest in the undistinguished songs that Hank was sending up from Louisiana. MGM might have dropped him when his contract was up that year. Hank might even have become so discouraged that he would have gotten out of the business, as he had told Johnny Bond he would do just one year earlier. What if Fred Rose had stuck to his guns and refused to let Hank record “Lovesick Blues"? Instead of soaring in 1949, Hank Williams’ recording career might simply have petered out.

  Chapter 9

  More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered prayers.

  St. Teresa of Avila

  “HURRIED SOUTHERN TRIPS…”

  THE new decade dawned with Hank preparing for two recording sessions, scheduled for Monday, January 9, and Tuesday, January 10. Frank Walker came to Nashville to work with Fred Rose on the ninth, the only time Hank worked with anyone other than Rose behind the glass. Hank was using his road band for the first time since the disastrous “Fly Trouble” session in August 1947, and was recording all his own songs for the first time since April 1947. That alone said much for his growing confidence. Just one thing was required from these sessions: another blockbuster hit. “Mind Your Own Business,” “You’re Gonna Change,” and “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It” had all sold well enough, but none of them had come close to eclipsing “Lovesick Blues” or “Wedding Bells.” The midsize hits were fine, they kept the pot boiling, but Hank needed a song that would rule the airwaves for months. Like a successful sports franchise, he needed to deliver the big prize every now and again to keep the attendance up.

  Hank and Fred Rose decided to take their best shot with “Long Gone Lonesome Blues,” a song that had — in almost every sense — been sired by “Lovesick Blues.” Rose, of course, couldn’t risk another lawsuit from Mills Music, so the melody wasn’t litigiously close, but Hank had clearly crafted a deliberate follow-up. It had “blues” in the title and windows for the yodels and flashes of falsetto that had proved so effective on “Lovesick Blues.” The tempo was almost identical, and the lyrics were just as inconsequential. The song’s architecture and arrangement were kissing cousins, right down to the unison yodeling figure from the lead guitar and the steel guitar at the intro. Hank liked to tell interviewers that he just closed off his mind and let God write his songs, but “Long Gone Lonesome Blues” was squeezed out line by line from a title that Hank had been nursing for a while. The pieces came together on a fishing trip with songwriter Vic McAlpin. They left early to drive out to the Tennessee River where it broadens into Kentucky Lake, but Hank had been unable to sleep on the trip, and was noodling around with the title all the way. As McAlpin told journalist Roger Williams, he and Hank were already out on the lake when McAlpin became frustrated with Hank’s preoccupation. “You come here to fish or watch the fish swim by?” he said, and suddenly Hank had the key that unlocked the song for him. “Hey!” he said. “That’s the first line!” Then it fell into place. All the old blues clichés he had ever heard about going to the river, jumping in three times and only coming up twice came flooding back. McAlpin contributed a few lines, but Hank later bought him out.

  In case “Long Gone Lonesome Blues” didn’t make it, Hank had written himself an insurance policy, “Why Don’t You Love Me (Like You Used to Do).” It showed that he could still afford to be lighthearted about the persistent troubles with Aud
rey. “I’m the same old trouble you’ve always been through,” he told her, and that would become truer than either of them dared believe. “Why Should We Try Anymore?” was a wintry variation on the same theme. Based loosely on “I’m Not Coming Home Any More,” its four verses limned a bleak picture of a marriage gone sour.

  The session was rounded out with another stab at “My Son Calls Another Man Daddy,” in which a jailed man loses his son. There were hundreds of similar songs dating back to the dawn of country music. “I’ll ne’er know his name or his face,” sang Hank, once again resorting to an archaic form as he often would when trying something with a traditional flavor.

  After admitting that he was wrong to steer Hank uptown with novelties like “Fly Trouble” and “Rootie Tootie,” Rose had realized that Hank was plugged in to a segment of the market that neither craved nor aspired to sophistication. He had come to share Hank’s “vanilla” philosophy. Bob McNett remembered that during rehearsals he hit some licks and then looked up at the control room. “Is that too country?” he asked. “You can never get too country,” Rose told him. Not on a Hank Williams session.

  As they began working together, Rose helped the band define what is still known as the Hank Williams sound. He gave Don Helms the golden rule for accompanying Hank. “Fred said it was useless for me and Hank to be in the same register,” said Helms. “He said, ‘When Hank is singing something low why don’t you play high, and if he’s singing high, you play something low,’ so the steel was always in a different register.” Once, when Helms wasn’t playing high enough for Rose’s liking, he came out of the control and moved the steel guitar several inches, gesturing with his hands up past the nut to show how much higher he wanted it.