Hank Williams

by Colin Escott

  You have been so faithful, darling

  Waiting for me all these years,

  And if you’ll forget the vows I’ve broken,

  I’ll try to pay you for all your tears.

  Finally, Hank got a releasable cut of “Honky Tonk Blues,” a song that dated back almost as far as “Let’s Turn Back the Years.” He had first tried it at the August 1947 session that had yielded “Fly Trouble.” He’d taken another stab at it in March 1949, and yet another in June 1950. Rose might have held it back because the title was easily confused with “Honky Tonkin’,” but the flurry of activity around “Honky Tonkin’” in 1948 and again in 1950 had died away, and Rose now felt confident scheduling “Honky Tonk Blues” as Hank’s first release for 1952. The version that hit the streets didn’t contain all the lyrics on his original demo; the next-to-last verse in which Maw and Paw are “really gonna lay down the law” was missing, emphasizing in a way that Hank himself never made it back from the honky-tonks to pappy’s farm. On release in February 1952, “Honky Tonk Blues” was coupled with “I’m Sorry for You, My Friend,” the song Lefty Frizzell said Hank had written for him.

  As 1951 was drawing to a close, Hank Williams needed repair. Two and a half years of almost constant travel, sleep deprivation, and unrelenting pressure had taken their toll on his body and mind. The drinking bouts were becoming increasingly frequent. The lower five vertebrae of his back ached constantly. The brace wasn’t working. And now Hank’s career seemed to be controlling him rather than vice versa. If he felt guilty about his binges, as he almost certainly did, he covered it up by refusing to acknowledge that there was a problem. When he was drunk or in the process of getting drunk, he was in no condition to discuss his alcoholism, and when he was sober he pulled rank on his band and cut short any discussion. “I’d say to him, ‘That’s when you really showed your butt,’” said Don Helms, “and he’d say, ‘I don’t wanna talk ‘bout it.’”

  At some point in 1951 Hank was sent, or committed himself, to a sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky, which was supposed to specialize in treatment of alcoholics. There, he was told essentially what he wanted to hear: he wasn’t an alcoholic because he went days, weeks, sometimes months without drinking. An alcoholic couldn’t do that. Therefore, Hank was a spree drinker. Hank almost certainly knew in his heart that he wasn’t a spree drinker, and knew how much strength it took on a daily basis to wrestle down his craving for alcohol. “He got so bitter about alcohol,” said Ernest Tubb, one of the few Hank opened up to about his problem because it was one that Tubb shared:

  He hated drinking, and he wanted to take this cure. You’d take this medicine, and you had to carry a letter in your pocket. If you’re taking this medicine [and] you take a drink, if you don’t get to a hospital quick enough it’ll kill you. He asked me if he should do it, take this cure. I told him, “This you have to decide, ’cause if I advise you to do it and you get off some place late at night and you fall off the wagon, and start drinking you could wind up dead and I’d feel responsible.” He knew he was an alcoholic. Then it dawned on him.

  Unlike Lefty Frizzell, characterized by his drinking buddies as a happy drunk, Hank was a miserable drunk. He became surly and contrary. “He was a pain, a real pain,” said Don Helms. “If you wanted to leave, he wanted to wait; if you wanted to wait, he wanted to leave.” Hank’s problem was aggravated by a low tolerance for alcohol. Helms and Rivers agree that Hank probably drank less than just about anyone else on the Opry, but he drank in binges and his low tolerance quickly put him out of commission. A few drinks and he was a foaming-at-the-mouth, under-the-table drunk. When he was drunk, his natural bluntness turned into boorishness. His band members knew all the little telltale signs, like the strange wave from the wings when they were warming up the crowd. Said Jerry Rivers,

  We’d all just wilt ’cause we knew then he was drinking. One time in St. Joseph, Missouri, we were onstage picking and he came to the wings and we knew right away he was drinking. He came on, swung into “Move It on Over,” did the verse with “Remember pup before you whine,” and then Don did a solo, then he sung the same verse and Jerry took a solo. Then he did “I’m a Long Gone Daddy,” which is basically the same tune, and he came out of the break singing “Remember pup before you whine.” We’d rather he didn’t show. It was just such a letdown to us.

  Most of those who knew Hank have a pet theory about his drinking. He drank because of back pain, because of Audrey, because of career pressures, to gain attention — the list was long. Wesley Rose had a complex theory that centered around blood sugar levels, which was probably state-of-the-art thinking about alcoholism that month. Hank drank. It was a behavior he had acquired in his youth — before Audrey, before his back gave him much trouble, before his career took him over. It was a behavior to which he turned at moments both predictable and unpredictable. It was a behavior that took him over and acquired its own momentum as his personal and professional problems mounted. More than anything else, it was a release from whatever ailed him at the time. “I’m gonna keep drinkin’ ’til I can’t even think,” he’d written in “Tear in My Beer,” and he was true to every word.

  Hank and Fred Rose had discussed Hank’s problem many times. Rose approached it from the standpoint of a recovered alcoholic, but was unsuccessful in persuading Hank to tackle his alcoholism with a renewed spiritual awakening. Joining an organization like Alcoholics Anonymous was also out of the question for Hank, partly because of his intensely private nature, but mostly because it would have been an acknowlegment that he had a problem. This left palliative professional help when he was on a binge, which was essentially limited to deprivation, a good meal when he stood a chance of keeping it down, a few vitamins, and a big bill.

  With most tours lasting just a few days between Opry commitments, Hank was usually brought home if he was drinking, and Audrey would, with good reason, refuse to let him in the house. Jim Denny would ask the band to take him to a sanatorium attached to the hospital in Madison, just north of Nashville. The sanatorium had some outbuildings with bars on the windows that it used for drying out alcoholics. The band would pull up in front of the sanatorium and Hank wouldn’t have a clear idea of where he was. Someone would say, “Come on, Hank, let’s get out,” and he would see where they were and say, “Oh no, oh no, I ain’t goin’ in there. It’s that damn hut.” The attendants would have to come and get him, and he would stare daggers at the band as if he had been betrayed. “Seems to me,” said Helms, “that everyone would disappear round about that time,” but Helms lived close by and had known Hank the longest, so he would come to visit after a couple of days, and he’d bring candy bars and books. Usually, by the third day Hank would say, “Reckon they’re gonna let us outta here?” Helms would think to himself, “Hoss, we ain’t in here.”

  On another occasion in late 1951, Hank was committed to St. Margaret’s hospital in Montgomery. His cousin Walter McNeil came to see him there and found a desperately unhappy man. As was often the case when he was coming off a drunk, Hank was paranoid and surly, and, some thought, occasionally suicidal. “O’Neil,” he said ("O’Neil McNeil” was Lilly’s nickname for Walter Jr.), “I wish I was back at WSFA making twelve dollars a week. At least then if someone come to see me, I’d know they was coming to see me. Now I reckon they just want something from me.”

  Wondering what Audrey was doing while he was out on the road contributed to Hank’s broodiness and general upset. He saw the band members happy to get off the road and get home to their wives and families. He would go home and perhaps not find Audrey there at all. If she was there, they’d probably have a fight. As early as 1950, coming in off the road, he had told the guys that he knew they were all looking forward to going back home. Meantime, he said, he was going to Acuff-Rose to pick up a check for two thousand dollars, go home, give Audrey half of it, then spend the rest of the night fighting with her over the other half. Now he couldn’t even joke about it. It just wasn’t funny anymore.


  Still, Hank loved Audrey, and he loved Randall Hank. A WSM engineer remembered that Hank had once left Nashville in a hurry and got halfway to Jackson before realizing that he hadn’t said good-bye to Hank Jr., so he drove all the way back. Another time, Ernest Tubb remembered that he, Hank, and Minnie Pearl were playing the Tri-State Fair in Amarillo, Texas. “Hank had bought every stuffed bear, dog, and he had that Cadillac so loaded the boys said, ‘Where we gonna sit?’ I said, ‘Hank, that kid ain’t big enough to play with them,’ ’cause Hank had a stuffed dog as big as a man, but he worshipped that boy. Never knew a man worshiped a child like that. He just couldn’t buy enough things for Bocephus.” In Hank’s ideal world, little Hank was the centerpiece of the family that prayed together and stayed together. In that same dream, Audrey was baking a pie as he walked in the door.

  The paradox of Hank Williams was that he was easygoing on the outside, yet tense and querulous inside. He pretended that he’d just ridden into town on a mule, yet had a lively intelligence combined with what Minnie Pearl described as a “woods-animal distrust” of anyone who appeared to have any more learning than he did. He wanted to be the drifting cowboy, herding the dark clouds out of the sky and keeping the heavens blue, yet was prone to depression. He saw his own dalliances as one of the perks of the job, yet was infuriated and aggrieved by Audrey’s infidelities, perhaps because they were often conducted in full view of his peers.

  Through his music, his fans sensed the chasm between Hank’s onstage demeanor and his private disquiet, and that in turn accounted for part of his appeal. There was a huge gulf between the way he introduced the songs on radio or onstage and the song itself. The introduction was straight out of hillbilly vaudeville; the songs were from Hank Williams’ heart of darkness. When the spotlight was switched off, or the red recording light went off, and the people had gone home, Hank was left with Hiram Williams, who was wretched company for himself. “When he walked on the stage,” said Audrey later, “it was the only time Hank was ever really sure of himself. It was shyness and lonesomeness.”

  Hank tried to get one aspect of his life under control when he finally surrendered up his back to a team of surgeons led by Dr. Ben Fowler and Dr. George Carpenter at the Vanderbilt Medical Center. This was a major step for Hank, who had a country person’s pathological fear of big-city doctors. As early as March 31, 1951, Billboard had reported that he had a spine disorder and was expected to take six weeks off for surgery. At the time he signed his motion picture deal, he talked about working fewer shows to concentrate on songwriting (Bing Crosby was mentioned as a possible client), but as ever the bottom line was that Hank couldn’t keep his band on salary if they didn’t work.

  A hunting accident finally forced Hank into the hospital. Jerry Rivers had gone hunting with him, and Hank’s dog had treed a large groundhog in a stump. The groundhog put up a fight, and Hank and Jerry began running to save the dog. Rivers jumped a gully, carrying a heavy double-barreled shotgun, and beat off the groundhog. Then he looked around for Hank, but couldn’t see him.

  Hank was on his back in the gully. His face was pale and he was wracked with pain. He had lost his balance jumping the ditch and had fallen four or five feet onto his back. His first step was to check into St. Jude’s in Montgomery, where he felt more at home, but the doctors there referred him to the Vanderbilt Medical Center. As he told the story later, Hank went to the doctors and said, “Cure me or kill me, Doc. I can’t go on like this.”

  Before the surgery, Hank had agreed to work Connie B. Gay’s New Year’s Eve bash. Gay booked theaters in Washington, Baltimore, Toledo, Raleigh, Spartanburg, and Charleston, West Virginia. In conjunction with Jim Denny, he had arranged to bring in virtually every artist working on the Opry to fill those venues. Denny and Gay had worked together since 1947, and Gay held the Opry franchise for the D.C. area. This was to be their biggest joint venture. It’s likely that Denny had a personal stake in the financial outcome of the shows in addition to his professional stake. Hank was to be the headliner, and they planned to “bicycle” him (that is, have him play two locations) in Baltimore and Washington. Booking Hank was a calculated risk for Denny, who was as aware of his condition as anyone, but it was a risk that he was apparently willing to take. Hank had a history of showing up stone cold sober when he absolutely had to, and Denny might have planned to ensure his sobriety by assigning a minder.

  Hank didn’t make the shows, but not because he was drinking. The operation was less than a total success, and Hank aggravated his condition by insisting upon being moved home on Christmas Eve. Audrey got upset at him for ignoring the doctors’ instructions and Hank threw a chair at her, which worsened his condition and necessitated another trip back to Vanderbilt. The house was thick with tension over Christmas, deeply at odds with the cheery family Christmas card Hank and Audrey circulated. Guns were waved and insults traded. Audrey’s sister Lynette came up from Banks to spend the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and she later said that Hank couldn’t understand why he was in so much pain after the operation. Audrey would occasionally disappear in the evening, topping up Hank’s jealousy, but he could only rail against it because he was in such pain. It was all he could do to move from the bedroom to the bathroom.

  Hank’s mood worsened when he realized that he would have to prerecord apologies to the Washington and Baltimore audiences. In effect, he was being asked to prove he wasn’t drunk. His voice was sad and muted. Here in part is what he said:

  On December the thirteenth, I had to have an operation that I’d been putting off for about a year. I had to have it because it finally got to where I couldn’t even walk on one leg hardly…. But when he started the operation, when the doctor got into my back he found a lot wrong that he hadn’t anticipated before, so naturally he had to go ahead and fix it all. I had what you call a spine fusion. I had two ruptured disks in my back. The first and second vetebrae was no good, it was just deformed or broken when I was a child, or wore out or something. He said he thought I’d rode a few too many hundred thousand miles in these automobiles. So he went ahead and fixed it, so after I came to, after the anesthetic wore off he told me it’d be impossible for me to be out of here before the first of February.

  So then me and Mister Denny at the station here, we tried to talk him into letting me take an airplane with a stretcher in it, and fly up to Washington and take an ambulance from there to Baltimore, but he wouldn’t go along with it, so he just finally said no.

  Denny arranged for Jimmie Davis to take Hank’s place, then arranged for Audrey to sing with the Drifting Cowboys and play Hank’s message for the fans. It wasn’t an easy trip for her. On Saturday, December 29, Audrey alleged that Hank physically attacked her. She moved herself and the kids to the Garretts, a family that had sold Hank a pony for Lycrecia. Then on Sunday afternoon she came back home to pack for the shows.

  There were three elderly women [that] came back home with me so I could get some clothes and fly to Washington. I just wanted to slip in and out. We were just easin’ around, and I knew he was there and very edgy, and as we were leaving the gun shot four times. I could hardly walk. I was scared to death. Thinking back, I don’t know if he was shooting at me, or wanting me to think that he was shooting at himself. Anyway, I went on to Washington, and New Year’s Eve night I called him and said, “Hank, I’ll never live with you another day.”

  Johnnie and Jack and Kitty Wells were in town that Christmas. They came to see Hank to ask for his help in getting them back on the Opry, and they arrived to find the screen door riddled with bullet holes and one of Hank’s guitars smashed to pieces out on the patio. According to Johnnie Wright, Hank had just found out about Audrey’s latest affair. He told Johnnie, “That busted my heart.” The troubles, according to Wright, had started when Audrey had said she was going out to buy Hank Jr. a Christmas present and had come back with nothing. Hank suspected that she had been fooling around and exploded.

  During the divorce proceedings, Audrey reiterated
the story that Hank had shot at her, but Hank vigorously denied it. Wright’s confirmation notwithstanding, the shotgun blasts were in keeping with Hank’s frame of mind at the time. They were also in keeping with his wayward use of firearms when he was drunk, angry, or in acute pain. And that night he was drunk and angry and in acute pain. The year-end issue of Billboard showed that “Cold, Cold Heart” was the top country song of the year and was number thirteen in the year-end tally of the pop charts, but that was no comfort at all.

  Chapter 13

  I’ve been a bad boy again.

  John Prine

  “A GOOD TIME ALL THE TIME”

  PRESUMABLY, it was at Audrey’s request that Hank moved out of the family home on January 3, 1952. His first stop was the Andrew Jackson Hotel. Don Helms visited him there. He told Don that he didn’t think he’d be going back this time — and how right he was. His next stop was Lilly’s boardinghouse. While he was there, he sent word to Lon asking him to come pick him up. Lon drove in from McWilliams, but just as he was parking he saw Hank being carried out of the boardinghouse on a stretcher, bound for St. Jude’s Hospital. Lon followed the ambulance, and when he got to the hospital he was told that Hank was unconscious. One of the doctors took Lon aside and told him that Hank had overdosed and would have to stay in the hospital until what he called “the dope” had been flushed from his system. Lilly said she couldn’t understand it; Hank had only had two beers and two aspirins all day. On January 13, Hank made a five-hundred-dollar donation to St. Jude’s. Perhaps that was the day he was released back into Lilly’s care.