by Colin Escott
Gleason was sufficiently intrigued to catch Hank in person that night at the San Pablo Hall. According to his account, the hall was a one-story white building. You parked in the mud, and inside the door there was a long room with a bandstand at one end and a bar in an annex at one side. Hank “had that thing,” wrote Gleason. “He made them scream when he sang. There were lots of those blondes you see at C&W affairs [with] the kind of hair that mother never had and nature never grew…guys looking barbershop neat but still with a touch of dust on them.” Hank appeared a little stoned between sets, didn’t remember Gleason from that morning, and was hanging out with a crowd of whiskey drinkers. But here at least, in a northern California beer hall, Hank was on his home turf. He was playing to exiled southerners and Okies, most of whom had come out to work in the munitions factories during the war. He understood them, and they understood him when he sang about getting back to pappy’s farm. They both knew it would never happen.
On April 16, Hank was feted by MGM Records distributors in Los Angeles and received an award. The following day, Hank and Wesley Rose went to see Dore Schary at MGM Pictures. Hank had been stalling since he’d signed the movie contract in September 1951, but now he could stall no longer. Things got off to a bad start when he wouldn’t take off his hat as he entered Dore Schary’s office. Schary was one of MGM Pictures’ production chiefs, and had what Rose later called a pompous and condescending manner. Hank had been drinking. He put his boots up on Schary’s desk, pulled his hat down over his eyes and answered all questions in monosyllables and grunts. Some said he made anti-Semitic remarks, too. Wesley’s accountant’s soul couldn’t comprehend this. When they got outside, he asked Hank for an explanation of his conduct. “You see this kid here,” said Hank, gesturing to a black shoe-shine boy, “this kid is more of a man than that guy in the office will ever be.”
Hank, whose inferiority complex often manifested itself in truculence, developed lightning antipathy toward anyone who was even ever so slightly condescending toward him. It’s possible that a chance remark from Schary brought all his resentment of the business end of the entertainment business from a simmer to a boil. It’s equally likely that Hank had already determined that he wasn’t going to make movies for MGM or anyone so he might as well put on an act for his own amusement. He had been given the script to a Jane Powell and Farley Granger movie called Small Town Girl, which was to start shooting right away, but the bulk and complexity of the script probably intimidated him to the point that he felt hopelessly out of his depth. He masked his fear with boorishness because the ol’ drifting cowboy couldn’t appear to be intimidated. Hank wasn’t the borderline illiterate that he has been made out to be — and sometimes made himself out to be — but bypassing minor roles and going straight to headlining was like going from college ball to the major leagues. Few were suited to such a transition; Hank wasn’t.
The following day, Hank resumed his California trek, touring cities populated by Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas émigrés. He was in Los Angeles at Tex Williams’ Riverside Rancho, and in Bakersfield and Oakland before flying back to New York for the second Kate Smith Evening Hour on April 23. Three days later, he was advertised as the headliner of an Opry show at Boston’s Symphony Hall, but no one remembers him appearing. From April 29 until May 2, he was on an Opry package in southeastern Texas. He swung from there into Ontario for a short Canadian tour in early May, trying to expunge the memories of the 1951 tour. Then he went to Texas, followed by Las Vegas. And then, on May 22, MGM Pictures wrote to him, requesting that he show up for work on June 16. Hank had already decided that he wouldn’t.
A little snapshot of the risks involved in booking Hank comes from Sergeant F. D. McMurry of the Beaumont, Texas, police department. In an attempt to raise funds, the Beaumont Police Benefit Association arranged for an Opry troupe led by Hank, Ernest Tubb, and Minnie Pearl to play there on April 29 as part of the swing along the Gulf coast. They arrived in Henry Cannon’s Beechcraft. Warning McMurry about Hank, Jim Denny had said, “If you take care of him, he’s yours.” Someone in the cast advised McMurry to keep watch over Hank to ensure that he remained sober until after the show. McMurry took the task upon himself, and like Gleason, he was amazed at the number and variety of pills that he took. “He had pills in his hat band, his guitar, pills everyplace,” said McMurry, who’d never seen anything like it.
The troupe arrived in the morning, and McMurry escorted them around to do some PR at the local stations, then took Hank out to his mother-in-law’s house for a meal. “Ol’ Hank sure did enjoy that,” said McMurry. “He said he didn’t get meals like that often. He stretched out on the couch, kicked his boots off. We took the pressure off of him.” Hank made the show that night at the Municipal Auditorium, and everyone loved him. It was a good night. He was still in fine form in Ontario a week later, showing off his operation scars and talking positively.
Starting May 16 for two weeks, Hank was supposed to play Vegas. Roy Acuff, who had done everything first, had tried to bring hillbilly music there without much success. Hank was booked into the Last Frontier’s Ramona Room, where he played second fiddle to an old vaudevillian, Willie Shore. Hank and a supporting Opry troupe were booked in connection with a western theme month, Helldorado, run by the Frontier and some other venues. No one had told the bookers that although Hank dressed like a western singing star and led a band called the Drifting Cowboys, he wasn’t a western act, and wasn’t likely to go over much better than Acuff.
Hank had hired Don Helms and Jerry Rivers for the trip, and the three of them drove out together. “The closer we got to Vegas, the more nervous he became,” said Helms. “We got there and checked in and the next day he was wiped out.” Jim Denny told Don and Jerry to hire two minders to watch Hank in alternating twelve-hour shifts. He was sober by show time, but with more reason to drink than on any recent trip. Hank felt ridiculed and out of place. As he peeked through the curtains, he knew it wasn’t going to work. Music in Vegas had a very specific function: it was supposed to lull sensibilities and provide a backdrop for dining and gambling. Some performers were born to play Vegas; some weren’t. The unsettling emotionalism in Hank Williams’ music was precisely what Vegas did not want. His five-piece band sounded thin, and his crowd wasn’t there. There was a room full of suits, ties, and dinner dresses. Those who had come especially to see him bought an overpriced fifty-cent Coke and nursed it until the end of the show, then left without staying to drink and gamble. Hank no more belonged there than Sammy Davis Jr. belonged at the Wagon Wheel in Opelika, Alabama. It was reported that none of Hank’s records were on the jukebox at the Last Frontier, so he ordered a jukebox from a local jobber, filled it with his own records, and hauled it to the showroom. “This one’s got some good records on it,” he said.
On the morning of May 23, Hank was awakened with a phone call from the Last Frontier’s booker. He was being canceled after one week, and comedian Ed Wynn was drafted in at short notice to take his place. “I could see a sigh of relief come over him,” said Helms. On the way out of town, they checked out Rex Allen’s show at the Thunderbird Lounge. Hank started drinking there, and he drank all the way back to Nashville. Don and Jerry drove in alternating shifts. Four years later, Vegas provided Elvis Presley with the first serious debacle of his career. It was a town without pity for those who didn’t understand it.
Hank now presented bookers with an acute dilemma. He was one of the biggest draws in country music, but the odds on his showing up sober or showing up at all were now no better than even. There was only one reason that Fred Rose, Jim Denny, MGM, and all other interested parties didn’t give up on him: he never struck out in the studio. “Baby, We’re Really in Love” was in the charts for fifteen weeks starting in December 1951, and it was followed in March 1952 by “Honky Tonk Blues,” which peaked at number two and stayed twelve weeks on the charts. “Honky Tonk Blues” was followed in May by “Half As Much,” which also peaked at number two and stayed around for four mon
ths. “Cold, Cold Heart” was still on the charts as 1952 dawned, and “Hey, Good Lookin’” had yet to drop from heavy rotation. The streak was alive.
On June 13, Hank went into the studio for a late morning session — his first for six months. He’d put off recording, holding out for a cash payment. With Sammy Pruett gone, Fred Rose contracted Chet Atkins for the session. Howard Watts was also unavailable, and Charles “Indian” Wright of the Willis Brothers / Oklahoma Wranglers band was drafted in to play bass. Wright had played on Hank’s very first session for Sterling almost five years earlier. There were four songs on the menu; the first was Marcel Joseph’s “Window Shopping.” Joseph was a French Jew who’d settled in New York in 1914; he developed a fascination with country music after hearing it on a New Jersey station. He wrote hundreds of songs, but “Window Shopping” was his only hit. By day, he was an illustrator at the Journal American. “Window Shopping” was just one verse and a chorus, and Rose obviously coached Hank on his diction because “window” was not “winn-der.”
Joseph was a fortunate man because “Window Shopping” got a free ride on the flip side of the next song recorded that day, “Jambalaya (on the Bayou).” Hank had worked on the song with singer-pianist Moon Mullican, who wasn’t a Cajun but had worked the eastern Texas and Gulf Coast honky-tonks since the 1930s. In a letter to Fred Rose just after the session, Hank directed that Mullican surreptitiously receive 25 percent of song’s publishing royalties. The ostensible reason was that Mullican was to record it, but that doesn’t ring true. If everyone who recorded a Hank Williams song got 25 percent of it, there would have been nothing left. It’s likelier that Mullican wrote at least some of the song. Mullican, though, was under contract to King Records and its publishing division, Lois Music; Rose paid him surreptitiously so that he wouldn’t have to split the music publishing with King. Mullican was trying hard to get off King, even conscripting Jim Denny to intercede on his behalf, but no one got out from under a King Records contract.
Most cajun songs are interbred, and the melody of “Jambalaya” came from Chuck Guillory’s 1946 recording of “Gran’ Texas.” It’s hard to know if Mullican’s recording of “Jambalaya” was made before or after Hank’s, but it’s quite different from Hank’s record, suggesting that either Fred Rose or Hank tinkered with the song after Mullican was through with it. Hank had already shown a passing familiarity with cajun culture on “Bayou Pon-Pon,” a song he’d written with Jimmie Davis, and there’s a sheet among his effects in which he phonetically transcribed the names of cajun foods. He loved the cajun areas of Louisiana because the cajuns offered a view of life that he desperately wished for himself. “He loved the carefree life [down there],” said Jerry Rivers. “He longed for it because he was not ever a carefree person. He took everything seriously.” He even seemed to take “Jambalaya”; seriously; his performance is dour and completely without sparkle. On live shows, Hank would deliver the song with some panache, but the record sounds enervated.
“Jambalaya” proved to be the Hank Williams song that crossed all musical boundaries to the point that it is no longer a country song. Fats Domino had a hit with it, John Fogerty had a hit with it, and every cajun and zydeco band is obliged to play it whether they want to or not. Its success is probably due to the fact that it isn’t really a cajun song. Ethnic music is usually unpalatable for a mass market unless it is diluted in some way (Harry Belafonte’s calypsos, Paul Simon’s Graceland… the list is endless). The broader audience related to “Jambayala” in a way that it could never relate to a true cajun two-step led by an asthmatic accordion and sung in patois.
The third item on the menu that morning was “Settin’ the Woods on Fire.” Like “Hey, Good Lookin’,” it pointed unerringly toward rockabilly. Although it sounded for all the world like a Hank Williams song, it was written by Fred Rose and an elderly New Yorker, Ed G. Nelson Sr., the writer of “In a Shady Nook by a Babbling Brook” and “When a Yankee Doodle Learns to Parlez-Vous Francais.” Nelson had written with Rose back in the mid-1930s and had been partly responsible for his conversion to Christian Science, but where the pair acquired the vocabulary of “Settin’ the Woods on Fire” is anybody’s guess. Once again, Hank sounded curiously lifeless.
The fourth song on the slate was “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive.” Too much has been made of its significance. It wasn’t number one on the day he died, although it shot to number one in the wake of his death. Were it not for the coincidence that it was on the market when he died, it would have been seen for no more than what it was: a novelty song, like “Howlin’ at the Moon” or “Mind Your Own Business.” The addition of Fred Rose to the composer credit suggests that Rose had to contribute more than usual. In fact, this was the only Hank Williams session in which there were no songs that were solely his own work.
It was a lackluster session in every way, and Hank’s physical appearance made a deep impression on Chet Atkins. “We recorded ‘I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive,’” he told Alanna Nash, “[and] after each take, he’d sit down in a chair. I remember thinking, ‘Hoss, you’re not just jivin’,’ because he was so weak that all he could do was just sing a few lines, and then just fall in the chair.” Atkins may have been exaggerating a little. Hank probably sat down to ease his back, but he certainly wasn’t in peak form that day.
By now, Frank Walker was sick of seeing Mitch Miller scoop Hank’s songs and transform them into pop hits, so he gave “Window Shopping” to one of his hottest properties, band leader Art Mooney, who recorded it on July 21. Walker then gave “Settin’ the Woods on Fire” to Fran Warren, whose version was released the same day as Hank’s, but he neglected “Jambalaya,” which Mitch Miller eagerly picked up and recorded with Jo Stafford. Miller also persuaded Stafford to duet with Frankie Laine on “Settin’ the Woods on Fire.” Once again, Miller got the hits; “Settin’ the Woods on Fire” went to number twenty-one on the pop charts, and “Jambalaya” went all the way to number two. And if Hank’s version of “Jambalaya” made only a passing nod toward cajun music, Stafford’s record didn’t make the connection at all; it was sung incongruously to a mambo rhythm. They were that clueless.
Right after the session, on June 16, Hank was due to report for work at MGM Pictures, but on June 17, MGM wrote to Hank in care of Fred Rose notifying him that “for good and sufficient cause, your employment…is terminated.” Presumably, Hank never showed up. As far as we know, he barely worked at all in June. There was probably an appearance in El Paso with Minnie Pearl, and for many years Minnie told the same story with slight variations, usually referring to Hank as “ill” or “sick” rather than drunk. On an MGM Records documentary she said,
The boys were worried that Hank was ill and unable to perform. They kinda insisted that he perform, and it made me unhappy. Then I walked backstage, and they were bringing him up the steps, and the look he had on his face was of such implication that I never will forget it. He said, “Minnie, I can’t work. I can’t work, Minnie. Tell ’em.” I had no authority. They went ahead, and he worked and it was bad. A. V. Bamford told me to stay with him between shows. He said, “He may listen to you. You may be able to keep him from getting any worse than he is.” Maxine Bamford and Hank and me and someone else drove around with him. This was between shows, and we were trying to keep him from getting anything else that would make him get in worse shape than he was. We started singing. He was all hunkered down, looking out of the side of the car singing. He was singing, “I Saw the Light,” then he stopped and he turned around, and his face broke up and he said, “Minnie, I don’t see no light. There ain’t no light.”
Hank’s self-defeating conduct stemmed in part from his perception that he was being marketed as a commodity. He was sent here and there to fly the flag for country music in general and the Grand Ole Opry in particular. The comfort and joy he’d once drawn from checking the charts diminished now that he came to see himself as commodified. Never especially forthcoming, he withdrew all the more now
that Audrey was gone, but still needed the constant distraction of people around him. On a night when he found himself home alone on Natchez Trace, he would phone all around the country trying to find Ray Price or someone else to talk to. Fame seems to carry with it an inability to be alone, or to be yourself without an audience, and the Hank Williams who encountered himself on Natchez Trace didn’t like the company he found.
What makes the evidence of Hank’s dissolution almost unbelievable is that he could still exercise restraint over his drinking when he absolutely had to. The Kate Smith Evening Hour appearances show a rivetingly on-form performer. Hank was intent, focused, and every inch the star. He stared at the cameras during his performance of “Cold, Cold Heart” with a cockiness and self-confidence that bordered on arrogance. His dark Indian eyes were burning and utterly alive in the moment. The rhinestones on his jacket glistened in the television lights, and the fringe swayed in time with the music. When he dueted with Anita Carter on “I Can’t Help It (if I’m Still in Love with You),” she seemed terribly in awe of him, perhaps even in love with him. Smith herself was patronizing. Struggling hard to find something to say, she mentioned the Opry’s “nice” dancing and “good, wholesome” entertainment. It’s hard to know how many people saw Hank and the Opry troupe. The Kate Smith Evening Hour on NBC ran only from September 1951 to June 1952; it went head-to-head with Arthur Godfrey, and lost.