Behind the Grand Ole Opry Curtain

by Grand Ole Opry

  In 1943–1948, Hank performed on WFSA in Montgomery, Alabama. He also sang in some of the roughest roadhouses in the state.

  “My friends who grew up with Hank down there told me about when they went to work with Hank,” Jerry Rivers remembered. “He went into a pawn shop and bought everybody in the band a blackjack. He said, ‘If you’re gonna work with me, you’ll need that a lot more than you will your guitar.’ So that tells you something there about the atmosphere that Hank had to work in.”

  Audrey constantly looked for ways to get them out of Montgomery and into the big time. On September 14, 1946, they took the train to Nashville so that Hank could audition for songwriter/publisher/producer Fred Rose. Fred signed Hank as a staff songwriter for Acuff-Rose Publishing and got him a recording contract with a small label called Sterling Records. In 1947, Fred moved Hank up to the larger MGM Records. “Move it on Over” became Hank’s first hit later that year. As Audrey had hoped, it got them out of Montgomery and secured him a cast position at the Louisiana Hayride, which was broadcast from Shreveport, Louisiana, by the powerful signal of KWKH.

  “When Hank Williams came to the Louisiana Hayride [in 1948], I didn’t know at the time that he was a drinker,” recalls singer Johnny Wright. “His wife Audrey was pregnant. I guess they must have got into an argument. He tore up everything in the house, broke the furniture, the lamps, and everything. So she called my wife [Kitty Wells] and asked if she’d come over and stay the night. Hank was on one of his big sprees. So Kitty and I went over there and spent the night with them. Hank had gotten into Audrey’s nerve pills. So I had to sleep with Hank that night, and my wife slept with Audrey. He’d stay on that drinking for about a week before you could get him off it.”

  “People talked about this young man from Montgomery, Alabama, who was absolutely stealing shows away from all the greats of that era,” recalled singer-songwriter Merle Kilgore (1934–2005). “He had a slight little problem. That is, he liked to drink. He was a teenage drunk. They said he was coming down to see if he could work for a year in Shreveport, and then the Grand Ole Opry would consider him. He had a record out, ‘Move it on Over,’ that was played quite a bit. He had an early-morning show [on KWKH]. A teenage drunk—I’d never seen one of those. I wanted to meet this guy, so I was there waiting. About 5:30 in the morning, here came an old car. This guy got out. He had a white suit on. I said, ‘You Hank Williams?’ He said, ‘Who are you?’ I said, ‘My name is Merle. The elevators don’t work, and you have to carry your own instruments up. I’d like to carry your guitar.’ He looked at me and said, ‘Grab it, hoss.’

  “I remember his wife Audrey was with him, and she was pregnant with Hank Williams Jr. I said, ‘Are you going to sing?’ She said, ‘You’re not kidding! I’ll be singing right on the show today.’ I remember Hank looking at me real funny, like he didn’t want this to happen. But there she was, every morning.”

  Randall Hank Williams (Hank Williams Jr.) was born on May 26, 1949. Two weeks later, his father made the most spectacular Grand Ole Opry debut in history. Hank’s success at the Louisiana Hayride and further hits like “Honky Tonkin’” and “Mansion on the Hill” led to his invitation to perform on the Opry on June 11, 1949. He sang his new record, “Lovesick Blues,” and created pandemonium.

  “I was in the audience,” recalled Porter Wagoner. “It was electrifying. I think I was, like, fourteen years old. My sister and brother-in-law brought me down to Nashville [from Missouri]. My sister said, ‘You know what would make this trip perfect? If Hank Williams was going to be on there.’ I said, ‘Well, he’s not a member [of the Opry] yet.’ But, God, I loved his music. We got in line early that day. We got a program, and it said, ‘Special Guest Hank Williams.’ And I lit up. I couldn’t believe it, man. That night, I couldn’t wait to see him come on. And then it was like a storm. People were just ecstatic. It was probably one of the most moving moments that I can remember. We were sitting behind this post, and I had a stiff neck the next day. It was wonderful, a great evening.”

  Between 1949 and 1952, Hank had twenty-seven smash hits, including “Cold, Cold Heart,” “Hey Good Lookin’,” and “Jambalaya.” He eclipsed such established superstars as Roy Acuff, Eddy Arnold, and Bob Wills.

  “Hank Williams was country music’s first superstar,” stated Jerry Rivers. “When we went to New York City to do a few of the showcase shows—Kate Smith’s show, Perry Como’s show—and I walked down 5th Avenue and out of one of the many camera shops, gimmick shops, along Times Square, I heard Hank Williams singin’ ‘Cold, Cold Heart’ on a radio station or a record they were playing, and I thought, ‘Hank Williams is known on Times Square, I can’t believe that.’”

  “He was on the Hadacol show,” remembered former Opry bass player Buddy Killen about a tour sponsored by that patent medicine. “All the big stars in the country would get on the train, called the Hadacol Train, and they’d go around and play football stadiums. They had Bob Hope and Milton Berle and so many of the big pop stars of the day were on that show. Hank encored eight times in a row, and Bob Hope went back to the manager of the show and said, ‘I will not go on after that hillbilly again. You put me on first.’ That’s how much of an impact that Hank had.”

  “I don’t guess anybody can define charisma,” mused former Opry steel guitarist Joe Talbot. “Whatever it is, he had it. I watched him work back in those days. He just absolutely laid the people out flat.”

  Jimmie Dickens reminisces, “I suppose I was as close to him as most people. He was a very moody person, and his moods changed quite a bit. You’d be talkin’ to him once, he’d be laughin’. Then the next thing you’d know, Hank Williams would be in deep thought about something. But we were friends. We went rabbit huntin’ with beagle dogs, and we went fishin’ together. We’d go to one another’s house and just visit. We’d sit around and talk, but not about country music. Just visiting.”

  “I met him when I first came to Nashville in 1950, and he was hot as a firecracker,” recalled Chet Atkins. “I remember I was impressed by how slender he was and how dark his eyes were. He had real dark eyes. In a few days, he came to me and said, ‘Fred Rose says you write songs. We should get together and try to write one.’ We did, but I was too awestruck by his stardom and everything. We tried to write a couple of songs, and nothing happened. But he would come up and say, ‘Hey, hoss, listen to this.’

  “You could smell the bourbon on his breath, and he’d sing ‘Jambalaya’ or one of those new songs he’d written. He was always nice to me, but he was pretty cruel to some of the people who turned down his songs. I remember he once played a song for Hank Snow, and Hank didn’t like it. So he told Mr. Snow he could do some impossible physical things to himself. His songs were his babies.

  “He was this funny guy, too. People think of Hank as being somber and writing all these sad songs, but he was very funny. He had some great comebacks. I guess he patterned himself in conversation a lot like Freddy Rose, because Freddy had a lot of great retorts. He was sharp as a razor, and Hank tried to be like that. A very funny fellow, I thought, and you never read that or hear about it.”

  “Hank was not actually a drunk,” observed Drifting Cowboys bass player Hillous Butrum. “He was an alcoholic, ’cause he would go for months at a time and never take a drink. I’ve seen Hank buy the booze, but he’d sit there and drink a Coca-Cola because, he said, ‘You know what would happen to me. If I take one drink, you all would wind up havin’ to haul me on the rest of the tour.’ And this would be what would happen, because he couldn’t take one drink and leave it alone. He would just keep drinkin’ ’til he completely knocked himself out. So then we’d go to an auditorium and pour coffee down him and get him straightened up to do a show. Then we’d come back to Nashville, put him in the hospital, and he’d dry out. Then he’d go for months and never take a drink.”

  But Hank’s periods of sobriety became more and more infrequent. Everything began to unravel in 1952. He was recovering from a back operation as the
year began and was dosing himself with pain medication. Unable to pay his band, he let The Drifting Cowboys go. He moved out of his house in January, probably at a fed-up Audrey’s insistence. For a time, he shared a house with Ray Price, who was then emerging with his first hits “Talk to Your Heart” and “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes.”

  “When Hank and I met, it was one of those instant-friendship things,” Ray recalls. “He took me to the Grand Ole Opry the next day, and then we went to Evansville, Indiana, and wrote ‘Weary Blues from Waitin’’ together. We became very dear friends, close friends. I lived with Hank for almost a year before he moved [back] to Louisiana. Hank was my best friend, and he’s the one that got me on the Grand Ole Opry. The house we shared is still there,” a stone bungalow at the corner of Natchez Trace and Ashwood Avenue in West Nashville.

  Hank traveled with The Carter Sisters, Mother Maybelle Carter, Roy Acuff, and Chet Atkins to appear on Kate Smith’s TV program in New York. The shows were on March 26 and April 9, 1952. These shows are the only quality footage we have of Hank in performance.

  As 1952 wore on, Hank began showing up drunk at shows more and more often, or not showing up at all. His reputation for un-reliability meant that fewer and fewer people would take a chance on booking him to perform. When Audrey’s divorce became final on July 10, 1952, Hank spent several days drinking relentlessly. Ray Price and Drifting Cowboys band member Don Helms arranged for him to be sedated and committed to a sanatorium. While he was gone, Ray moved out.

  During his final year, Hank had an affair with a Nashville woman named Bobbie Jett. Then he took up with Faron Young’s girlfriend, Louisiana native Billie Jean Jones. He went on another bender in August. As a result, he was dismissed from the Opry.

  “I was there when he got fired,” recalls Johnny Wright. “[Opry manager] Jim Denny called him and told him he was gonna have to leave the Opry. So Hank told him, ‘Hell, you can’t dismiss me—I’ve already quit.’ Jim Denny said, ‘Johnny, come by up here, and I will give you a check. He’s got a little check coming.’ So we loaded up everything Hank owned in his little Drifting Cowboys trailer. Kitty [Wells] and I had a ’51 model Chrysler limousine. We put the reclining chair in the back, put Hank up in that chair, stretched him out, and took him home to Montgomery,” towing the trailer.

  “When we stopped at WSM [to pick up the check], Owen Bradley and Roy Acuff were up there. So they went down to my car to tell Hank good-bye. Then we stopped at a liquor store at 16th and Broadway. Hank wanted to get that check cashed and get him a fifth of whiskey. Hank’s mother ran a boardinghouse in Montgomery. She met us at the door. We took him in, pulled his pants off, put his pajamas on, and put him to bed. The next time we saw Hank, he was back working at the Louisiana Hayride.”

  Fred Rose had come to Hank’s rescue again by persuading the Louisiana Hayride to take him back. Hank married Billie Jean on the show’s stage on October 19, 1952. Around this same time, he began to complain to Hayride performer Red Sovine that he was having chest pains. Hank’s self-prescription was to take more drugs and drink more alcohol. During a December tour in Texas, Hank reportedly either overdosed or had a small heart attack or two. His time was running out.

  Then came that winter ride down the “Lost Highway,” to borrow a title from one of Hank’s most chilling songs. Two days after Hank’s burial in Montgomery’s Oakwood Cemetery, Bobbie Jett gave birth to a daughter. The girl learned of her parentage as an adult and now performs as Jett Williams. Hank’s son is superstar Hank Williams Jr. Grandchildren Holly Williams, Hillary Williams, and Hank Williams III are also singers.

  In the aftermath of one of the greatest tragedies in music history, Hank had a string of posthumous hits. Indeed, “Kaw-Liga,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” and “Take These Chains from My Heart” remain some of his best-loved songs. As recently as 1989, he was on the charts and winning awards for “There’s a Tear in My Beer,” recorded as a “duet” with Hank Jr. A historical boxed set of his timeless recordings won two Grammy Awards in 1998. In 2008, Hank’s radio broadcasts were released on compact discs, and his legendary family became the subject of a huge exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame.

  Since his death, more than 250 tribute songs have been recorded about him. They include “The Night Hank Williams Came to Town” by Johnny Cash (1987), “The Ride” by David Allan Coe (1983), “Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life” by Moe Bandy (1965), and “Midnight in Montgomery” by the Opry’s Alan Jackson (1992).

  “It just felt like a little part of us died when Hank went,” said June Carter Cash wistfully. “He was a great talent. We all grieved for Hank Williams.”

  SOURCES

  Chapter 1: Johnny and June

  Johnny Cash, interviews with Robert K. Oermann, July 1999, September 1994, April 1987.

  June Carter Cash, interviews with Robert K. Oermann, July 1999, September 1994.

  Cindy Cash, The Cash Family Scrapbook (New York: Crow Trade Paperbacks, 1997).

  Johnny Cash, Man in Black (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1975).

  Johnny Cash with Patrick Carr, Cash: The Autobiography (New York: HarperCollins, 1997).

  June Carter Cash, Among My Klediments (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1979).

  Marshall Grant with Chris Zar, I Was There When It Happened: My Life with Johnny Cash (Nashville: Cumberland House, 2006).

  Peter Lewry, A Johnny Cash Chronicle: I’ve Been Everywhere (London: Helter Skelter, 2001).

  Stephen Miller, Johnny Cash: The Life of an American Icon (London: Omnibus Press, 2003).

  Michael Streissguth, Johnny Cash: The Biography (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2006).

  Steve Turner, The Man Called Cash (Nashville: W Publishing, 2004).

  Hugh Waddell, compiler, I Still Miss Someone (Nashville: Cumberland House, 2004).

  Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshberg, Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone: The Carter Family & Their Legacy in American Music (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002).

  Chapter 2: The Stringbean Murders

  Anonymous, “Stringbean Buried Near Other Stars,” The Nashville Banner, November 14, 1973.

  Birthplace of Country Music Alliance, “David ‘Stringbean’ Akeman” online biographical entry, 2007.

  Buddy Lee Attractions, The Kentucky Wonder Stringbean promotional biography (Nashville: Buddy Lee Attractions, 1971).

  Warren B. Causey, The Stringbean Murders (Nashville: Quest Publishers, 1975).

  Cousin Wilbur with Barbara M. McLean and Sandra S. Grafton, Everybody’s Cousin (New York: Manor Books, 1979).

  Bruce Eder, “Stringbean” online biographical entry on Allmusic.com, 2007.

  Find a Grave, “David ‘Stringbean’ Akeman” online entry, 2007.

  Linnell Gentry, A History and Encyclopedia of Country, Western and Gospel Music (Nashville: Clairmont Corp., 1969).

  Bill Hance, “Shoe Box Banjo Start for ‘String,’” The Nashville Banner, November 14, 1973.

  Stacy Harris, “Stringbean Went a Lot Further,” The Tennessean, November 13, 1973.

  Louis M. “Grandpa” Jones with Charles K. Wolfe, Everybody’s Grandpa: Fifty Years Behind the Mike (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984).

  Patricia Lynch Kimbro, “23 Years Later, Stringbean’s $20,000 Found,” The Nashville Banner, January 27, 1997.

  Colin Larkin, The Virgin Encyclopedia of Country Music (London: Virgin Books, 1998).

  Sam Lovullo and Marc Eliot, Life in the Kornfield: My 25 Years at Hee Haw (New York: Boulevard Books, 1996).

  Barry McCloud et al., Definitive Country (New York: Perigee Trade, 1995).

  John C. McLemore, “The Time Grandpa Jones Outwitted Perry Mason,” The Tennessean, March 5, 1998.

  Linda A. Moore, “Stringbean’s Stash a Mouse Nest?” The Tennessean, January 28, 1997.

  Musicweb Encyclopaedia of Popular Music, “Stringbean,” biographical entry, 2005.

  Randall Riese, Nashville Babylon (New York: Congdon & Weed,
1988).

  Jeff Rovin, Country Music Babylon (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993).

  Richard D. Smith, Can’t You Hear Me Callin’: The Life of Bill Monroe, Father of Bluegrass (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2000).

  Starday Records, Stringbean and His Banjo: A Salute to Uncle Dave Macon album liner notes (Nashville: Gusto Records, 1976).

  Phil Sullivan, “More Than a Name,” The Tennessean, April 1, 1962.

  Wikipedia, “David ‘Stringbean’ Akeman” online encyclopedia entry, 2007.

  Chapter 3: A Lesson in Leavin’

  Jan Howard interview with Robert K. Oermann, July 1993.

  Wayne Oliver interview with Robert K. Oermann, July 1991.

  Jeannie Seeley interview with Robert K. Oermann, July 1993.

  Dottie West interviews with Robert K. Oermann, August 1990, November 1984, May 1983, April 1983.

  Shelly West interview with Robert K. Oermann, July 1993.

  Jim Albrecht, “The Wild West,” CountryStyle, May 1981.

  Michael Bane, “Dottie West: Country’s Singing Swinger!” Oui, January 1983.

  Judy Berryhill and Frances Meeker, Country Sunshine: The Dottie West Story (Nashville: Eggman Publishing, 1995).

  Mary A. Bufwack and Robert K. Oermann, Finding Her Voice: Women in Country Music (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003).

  Scott Cain, “Dottie West: Happy Again,” Atlanta Journal, April 17, 1981.

  Rochelle Carter and Robert K. Oermann, “Trustee Seeks Out Dottie West Stash,” The Tennessean, March 28, 1991.

  Carol Davis and Sharon Curtis-Flair, “West Services Set for Saturday,” The Nashville Banner, September 5, 1991.

  Lois Ann Eagleston, “Events Leading to Dottie West Crash Pieced Together,” The Tennessean, September 4, 1991.

  Laura Eipper, “Country Music Warms Icy North,” The Tennessean, April 2, 1978.

  Thomas Goldsmith, “Fans, Friends Celebrate West’s Life,” The Tennessean, September 8, 1991.

  Thomas Goldsmith, “Stars She Befriended Mourn Dottie,” The Tennessean, September 5, 1991.