Biography of Hank Williams

It is impossible to overstate the importance of Hank Williams to country music. Incredibly, that statement is as true today as it was during the peak of his career more than forty years ago. Both as a composer and a recording artist, Hank Williams has few peers. This is doubly impressive when one realizes that Williams was dead before his thirtieth birthday and his entire recording career spanned barely six years. It is easy to lose sight of this in terms of the sheer number of "greatest hits" left in his wake. Virtually every noteworthy country artist for the past forty years has recorded an album of Hank Williams songs, while tunes like "Your Cheatin' Heart" and "Cold Cold Heart" have frequently crossed musical boundaries and enriched the careers of distinctively non-hillbilly artists such as Tony Bennett and Ray Charles. Hank Williams's music is noteworthy for the quality of his songs and the emotional intensity of his performances. Both are truly timeless. Throughout the years, owners of the Hank Williams catalog have subjected it to a variety of indignities, such as vocal and instrumental overdubbing, to tart up the recordings for the marketplace. Undoubtedly, Williams's records work best just as they were made, which, after many years, is how they are again being released. It is perhaps in Hank Williams's midnight home recordings, which feature only vocal and acoustic guitar, that one best hears the harrowing emotional intensity of his work. Williams came by it honestly. His short life was filled with physical pain, substance abuse, and enough backwoods pathos to fuel a dozen TV movies. There is perhaps no greater indication of Hank Williams's appeal to new audiences than that forty years after his death virtually every song he recorded remains in Polygram's active catalog. The label continues to spend as much time repackaging and promoting his music as it does their hottest country acts, whose names will be lost in the mists of time while the Hank Williams catalog is being transferred to DAT, or whatever format changes the 21st century brings. ~ Hank Davis