Hiram “Hank” Williams was born poor in rural Alabama, saw little of his father growing up, and learned to play guitar while still a child from a black bluesman who played on the street. By 13 Williams was playing his songs and hosting a regular weekly Montgomery radio show and soon dropped out of school to form a band, the Drifting Cowboys. In 1944 Hank married an aspiring singer, Audrey, who encouraged Williams in his musical ambitions. 1947 brought Hank his first recorded success, “Move It On Over”, an early rockabilly number. In 1949 his cover of “Lovesick Blues” was a national sensation and Hank was on his way.

         For the next four years, Williams dominated the country & western charts with such soon to be classics as “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”; “Cold, Cold Heart”; “Hey Good Lookin’; “Jambalaya”; “Your Cheatin’ Heart”, and more. The media began referring to him as country music’s first superstar and the “Hillbilly Shakespeare,” but Williams, who had drank heavily since his youth, had begun to go into a tailspin by late ’51. He’d taken a nasty fall, aggravating an already bad back, tried an unsuccessful medical procedure to address the problem, and then turned to morphine and other painkillers on top of the alcohol to numb the pain. He began missing shows or turned up to perform drunk.

         On December 30, 1952 he got in the back seat of his powder blue Cadillac to drive through an ice storm to a show in West Virginia. Coping with his pain, he was drinking, using chloral hydrate and morphine. Before dawn on January 1, his hired driver realized he was dead- his heart had simply given out at the tender age of 29. Partly because of his sad and lonely demise, Williams is today a tragic mythic figure, but still it his music, above all, that makes him an immortal. 

         -Steve Williams (5/29/23) – Greatest Recording Artists Blog Post #14