Hiram King “Hank” Williams: September 17, 1923–January 1, 1953

✪ Hiram King “Hank” Williams was an American singer-songwriter. He is regarded as one of the most significant and influential American singers and songwriters of the 20th century. Williams recorded 55 singles that reached the top 10 of the Billboard Country & Western Best Sellers chart, five of which were released posthumously, and 12 of which reached No.1.

Williams established the rules for all the country performers who followed him and, in the process, much of popular music. The Country Music Hall of Fame stressed that Williams “set the agenda for contemporary country songcraft” and the “standard by which success is measured in country music.” Encyclopædia Britannica considers him “country music’s first superstar” and an “immensely talented songwriter and an impassioned vocalist.” The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame praised the “straightforward approach” of Williams’ songs, which they deemed “brutally honest” and written in the “language of the everyman.”

Hank Williams was born Hiram Williams on September 17, 1923, in the rural community of Mount Olive in Butler County, Alabama. He was the third child of Jessie Lillybelle “Lillie” (née Skipper; 1898–1955) and Elonzo Huble “Lon” Williams (1891–1970). Williams was of English and Welsh ancestry. Elonzo’s family came from south and central Alabama and his father fought during the American Civil War, first on the Confederate side; and then with the Union after he was captured. Elonzo worked as a railroad engineer for the W. T. Smith Lumber Company and was drafted during World War I, serving from July 1918 to June 1919. He suffered severe injuries after he fell from a truck, breaking his collarbone and receiving a severe blow to the head.

The Williams’ first child, Ernest Huble Williams, died two days after his birth on July 5, 1921. A daughter, Irene, was born a year later. Williams was named after Hiram I of the Book of Kings. His name was accidentally misspelled as “Hiriam” on his birth certificate, which was prepared and signed when he was 10 years old. Williams was born with spina bifida occulta, a birth defect of the spinal column which caused him lifelong pain and would later become a major factor in his alcohol and drug abuse.

At the age of three, Williams sat with his mother as she played the organ at the Mount Olive Baptist Church. Lillie also joined singing the hymns that influenced the singer’s later compositions. Williams received his first musical instrument, a harmonica, at the age of six. As a child, he was nicknamed “Harm” by his family and “Herky” or “Skeets” by his friends.

Williams’ father frequently relocated for work, and as a result the family lived in several southern Alabama towns. In 1930, when Williams was seven years old, Elonzo began experiencing facial paralysis. After being evaluated at a Veterans Affairs clinic in Pensacola, Florida, doctors determined that he had a brain aneurysm, and Elonzo was sent to the VA Medical Center in Alexandria, Louisiana. He remained hospitalized there for eight years and was mostly absent throughout Williams’ childhood. From that point on, Lillie assumed complete responsibility for the family.

In the fall of 1933, Williams was sent to live with his aunt and uncle, Walter and Alice McNeil, in Fountain, Alabama. Their daughter, Opal, went in exchange to live with Lillie to attend school in Georgiana, Alabama. Williams learned to play basic guitar chords from his aunt and listened to music that was played at dances and in area churches. The following year, the Williams family moved to Greenville, Alabama, where Lillie opened a boarding house next to the local cotton gin. The family later returned with Opal McNeil to Georgiana, where Lillie took several side jobs to support the family despite the bleak economic climate of the Great Depression. She worked in a cannery and served as a night-shift nurse in the local hospital. Their first house burned down, and the family lost their possessions. They moved to Rose Street on the other side of town, into a house which Williams’ mother soon turned into another boarding house. The house had a small garden in which they grew diverse crops that Williams and his sister Irene sold around Georgiana. At a chance meeting in Georgiana, Williams’ sister Irene met U.S. Representative J. Lister Hill while Hill was campaigning across Alabama. She told Hill that her mother was interested in talking to him about her problems. With Hill’s help, the family began collecting Elonzo’s disability pension. Despite his medical condition, the family managed fairly well financially throughout the Great Depression.

There are several versions of how Williams got his first guitar. While several prominent Georgiana residents later claimed to have bought it for him, his mother said she bought it for him and that she arranged for his first lessons. Williams told Ralph Gleason, who at the time was writing a weekly music column in the San Francisco Chronicle, “When I was about eight years old, I got my first git-tar. A second-hand $3.50 git-tar my mother bought me.” Gawky and shy, Williams attached himself to an old black man, Rufus “Tee-Tot” Payne, a street performer whom Williams followed around town. Payne gave Williams guitar lessons in exchange for money or meals prepared by Lillie. Williams later credited him as the provider of the only musical training he ever had. Payne’s basic musical style was blues; he repeatedly stressed the importance of maintaining good rhythm and time; and he added the showmanship of stoops, bows, laughs and cries to his performances. Later on, Williams recorded “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in I,” one of the songs Payne had taught him. Williams was also greatly influenced by other country acts such as Roy Acuff.

In July 1937, the Williams and McNeils opened a boarding house on South Perry Street in downtown Montgomery. It was at this time that Williams decided to change his name informally from Hiram to Hank. During the same year, he participated in a talent show at the Empire Theater and won the first prize of US$15 singing his first original song “WPA Blues.”

Hank never learned to read music. Instead, he based his compositions in storytelling and personal experience. After school and on weekends, Williams sang and played his Silvertone guitar on the sidewalk in front of the WSFA radio studio. His recent win at the Empire Theater and the street performances caught the attention of WSFA producers who occasionally invited him to perform on air with Dad Crysel’s band.

Williams’ successful radio show fueled his entry into a music career, and he started his own band for show dates, the Drifting Cowboys. Originally billed as “Hank and Hezzy and the Drifting Cowboys,” they frequently appeared as fill-ins at the local dancehall, Thigpen’s Log Cabin, just out of Georgiana. The band traveled throughout central and southern Alabama performing in clubs and at private gatherings.

Williams dropped out of school in October 1939 so that he and the Drifting Cowboys could work full-time. Lillie Williams began booking show dates, negotiating prices and driving them to some of their shows. Now free to travel without deference to Williams’ schooling, the band could tour as far away as western Georgia and the Florida Panhandle. The band started playing in theaters before the screening of films and later they played in honky-tonks. Williams’ alcohol use started to become a problem during the tours; on occasion he spent a large part of the show revenues on alcohol. Meanwhile, between tour schedules, Williams returned to Montgomery to host his radio show.

The American entry into World War II in 1941 marked the beginning of hard times for Williams. While he was medically disqualified from military service after falling from a bull during a rodeo in Texas and suffering a back injury. His band members were all drafted to serve. Many of their replacements quit the band due to Williams’ worsening alcoholism, and in August 1942 WSFA fired him for “habitual drunkenness.” Backstage during one of his concerts, Williams met Roy Acuff, who warned him of the dangers of alcohol, saying, “You’ve got a million-dollar voice, son, but a ten-cent brain.”

Williams started a job as a shipfitter’s helper for the Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company at Mobile in 1942, working there off and on for about a year and a half during the war. He also worked briefly at Kaiser Shipyards in Portland, Oregon, apparently lured by the free tickets, free accommodations, free training, and good wages offered by the company.

In 1943, Williams met Audrey Sheppard at a medicine show in Banks, Alabama. According to Sheppard, she and Williams lived in a hotel in Mobile while they worked together at the shipyard for a short while. On December 15, 1944, Williams married Sheppard at a Texaco gas station in Andalusia, Alabama, by a justice of the peace. . It was her second marriage and his first. Their son, Randall Hank Williams (now known as Hank Williams Jr.), was born on May 26, 1949. The marriage was always turbulent and rapidly disintegrated as Williams developed serious problems with alcohol, morphine, and other painkillers prescribed for him to ease the severe back pain caused by his spina bifida occulta. The couple eventually divorced on May 29, 1952.

Sheppard told Williams that she wanted to help him regain his radio show, and that they should move to Montgomery and start a band.

In 1945, back in Montgomery, Williams returned to WSFA radio. He attempted to expand his repertoire by writing original songs and he published his first songbook, Original Songs of Hank Williams, containing “I’m Not Coming Home Anymore” and several more original songs, nine in all, including one not written by him, “A Tramp on the Street.”

On September 14, 1946, Williams auditioned for Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry at the recommendation of Ernest Tubb, but was rejected.

They approached Fred Rose, the president of the Rose-Acuff Music Company, during one of his daily ping-pong games at WSM radio studios. Audrey asked Rose if her husband could sing a song for him at that moment, Rose agreed, and perceived that Williams had much promise as a songwriter. Rose signed Williams to a six-song contract, and leveraged this deal to sign Williams with Sterling Records. On December 11, 1946, in his first recording session, Williams recorded “Wealth Won’t Save Your Soul, Calling You, Never Again (Will I Knock on Your Door)” and “When God Comes and Gathers His Jewels.” The Sterling releases of Williams’ songs became successful, and Rose decided to find a larger label for future releases. The producer then approached the newly formed recording division of the Loews Corporation, MGM Records.

Williams signed with MGM Records in 1947 and released “Move It on Over,” which became a country hit. In 1948, Williams moved to Shreveport, Louisiana, and joined the Louisiana Hayride, a radio show broadcast on KWKH that brought him into living rooms all over the Southeastern United States, appearing in weekend shows.

After a few more moderate hits, in 1949 he released his version of the 1922 Cliff Friend and Irving Mills song “Lovesick Blues,” made popular by Rex Griffin. Williams’ version was a hit and the song stayed at number one on the Billboard charts for four consecutive months. Following the success of the releases of “Lovesick Blues” and “Wedding Bells,” Williams signed a management contract with Oscar Davis. Davis then booked the singer on a Grand Ole Opry package show, and he later negotiated Williams’ induction into the musical troupe

On June 11, 1949, Williams made his debut at the Grand Ole Opry, where he received six encores. That year Audrey Williams gave birth to Randall Hank Williams (Hank Williams Jr.). During 1949, he joined the Grand Ole Opry’s first European tour, performing in military bases in Germany and Austria.

By 1950, Williams earned an estimated $1,000 per show. That year, he also began recording as “Luke the Drifter” for his moral-themed songs, many of which are recitations rather than singing. Fred Rose had been concerned how it would affect the jukebox operators who serviced the machines at the honky-tonks where William’s songs were most commonly played if a customer punched a “Hank Williams” selection on a jukebox and heard a sermon rather than the music expected. It was he who requested that Hank use a pseudonym for these recitations to avoid leading the public astray. Although the real identity of Luke the Drifter was supposed to be unknown, Williams often performed part of the recorded material on stage. Most of the material was written by Williams himself.

The songs depicted Luke the Drifter traveling around from place to place, narrating stories of different characters and philosophizing about relationships gone awry, injustice in society and death.

In 1951, “Dear John” became a hit, but it was the B-side, “Cold, Cold Heart,” that became one of his most recognized songs. A pop cover version by Tony Bennett released the same year stayed on the charts for 27 weeks, peaking at number one.

Williams’ career reached a peak in the late summer of 1951 with his Hadacol tour of the U.S. with Bob Hope and other actors. On the weekend after the tour ended, Williams was photographed backstage at the Grand Ole Opry signing a motion picture deal with MGM.

The following month, MGM Records released Williams’ debut album, Hank Williams Sings. On November 14, 1951, Williams drove with Bill Lister and the Drifting Cowboys to New York where he appeared on television for the first time with Perry Como on CBS’s Perry Como Show. There he sang “Hey Good Lookin'” and the next week Como opened the show wearing a cowboy hat and singing the same song, with apologies to Williams.

On May 21, 1951, Williams was admitted to North Louisiana Sanitarium in Shreveport for treatment of his alcoholism and his back problem, and was released on May 24. In November of the same year, he fell trying to leap across a gully on a squirrel hunting trip with his fiddler Jerry Rivers in Franklin, Tennessee. The fall aggravated his congenital spinal condition and on December 13, 1951, he underwent a spinal fusion operation at Vanderbilt University Hospital. He was discharged against medical advice on Christmas Eve wearing a back brace and consuming more painkillers, to the detriment of his already compromised health.

In the spring of 1952, Williams flew to New York City twice with his band and a Grand Ole Opry troupe to appear on two episodes of the nationally broadcast The Kate Smith Evening Hour. On March 26, he performed “Hey Good Lookin'” and joined the rest of the cast in singing “I Saw the Light.” On April 23, he performed “Cold, Cold Heart” and sang a truncated “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You)” with Anita Carter, and later joined the cast in singing “Glory Bound Train.”

In June 1952, he recorded “Jambalaya (On the Bayou), Window Shopping, Settin’ the Woods on Fire” and “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive.” On August 11, 1952, Williams was dismissed from the Grand Ole Opry for habitual drunkenness and missing shows. He returned to Shreveport to perform on KWKH and WBAM shows and in the Louisiana Hayride, for which he toured again. His performances were acclaimed when he was sober, but despite the efforts of his work associates to get him to shows sober, his abuse of alcohol resulted in occasions when he did not appear or his performances were poor.

After Audrey Williams divorced him that year; the next day he recorded “You Win Again” and “I Won’t Be Home No More.”

During his last recording session on September 23, 1952, Williams recorded “Kaw-Liga,” along with “Your Cheatin’ Heart, Take These Chains from My Heart” and “I Could Never Be Ashamed of You.” By the end of 1952, Williams started to have heart problems. He met Horace “Toby” Marshall in Oklahoma City, who said that he was a doctor. Marshall had been previously convicted for forgery, and had been paroled and released from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in 1951. Among other fake titles, he said that he was a Doctor of Science.

Under the name of Dr. C. W. Lemon he prescribed Williams with amphetamines, Seconal, chloral hydrate and morphine, which made his heart problems worse.The final concert of his 1952 tour was held in Austin, Texas, at the Skyline Club on December 19. Williams’ last known public performance took place in Montgomery, on December 21, where he sang at a benefit held by the local chapter of the American Federation of Musicians for a radio announcer who had polio.

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Williams was scheduled to perform at the Municipal Auditorium in Charleston, West Virginia, on New Years Eve, December 31, 1952. Advance ticket sales totaled $3,000. That day, Williams could not fly because of a snow storm in the Montgomery area; he hired a college student, Charles Carr, to drive him to the concerts.

Back in Knoxville, the two arrived at the Andrew Johnson Hotel, and Carr requested a doctor for Williams, who was affected by the combination of the chloral hydrate and alcohol he had consumed on the way to Knoxville. Dr. P. H. Cardwell injected Williams with two shots of vitamin B₁₂ that also contained a quarter-grain of morphine. Carr and Williams checked out of the hotel, but the porters had to carry Williams to the car. Carr later mentioned that Williams had severe hiccups, while the porters said that he had made a coughing sound twice.

Around midnight on January 1, 1953, the two crossed the Tennessee state line and arrived in Bristol, Virginia. Carr stopped at a small all-night restaurant and asked for a relief driver from a local taxi company, as he felt exhausted after driving for 20 hours. Driver Don Surface left the restaurant with Carr and Williams. They drove on until they stopped for fuel and coffee at a gas station in Oak Hill, West Virginia, where they realized that Williams had been dead for so long that rigor mortis had already set in. The station’s owner called the local police chief. Dr. Ivan Malinin performed the autopsy at the Tyree Funeral House. He found hemorrhages in the heart and neck and pronounced the cause of death as “acute rt. ventricular dilation.”

That evening in Canton, when Williams’ death was announced to the gathered crowd, a few people started laughing because they thought it was a joke. Akron deejay Cliff Rodgers assured the crowd that it was no joke and that Hank Williams was indeed dead. When Hawkshaw Hawkins and other performers started singing Williams’ song “I Saw the Light” as a tribute to him, the crowd began to sing along.

On January 2, Williams’ body was transported to Montgomery, Alabama, where it was placed in a silver casket that was displayed at his mother’s boarding house for two days. His funeral took place on January 4 at the Montgomery Auditorium, with his casket placed on the flower-covered stage. Mourners came to Montgomery from all over the South, and beyond. An estimated 15,000 to 25,000 people were outside the auditorium, and inside were 2,750, with the balcony set aside for about 200 black mourners. Hundreds passed by the casket to pay their final respects.