Hank Williams

I’VE been meaning to write about Hank Williams for quite a while. I even had a title – I Can’t Help It – a reference to one of his best songs and one of my favourites. I see now that the BBC has had the same idea and are calling their new radio series on him, beginning later this week, In Love With Hank.

Some of my friends like Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly. Others are fans of Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald. Then there’s Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and the like. I even know someone who shares my affection for Al Jolson. But they look on me with pity, even contempt, when I declare my admiration for Hank Williams

They all love Elvis Presley and I sometimes say, with Boxcar Willie, ‘I know why you cried, the day Elvis died. When Hank passed away, I cried all that day.’ I didn’t, of course, because I was only two. But I would have done, had I been there in Alabama to watch the funeral cortege pass by.

I saw a documentary once about him, in which some old-timer from Alabama was reminiscing, and said of Hank’s mother, ‘She thought a heap o’ Hank.’ So do I.

SO WHY? Hank’s music was hardly sophisticated. I doubt he ever struck a minor chord or picked a flattened note. His lyrics are so simple they could be called trite and his rhymes are obvious – or should I say they don’t draw attention to themselves. He sticks rigidly to 4/4 time and a two or three verse plus bridge formula, with an instrumental break consisting of fiddle and guitar. He sings of love and loss, of hope and heartache, of faith and failure. And that’s just what he recorded as Hank Williams. A lot of his material was so depressing it had to be released under the name ‘Luke the Drifter’.

All true, but look at the song I mentioned earlier, I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You). Structurally it’s a perfect popular song, its bridge has a sense of inevitability and doubles as a quite emotional climax – ‘Heaven only knows how much I miss you. I can’t help it if I’m still in love with you.’

The words and rhymes, of course, are simple. The song is accessible, the details of lost love concrete and familiar. The tune is distinctive and memorable and lends itself to all manner of styles. Many of Hank’s songs are in fact part of the canon of popular music, making him one of the most covered artists of all, from Ray Charles to Tony Bennett.

Most of all, the song conveys emotion, an emotion most of us can share. This is the essence of Hank Williams. He sings non-macho songs for macho men, who prefer to have someone else do their crying for them, someone to display the self-pity their pride forbids them to show.

Hank’s voice fits the mood of the songs exactly. The country-boy accent, the nasal whininess, the emotional breaks. It fits so well with the ever-present sob and wail of the scraping fiddle, itself reminiscent of the lonesome train whistle he so often sings of, a symbol of freedom and loss. Kris Kristofferson summed it up in Me and Bobby McGee - 'Nothing ain't worth nothing, but it's free.'

I DON’T KNOW about you but if I’m feeling down, I might achieve some comfort through the distancing and sublimating effect of Shakespeare’s words, ‘When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state,’ but there are times when only ‘Everything’s agin me and it’s got me down’ will do. And when comfort seems an insult to my misery, I want to hear, ‘The moon just went behind a cloud to hide its face and cry.’ Did you ever see a robin weep? You don’t need to, do you?

It’s not all doom and gloom. There’s humour in I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive and My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It. And Hey, Good Lookin’ and Settin’ the Woods on Fire are full of bounce and happiness. Howlin' at the Moon is an exuberant hymn to the silliness that is being in love. It's like being drunk. We know it's daft and won't do us any good, but who cares? The hangover's a small price to pay.

HANK HIMSELF was weaned on the semi-commercial country music of the thirties and forties, a mix of gospel (I Saw the Light), honky-tonk and blues (My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It). But his own influence on others has been phenomenal, often expressed in songs about him. Johnny Cash sang of The Day Hank Williams Came to Town. Rock ‘n’ Roll owes him a debt – what is Rock Around the Clock if not a rip-off of Move It On Over? And, as I said before, he could ‘cross over’. Hank may have been in two minds about Tony Bennett’s insipid version of Cold, Cold Heart – ‘What the **** have you done with my song? – but no doubt the royalty cheques eased his concern.

This crossing-over, making raw country music acceptable to pop lovers, nearly emasculated the genre and led to an inevitable reaction. Waylon Jennings sang Hank Never Done it Thissaway and with his fellow ‘Outlaws’ turned his back on Nashville. His son Shooter carries on the tradition of rough, straight-talking music, as does Hank’s grandson, Hank III.

Well, sometimes a simple ‘I love you’ is more effective than flowers, chocolates and a especially composed sonnet. Sometimes it is better that a song speaks directly to you, without the need for a musicological reference book. Sometimes we would rather hear our petty tragedies, our sins and failures addressed directly and not veiled in irony, humour or artificiality.

I can only sum up in the words of Kris Kristofferson. ‘If you don’t like Hank Williams, honey, you can kiss my ass.’

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More blogs to come, if the good Lord’s a-willin, and the creeks don’t rise.