I'm editing a book about Hank Williams at the moment--love his music and his persona. I didn't turn up any evidence of him being typed on this site, so I thought we might give it a whirl.
So, he's famous for alcoholism and for dying young. I'll call that mostly irrelevant.
Here are some things I know about him:
* Socially sophisticated enough to have a wide range of friends and acquaintances and draw on them, organize them, to make his way in the music business. Despite his problems, he was always had some kind of entourage helping him, ready to work with him, play music with him. I'm guessing this is not just because he was talented and because working with him benefited others, because it was true from the time he was still just a kid and predated his real success.
* Everyone who knew him well points out that he was a really good-hearted person, but in a quiet way, so you might not know it. An anecdote was when he took his band into a barbecue joint run by an impoverished couple. After the meal, the group went outside and the woman who ran the restaurant came outside with Hank's money clip and said, "Oh, Mr. Williams, you dropped this on the floor!" And he said, "Why, thank you so much, Mrs. XX," and he took all the money out of the clip and gave it to her for helping him. But in fact, the band members knew that he had dropped the money on the floor on purpose just so he could find an excuse to give it to her.
* He learned how to win over an audience from a very early age and was sometimes seen as the Frank Sinatra of the hillbilly-music world. He was so masterful at playing a crowd that even before he was a huge success, more established stars refused to go onstage after him. He held records for encores, had the audience eating out of the palm of his hand. Young girl fans would come after him in droves, one time with razor blades to cut off pieces of his hair and clothing.
* An interesting detail: Although he looks well-kempt in many photos and some videos, he purposely cultivated a subtly disheveled appearance according to bandmates. One guy was always trying to straighten Hank's tie and hat before they went onstage, and Hank would jerk the tie back out of place and make the hat crooked again, saying, "You're too particular."
* He had a strong sense of humor, gave all of his fellow musicians weird nicknames, had a lot of radio programs in which he improvised a lot of clever jokes. Often word-play was involved, or just witty one-liners. The sense of humor was very, very dry.
* He's best known for his incredible lyrics, so we can safely call him a wordsmith. The song I linked to on YouTube is NOT one he wrote.
* His wife, Audrey, seems to have run roughshod over him. His mother also was a very strong, powerful figure.
* He worked his ass off. The number of songs he created in his short life was huge. His touring schedule was really grueling. He was under a lot of pressure. And he did all this despite his alcoholism. He tried really hard to keep it together and usually did. And when he didn't keep it together, he bounced back quickly to resume his work.
* He had a pretty realistic sense of his talent and potential, and of what audiences wanted. Before he hit it big, after years of working on his writing and his act, he called the most important manager in the country music business and told him, "Now I'm ready for you. Now you're gonna want me." He fought like mad against his manager's and promoter's wishes to record the song that broke him into the bigtime; he knew it would be a big hit, and they didn't, and he got his way. Same with some later songs, he knew as he wrote them that they would go to number one, or not.
* He was torn between a sense of himself as a bad person/personal failure, and wanting redemption. He recorded under the name "Luke the Drifter" as well--spiritual music.
* Had no patience for musicians who overplayed. He wanted the best sidemen but insisted on the ensemble being tight and keeping it simple.
* Much as been made of his relationship to his son Hank Jr. being shitty. Hank Sr. was out on the road all the time and often separated from his son, and his relationship with the boy's mother was pretty bad, stormy. But it's clear that even if he didn't always give the boy the fathering he needed, he was thinking about the boy all the time and loved him a lot--this per the musicians he toured with. He'd buy so much stuff for Hank Jr. that there was no room for the musicians to sit in the car. One time he left the family home in Nashville to go record in another town, and he realized he'd forgotten to say goodbye to Hank Jr., so he drove all the way back home to say 'bye.




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