Hank Williams

by Colin Escott

  Clyde Baum remembered that Rose and Hank got into an argument. “I’ll tell you one damn thing,” Hank said to Rose. “You might not like the song, but when it gets so hot that I walk off the stage and throw my hat back on the stage and the hat encores, that’s pretty hot. And you said that ‘Pan American’ was no good, and that sold pretty good.” Rose started to walk out to get a cup of coffee, telling Hank to cut it if he liked, but he was having nothing to do with it. As he got to the door, Rose turned to the musicians (whose fees were deducted from Hank’s royalties) and told them that he would give them time and a half if they finished before the three hours of studio time were up. “You’re mighty damn free with my money!” yelled Hank, just as the musicians were kicking it off.

  With so little time left on the session, the band was under the gun to come up with an arrangement. Byrd and Turner had worked on an Ernest Tubb session shortly before the recording ban when they’d cut Jimmie Rodgers’ “Waiting for a Train.” They remembered a little unison lick they’d worked up for Tubb’s record, and, with no time to prepare anything else, replicated it on “Lovesick Blues.” “We made two cuts,” said Jerry Byrd. “I said to Hank, ‘That’s the sorriest thing I ever did hear.’” Faced with criticism from all sides, Hank started to become defensive. “Well,” he said, “maybe we’ll put it on a flip side or something.”

  Fred Rose had good reason to be upset. After a year away from the recording studio, the best that Hank could come up with was two mediocre hymns that Audrey made almost unlistenable, one undistinguished secular song, and “Lovesick Blues.” It wasn’t much to show for a new start and a year’s creativity, but if Rose had set aside his musicianship he would have heard something strangely compelling in Hank’s treatment of “Lovesick Blues.” The brisk tempo and unusual structure, together with the yodels and little flashes of falsetto, made it wholly unlike any other country record.

  Hank told Fred Rose that “Lovesick Blues” was an arrangement he’d bought from Rex Griffin, but probably had a suspicion that it dated back beyond Griffin’s 1939 recording. He almost certainly didn’t know that the song had been kicking around a year longer than he had. Irving Mills, later the gray eminence behind Duke Ellington’s music, had written the words, and vaudevillian Cliff Friend, who later wrote “When My Dreamboat Comes Home” and “Time Waits for No One,” had written the melody. “Lovesick Blues” was first recorded in March 1922 by a popular contralto named Elsie Clark, but it was Emmett Miller’s 1925 and 1928 recordings that Hank had probably heard. Miller was a blackface vaudevillian with a trademark trick yodel; his influence stretched from Jimmie Rodgers to Bob Wills and on to Hank Williams. His few recordings offer a little glimpse into the black hole of the prerecording era. It’s impossible to know if Hank heard him on record or in person, but the trailing yodel he later used on “I’d Still Want You” is Emmett Miller note for note. On “Lovesick Blues” and many of his other records, Miller used subtle tempo shifts and minor chords that were never part of Hank’s music, but the Miller influence is still there.

  The missing link between Emmett Miller and Hank Williams was Aulsie “Rex” Griffin. In September 1939, Griffin cut “Lovesick Blues” for Decca Records with just his guitar, modeling his approach on Emmett Miller, but using the arrangement that Hank would use. When Hank spoke to an interviewer from National Hillbilly News at the end of 1949, he mentioned Emmett Miller’s record and confirmed that he had been performing the song for years, but gave no clue where he’d first heard it. He didn’t mention Rex Griffin at all.

  Originally from Gadsden, Alabama, Griffin was a problem drinker and a fine songwriter. Inasmuch as he’s remembered at all today it’s for “The Last Letter,” the suicide note of an older man besotted with a younger woman ("I cannot offer you diamonds and a mansion so fine / I cannot offer you clothes that your young body craves…"), but he ought to be remembered for “Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby,” a song that Carl Perkins later adapted and the Beatles recorded. Hank Williams and Rex Griffin played shows together, and one of Hank’s early sidemen, Pee Wee Moultrie, joined Griffin’s band, but it’s still unclear what transaction, if any, made Hank think that he’d bought “Lovesick Blues.” Griffin later told Lum York that he wanted to sue Hank over what he thought was an infringement of his arrangement of a public domain song. Unfortunately, Griffin never gave a full account of his dealings with Hank to anyone, and died of tuberculosis in the charity ward of a New Orleans hospital in 1958.

  In Rex Griffin’s hands, the melody of “Lovesick Blues” became simplified, and Mills’ first verse ("I’m in love, I’m in love with a beautiful gal") became the chorus, while the original chorus ("I’ve got a feeling called the blues…") was used as a verse. Structurally, it was, as Fred Rose wasted no time telling Hank, a mess. When Rose submitted writer and publisher information for “Lovesick Blues” to MGM in January 1949, it read “Composer: Rex Griffin; Arrangements by Hank Williams; Publisher: Acuff-Rose,” although the composer credit on the original pressings was ominously blank. When the Shreveport Times announced the release on January 9, it said, “Hank Williams’ recording of ‘Love Sick Blues,’ the authorship of which is much disputed and under investigation, will be released next week…. Capacity crowds at the Hayride nearly tear the house down for encores of ‘Love Sick Blues.’” Doubts over ownership are probably what delayed the release until February 11, 1949. Rose coupled it with one of the Sterling cuts, “Never Again,” clearly not wanting to waste “There’ll Be No Teardrops Tonight” on the flip side of what he considered a dog. Still, he took out advertisements in Billboard plugging what he thought was probably his song, and published sheet music showing Acuff-Rose as the publisher.

  In March 1949, Wesley Rose wrote to Hank saying that he had just returned from New York, and “had a hint” on who owned “Lovesick Blues.” He asked Hank to send along the records by Griffin and “Emmett something or other” so that they could try to prove it was a public domain song. A few weeks later, Irving Mills got wise and sued. In a settlement arbitrated by Frank Walker, effective November 1, 1949, Mills and Rose shared the publishing on Hank’s recording only, each collecting five-eighths of a cent from MGM in recognition of the promotional work that Acuff-Rose had done on the song’s behalf. Mills retained 100 percent of all other rights to the song. By that point, Mills was apparently the song’s sole owner. A report in Billboard stated that, at the depth of the Depression when Friend had forty cents to his name, he sold his interest in the song to Mills for five hundred dollars, although that seems an exorbitant amount for a song that was, to all intents and purposes, dead.

  Rose was not only proved wrong in his judgment of “Lovesick Blues,” but proved very wrong very quickly. Even Hank seemed a little surprised at the song’s overwhelming success. When he played at the Brackin Theatre in Ozark, Alabama, in September 1950, a local reporter asked him about “Lovesick Blues.” “I’d been singing it for years,” he said in words that don’t seem to be entirely his own. “It was an old minstrel tune. I liked it and my audiences liked it, but I never realized it would be such a hit as it is today.”

  For all its flaws, “Lovesick Blues” was a riveting record, and all those people who nearly tore the house down at the Hayride were already waiting to buy it. By the end of MGM’s royalty accounting period just seventeen days after release, “Lovesick Blues” had already sold more than forty-eight thousand copies. On March 5, it showed up on the country charts. Rose was dumbfounded to the point of questioning his commercial instincts, and the Cincinnati session crew was dismayed that, as Jerry Byrd said, “anything as sorry as that could be a hit.” A hit it was, though. On May 7, 1949, “Lovesick Blues” dislodged George Morgan’s “Candy Kisses” from the number one slot.

  “Hank was eating at the Bantam Grill,” said Tillman Franks. “I’d bought Billboard at the newsstand and ‘Lovesick Blues’ had just had gotten to number one. I walked in and I showed it to him. It shook him up pretty good. He just sat there silent the lo
ngest time. He realized what that was.” By the time Hank met his band later in the day, he had already turned it into a typically self-deprecating joke. When one of them said, “You got it made now, boy, you’re number one in Nashville,” Hank said, “I sure am glad it ain’t another damn ‘Pontchartrain.’” “Lovesick Blues” stayed at number one for sixteen weeks, and lingered on the charts until the following January. Whenever he was introduced onstage, Hank was “that ‘Lovesick Blues’ boy,” and no hit from his own pen would ever eclipse Rex Griffin’s adaptation of that Jazz Age novelty song. As he performed the song late in his career on a Sunday park date in Pennsylvania, he said, “I’ve sung this song ’til honestly I’ve woke up at night singin’ it. But I don’t guess I should complain, it’s been feedin’ me for about five years. We never did miss no meals, but we postponed a few.” Hank knew very well what “Lovesick Blues” meant to his career, and even in 1952, after he’d scored another twenty-five hits, it was still his show closer.

  Even before “Lovesick Blues” was released, Hank was becoming very popular in and around Shreveport. He reassembled a band at some point between the song’s recording and release. On the way back from the session, he stopped in Montgomery for Christmas, and while he was there he asked his mother to call down to the radio station where Lum York was working. Hank told Lum that he was thinking about putting another band together, and Lum rejoined him. Hank then recruited guitarist Clent Holmes and steel guitarist Felton Pruett from the Louisiana Hayride band. Holmes had met Hank in Houston when he was working on KLEE with Hank Locklin, and, after falling out with Locklin, went back to Mobile. He was on his way to join his brother in Abilene when he stopped by the Hayride. Hank cornered him and asked him to join his group. Holmes played the “sock” rhythm guitar that took the place of brushes on a snare drum and reinforced Hank’s guitar. Steel guitarist Felton Pruett, from Sabine County, Louisiana, was only eighteen years old, and joined the Hayride staff band after a stint with Harmie Smith on a KWKH morning show.

  Lead guitarist Bob McNett was the only northerner Hank ever hired. Originally from rural upstate Pennsylvania, he had arrived in Shreveport with the singing cowgirl Patsy Montana. Just as she was getting ready to dissolve her band, Hank walked up to McNett backstage at the Hayride, and, dispensing with formalities, asked, “Can you make the introduction to ‘Lovesick Blues’?” McNett said he could, and was hired. The band was rounded out by Tony Francini (or Franchini) on fiddle. Originally a classical violinist somehow stranded in Shreveport, Francini was already fifty years old when he joined Hank. He learned his parts from listening to the records and copying out the fiddle lines. He hated the traveling, and, according to Pruett, hated country music. One day when they were playing a Hayride show in Brownsville or Harlingen, Texas, Hank took his band across the border to Matamoros, Mexico. On the way back, Francini surprised everyone by producing an Italian passport. Canadian country singer Hank Snow was with them that day, and his green card had expired. Hank had to sweet-talk the customs agents into letting Snow back into the United States.

  Hank placed the band on a salary of between fifty and sixty dollars a week. On top of that, the band members went out into the crowd during the intermission and sold songbooks and photographs on commission. Admission was fifty cents, roughly double the 1941 price. Often, Hank would come home with his pockets stuffed full of cash. “One night we worked a schoolhouse date, and I was wanting to talk to Hank about something,” said Felton Pruett, “and I was standing there while he and the principal was countin’ out the money, and they counted out eight hundred dollars. We’d played two shows that night, but eight hundred dollars. Man!”

  Ever since Hank had ridden in Curley Kinsey’s seven-seater ‘48 Packard sedan, he had coveted it. The note on the Packard was carried by guitarist Billy Byrd, who had come to Shreveport with Kinsey and the Four Deacons. The Deacons split up, and Byrd joined Curley Williams’ Peach Pickers, bringing the Packard with him. Then the Peach Pickers disbanded, leaving Byrd toting the note. Hank paid five hundred dollars to Byrd and assumed the loan. He attached a trailer to the car for the instruments, but could never figure out how to reverse the car and trailer into his driveway, so someone from the band always drove home with him. Immediately after buying the Packard, Hank drove overnight to Montgomery so that he could show it off to WSFA owner Howard Pill and advertising boss Bill Hunt as they sat having coffee at the Jefferson Davis Hotel. Both had probably told him that he’d never amount to anything. Then he went on air to say howdy to all his old fans. Hardrock Gunter, who’d last encountered a very drunk Hank Williams at the Labor Day show in 1943, was in town that day. He heard Hank and went to WSFA to reintroduce himself. Hank quickly proposed that Gunter come back to Shreveport with him to lead his band and act as his manager. Gunter thought about it for a while, then refused. “We’ll make a lot of money,” said Hank. “I know we will, but I couldn’t spend it from prison,” said Gunter. Hank said, “Whaddya mean?” and Gunter said, “In time, I’d want to kill you. If I booked you on a show with several hundred dollars at stake and you were drunk someplace, I’m liable to kill you.”

  Hank’s career had turned around in the space of weeks. Now he had a band, a touring sedan, and a hit to pay for both. The gamble on the Hayride had paid off. The show’s blanket coverage of the central United States offered a launching site that no station in Montgomery could have provided. “When Hank sang ‘Lovesick Blues’ on the Hayride,” said Tillman Franks, “he would wobble his knees during the yodel. Ray Atkins, one of the guys who played with Johnnie and Jack, would stand underneath the stage on a platform and turn a flip right at that moment, and the roof would just come in. The auditorium had that natural echo, and, boy, it sounded great.”

  When Hank finally joined the Shreveport local of the American Federation of Musicians on February 4, 1949, he was living in an apartment across the Red River in Bossier City. Then in March 1949 he signed an agreement to purchase a small house for $9,500 on Charles Street in the Modica subdivision in Bossier. It was a typical postwar subdivision; the houses were small, boxy, and plentiful. Hank still had no inkling of the changes that “Lovesick Blues” would bring; he just knew that he had a wife (or, more precisely, an ex-wife, as they’d been divorced) seven months pregnant and a chance at some decent income for a while.

  As the heat and humidity kicked in that spring, Audrey became increasingly irritable. What had once been their career was now Hank’s career. “God, she was difficult to get along with then,” said Horace Logan. “I saw her stand there, pregnant with Hank Jr., and Hank had given her a set of crystal ware and she threw it out, every bit of it, piece at a time into the carport and broke it.” One day, returning from a tour, Hank went upstairs with Clent Holmes and tripped over a vase. Probably thinking he was drunk, Audrey picked up some tea glasses and hurled them at him, sending him to the hospital. Even in the relationship’s most quiescent period, antagonism simmered just below the surface. Audrey, everyone agrees, acted as though she had a permanent chip on her shoulder, and now an uncomfortable and encumbering pregnancy was thwarting her ambitions. Hank, as always, had a deep-seated need for a strong woman to lean on, especially as the pressures mounted. In his autobiography Hank Snow recounted an episode from the late months of Audrey’s pregnancy. Snow had guested on the Hayride and Hank had invited him home. They’d driven downtown to pick up some photographs and a ring for Audrey. She refused to leave her room, so Hank took the ring in to her, then suddenly came back out. Audrey had thrown the ring back at him, saying, “If you can’t do any better than that, forget it.”

  Before long, Hank was back to his old ways: drinking as soon as he left the house. In March 1949, just as “Lovesick Blues” was breaking, he booked some show dates in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He was half-drunk before he left town, and bought another jug for the road. He and Lum York were tussling while Felton Pruett was strumming Hank’s guitar. “Lum got sick of it,” said Pruett, “and Hank made a swipe at me and I ducked down,
and his ol’ bony knee came upside my nose. We went on down the road, found a doctor, and got my nose to stop bleeding. The doctor said, ‘Was your nose crooked like that before?’ and I said, ‘No sir,’ so he grabbed a hold of it and yanked it back into position.” They carried on to Lake Charles. “We poured Hank out,” said Pruett.

  He always wanted to play the fiddle when he was drunk. He got out and played “Sally Goodin” for five minutes. We kept sayin’, “That’ll do, Hank, that’ll do.” He’d say, “Naw, naw, them people jus’ eatin’ it up.” They were, too. We sold ninety-seven dollars’ worth of pictures that night at ten cents apiece. We give him the money two or three days later when he’d sobered up and he never did know where it come from. They loved him down there. Drunk or sober, it didn’t matter. Funny thing was, his time was right on. If you could get him out there and prop him up, he’d do the show.

  Soon after the trip ended, the Hayride performers and their families went out for an Easter picnic northwest of Shreveport on Caddo Lake. There was an egg hunt and a wiener roast. There was also a big tub of beer, and Hank partook. While the others were hunting for eggs, Hank was quietly getting plastered. The party moved to Johnnie Bailes’ house, and while the Baileses and Johnnie and Jack were working up some quartet pieces, Hank continued drinking. Audrey stormed off home with Lycrecia, and when Hank straggled back later she took an ice pick to the tires of the car. Hank retaliated by breaking some of the furniture and threatening to attack Audrey. She called Johnnie Wright and Kitty Wells, and asked them to come over, but by the time they arrived Hank had passed out on the bed.