Hank Williams

by Colin Escott

  Hank’s manager, Bill England, negotiated the show with the Jaycees, and he remembered it as a fiasco because of the poor PA, although his attitude could have stemmed from the fact that he and Hank were heading for a parting of the ways. The Homecoming was one of his last acts on Hank’s behalf, and they eventually parted backstage at the Ryman. They’d both seen it coming. WSM made England an offer to return to his old job, selling airtime, and he gratefully accepted.

  Hank stayed overnight in Montgomery after the Homecoming. Back at the boardinghouse, he took off his shirt to show everyone his new brace. Swarms of people were around him pitching songs or trying to sell him something. The next day, he headed down the oh so familiar Highway 31 toward the Gulf for a string of personal appearances that started in Biloxi, and he continued on through his old haunts in southern Louisiana and eastern Texas. He then returned to Nashville for the Opry and to prepare for another recording session, the first under a contract renewal dated July 5 that extended his MGM term for another two years and upped his royalty from two to three cents a single.

  The July 25, 1951, session was held between 7:15 and 10:35 p.m., and the studio was stiflingly hot. Air conditioners and fans created too much noise, so there was no alternative but to sweat it out. Another Acuff-Rose songwriter, Helen Hudgins, was there that night. “Hank had his shirt unbuttoned all the way,” she told researcher John Rumble, “and he was absolutely soaking wet. It seemed that all he was…was voice. It came up from I don’t know where.” Only three songs from the July 25 session were deemed issuable by Fred Rose. The most unusual was “Lonesome Whistle,” a title truncated in the interests of jukebox cards from “(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle.” Credited to Hank and Jimmie Davis, it was one of a long line of prison songs.

  Davis was something of an elder statesman in Hank’s eyes. After cutting his first record for KWKH’s “Doggone” label, he’d become a Jimmie Rodgers disciple. He’d made some wonderfully libidinous blues for RCA Victor, like “Tom Cat and Pussy Blues” and “Red Nightgown Blues,” but by the time he signed with Decca in 1934, he was cleaning up his act and his image. His biggest hit on Decca, “You Are My Sunshine,” was one he claimed to have written, all evidence to the contrary. He certainly popularized it, though. After a political career in Shreveport, Davis ran for governor in 1944, and won in the face of a viciously negative advertising campaign that tried to make capital out of his old smutty records. His opponent also maintained that Davis couldn’t be in favor of segregation, as he claimed, because he owned a “colored honky tonk” in California. After Davis’ first term as governor (he stood again and was reelected in 1960), he returned to Shreveport, and it was probably there that Hank met him. There’s a grainy photo of them; Hank has the grin that he usually reserved for the times he was getting plastered, and Davis looks none too sober. Three songs are jointly credited to Hank Williams and Jimmie Davis, but it’s unclear how or when they wrote them. On one of the Mother’s Best shows, recorded between January and March 1951, Hank tells his audience that he’s going fishing with Jimmie Davis next week. Perhaps they’d written the songs then or during Hank’s brief return to Shreveport in April.

  “Lonesome Whistle,” like “Ramblin’ Man,” had folk overtones, and gained what impact it had from the way Hank grafted the sound of a train whistle onto the word “lonesome.” It was shipped on September 24, coupled with another song from the July 25 session, “Crazy Heart.” The latter was a song that Fred Rose had written with one of his Tin Pan Alley buddies, Maurice Murray Fisher. The single reportedly sold one hundred thousand in its first week, but “Crazy Heart” pegged out at number four and “Lonesome Whistle” reached number eight, spending just two weeks on the charts. Both songs were covered for the pop market, and Guy Lombardo dented the top twenty with “Crazy Heart,” underscoring the fact that it was better suited to a palm court orchestra than Hank Williams.

  Two other songs were recorded at the July 25 session. “I’d Still Want You” was another bleak commentary on Hank’s continuing need for Audrey as she closed off her heart to him, while “Baby, We’re Really in Love” was tried and abandoned. Rose wanted to get some more songs in the can before Hank went off on the ten-week Hadacol Caravan, so he scheduled another Friday night session for August 10. Only two cuts from that session were released; the first was the rerecording of “Baby, We’re Really in Love,” and the other was “Half As Much.” Rose played the piano to flesh out the rhythm section, and — for the first and only time on a Hank Williams record — there was a flash of solo barroom piano at the very end of “Half As Much.”

  The “Williams” in the composer credit of “Half As Much” was not Hank but his buddy from Shreveport, Curley Williams. On September 13, 1951, some two months after Hank’s session, Curley recorded it for Columbia. Hank wasn’t too interested in touching the song, but Rose insisted that he cut it. Like “Crazy Heart,” it boiled down to nothing. Rose wanted to give Curley a head start, so Curley’s version was released first, on November 2. When Hank’s version was finally released on March 28, 1952, it became a number two hit. That success ensured that the pop cover versions soon appeared, and the pop charts were where the song belonged. Rosemary Clooney took it to number seven. “Later,” remembered Curley’s steel guitarist, Boots Harris, “Mitch Miller said to Wesley, ‘Ol’ Hank’s done it again, hasn’t he?’ and Wesley said, ‘That was Curley Williams who wrote “Half As Much,"’ and Mitch Miller said, ‘Who’s Curley Williams?’ and Wesley said, ‘A guy that’s been on your label about seven years.’”

  “Baby, We’re Really in Love” was released on November 23, 1951. It was as good as any other bouncy mid- to fast-tempo number that Hank had released, but it stalled at number four. Perhaps the competition was stronger; perhaps repetition was setting in. Hank’s 1951 MGM royalties were down from $22,574 in 1950 to $20,224, despite the success of “Cold, Cold Heart” earlier in the year. The declining numbers might have been the reason Hank was trying other people’s songs. He was still writing as prolifically as ever, pitching songs to almost every artist he met — all of which flopped. “I Can’t Escape from You” went to Rusty Gabbard and Ray Price. “Countryfied” and “The Little House We Built Just o’er the Hill” went to Big Bill Lister, and “Me and My Broken Heart” and “There’s Nothing As Sweet As My Baby” went to newcomer Carl Smith. Hank and George Morgan’s brother wrote “A Stranger in the Night” for Morgan, and Little Jimmy Dickens tackled the bruisingly sarcastic “I Wish You Didn’t Love Me So Much.” Jimmie Davis recorded the other two songs he’d written with Hank, “Bayou Pon-Pon” and “Forever Is a Long, Long Time.”

  Fred Rose, meanwhile, was producing acts so prolifically for MGM that it’s hard to see how he found time to work with Hank and run a pubishing company. Between March and June 1951, MGM released roughly one hundred records, and Rose produced nineteen of those. But, just as Hank couldn’t write a hit for anyone else, so Fred Rose couldn’t produce one for anyone else. The records he cut with the Louvin Brothers have lasted well, but they flopped on release, as did the records he produced on Al Rogers, Carl “Mr. Sunshine” Swanson, Hal White, Gene McGhee, and all the others.

  Another of Hank’s attempts to make a little money on the side was his booklet Hank Williams Tells How to Write Folk and Western Music to Sell. It was published in September 1951 and would have been very interesting if Hank had written a word of it. His major contributions were to put his name and face on the front, and narrate the radio spots. “I set down and started to writing,” he said with his salesman’s oily charm, “but pretty soon I decided I needed some he’p.” That help extended to letting his cowriter, Jimmy Rule, author the entire booklet. Rule was a fifty-year-old math teacher at a local private school who wrote songs on the side, but he had yet to write any folk or western music that had sold. He’d had a hand in a number of pop songs, like Perry Como’s first record, “Goodbye Sue,” and a wartime saber-rattler, “Let’s Sing a Hymn to G.I. Jim,” but he had not given up his day
job. Hank Williams Tells How to Write Folk and Western Music to Sell is full of solid advice for the budding songwriter but it holds little or no insight into Hank Williams.

  Toward the end, the booklet lists the titles and publishers of two rhyming dictionaries, but no one remembers Hank sitting at home or in the touring sedan with the New Rhyming Dictionary and Poet’s Handbook on his lap. Hank’s lengthy radio spots were more interesting than the book. As always when he was selling something, he put a little humor into his pitch. WSM announcer Grant Turner was the straight man, and mentioned that Hank’s photo was on the front of the book. “Yes, Grant,” said Hank. “If any of the folks are bothered by crows gittin’ in their corn, it might come in handy to scar’ them critters away.” The twenty-page booklet sold for one dollar and was marketed through the border station XEDM, in Nogales, Mexico. “It’ll be a blessin’ to you,” said Hank in conclusion. Rule continued writing folk and western music that didn’t sell, and died in January 2003 at age 101.

  In October 1951, Hank pitched a third song to Big Bill Lister. The chart books have no entry for Lister, but his record of “Beer Drinking Blues” had sold well. “We didn’t get no radio play on beer drinking songs,” says Lister, “but they was killers on the jukebox, so every session I had to do at least one beer drinking song.” Capitol’s West Coast–based chief of country A&R, Ken Nelson, scheduled a session for Lister on Friday, October 26. “I told Hank I needed a beer drinkin’ song,” says Lister, “and he said, ‘Don’t worry ‘bout it, Big un, I got you covered. I got one that’s hotter’n a pistol.’” One other published Hank Williams song, “I Can’t Escape from You,” had hinted at his problem with alcohol ("A jug of wine to numb my mind"), but the song he gave to Lister, “There’s a Tear in My Beer,” was an unambiguous celebration of getting plastered ("I’m gonna keep drinkin’ until I’m petrified…. I’m gonna keep drinkin’ ’til I can’t move a toe…. I’m gonna keep drinkin’ ’til I can’t even think"). Hank cut a demo on the night before the session, right after he’d finished prerecording some radio shows. It had a singalong chorus like the best drinking songs, and was perhaps the strongest song he’d farmed out. He knew he couldn’t risk cutting it himself, but Ken Nelson saw the potential and agreed to record it.

  After the session, Lister threw the demo acetate, which had no markings on it, into a box of records at his house. At some point between Christmas and New Year, he reconciled himself to the inevitable and moved back to San Antonio. Hank was more or less off the road by then, and his troupe had disbanded. The acetate went back to San Antonio with the Listers and sat out in their yard under a tarp for a few years before being moved up to the loft where, as Lister says, it’s hot enough to fry eggs in July. It was discovered during the mid-1980s when Lister was cleaning house. By then, Lister’s son did occasional gun work for Hank Jr., and the next time Junior came to San Antonio, Lister presented him with the acetate. “Here’s one they ain’t never heard your daddy do,” he told him. Hank Jr. took the acetate back to Nashville and, in September 1988, overdubbed himself onto it — a thirty-nine-year-old man duetting with his twenty-eight-year-old father. “There’s a Tear in My Beer” finally became a hit, helped in no small measure by a video that defied any jaw not to drop. It merged footage of father and son in a dream sequence. Hank Jr. was shot against a neutral backing and was superimposed onto high-grade performance footage of his father. Video engineers slowed down the footage of Hank Sr. to match the tempo of “There’s a Tear in My Beer,” then new lip movements were “pasted on” from an actor lipsynching the song. Junior was then superimposed over the four thousand frames that made up the forty-six seconds of “duet” footage. The result sent chills up Hank Jr.’s spine — and many others’ besides. Hank Jr. gave Bill Lister a percentage of the record’s revenue, brought him to Nashville to appear on TNN, and awarded him a gold record. It was a sweet moment for Lister, who had exited the business in the midfifties, concluding that no one cared about six-foot-seven-inch singing cowboys anymore.

  The last good year for the ol’ Drifting Cowboy was capped that fall when Hank, Bill Lister, the Drifting Cowboys, and Minnie Pearl took part in the Hadacol Caravan. For the first time since 1943, Hank was to play in a medicine show, but he wasn’t going to bump around the boondocks playing off the back of a flatbed truck; he was to travel firstclass in a fleet of Pullman cars keeping company with the country’s biggest stars and a troupe of dancing girls. He was to play to hundreds of thousands of people over the course of six weeks. It was to be the last and greatest medicine show.

  Chapter 12

  The more you earn, the less you learn To relax-ez vous

  Dean Martin, “Relaxez Vous”

  THE HADDY-COLE BOUNCE

  HANK had been surrounded all his professional life by snake-oil salesmen who used more or less unregulated airtime to sell everything from absolution to job lots of live chicks shipped by mail. He acquired a little arsenal of come-ons and self-deprecating jokes that he would trot out when he was in the business of selling something. “Friends,” he would often say, concluding his pitch, “I don’t need the money, but the folks I owe it to need it awful bad.”

  Good as Hank was, Senator Dudley J. LeBlanc could make him and most other salesmen look like rank amateurs. Dudley Joseph LeBlanc was born in Youngsville, Louisiana, on August 16, 1894, and claimed to trace his ancestry back to René LeBlanc in Longfellow’s Evangeline. He grew up speaking nothing but French, and never lost his Cajun accent. LeBlanc was fiercely proud of his heritage and eventually published a book on Acadian culture. After graduating from Southwestern Louisiana Institute, he became a salesman for a shoe company, working the same patch in north Louisiana as Huey P. Long. LeBlanc and Long were both formidable salesmen, and came to mistrust, then detest each other as only rival salesmen can.

  After World War I, LeBlanc got his introduction to selling patent medicines when he represented Wine of Cardui, fetchingly called a “woman’s tonic.” His first brush with politics came in 1924 when he stood as a candidate for the state legislature in Vermilion Parish, and won. This was at a time when the hot issues of the day included care of Confederate veterans. In 1932, he stood for governor, but lost. LeBlanc then concentrated on his own patent medicines, starting with Happy Day Headache Powder, a concoction that, in common with most of his remedies, contained a stiff dose of laxative.

  In 1942, after another unsuccessful stab at the governorship and the Public Service Commission, LeBlanc fell ill with beriberi, and was cured with vitamin B1 compounds. With the unquenchable enthusiasm of the autodidact, he set out to learn everything he could about vitamins, and then began distilling his own compound in the family barn. It was a mixture of vitamins, minerals, honey and — not least — 12 percent alcohol. It was dubbed HADACOL, a rough acronym from HAppy DAy CO., topped off with an L for LeBlanc. Its alcohol content was roughly the same as wine, but at $3.50 it was four times as expensive and immeasurably more foul-tasting so that people would believe it was doing them some good. With many dry counties still in the South, Hadacol was the closest to a nip that many folk out on the rural routes could get — from a bottle with a label on it, at least.

  Hadacol went on the market in 1945 after LeBlanc had tested it on his cattle, himself, and his neighbors. Sales were static for a while as he rekindled his political ambitions, becoming a state senator in 1948. During this second stint in politics, he was instrumental in helping to pass the Old Age Pension bill, then used his newfound credibility among older citizens to sell them Hadacol. LeBlanc more or less introduced saturation advertising to the South. His newspaper ads were rife with testimonials. “I have been suffering from nervousness, weak spells, lack of energy, and never felt like working,” wrote Mrs. L. E. Mitchell from Wadsworth, Texas, in March 1949. “After taking Hadacol, I am doing my work better than I have in years. I don’t have weak spells; I eat well; and I sleep like a log. My little girl didn’t eat very much. After taking Hadacol, she eats two helpings every meal. We just
can’t praise it enough. I just wish more people knew how wonderful Hadacol is.” Others claimed to be cured of cancer, epilepsy, heart trouble, strokes, and tuberculosis, and LeBlanc published their claims until the Federal Trade Commission stepped in. The advertisements concluded that the good senator “has served his people in public life faithfully and well. In private life, he brings you a service which is appreciated by suffering humanity — HADACOL.” At first, the advertising was designed to devour pretax profits, but it quickly began to assume a life of its own.

  Early in 1949, LeBlanc hooked up with Murray Nash, then head of Mercury Records’ southern division. “I asked LeBlanc what was in Hadacol,” said Nash, “and he told me there was enough alcohol to make people feel good and enough laxative for a good movement.” Nash’s commercial antennae began twitching, and he cut two Hadacol paeans — one for the country market, Bill Nettles’ “Hadacol Boogie,” which charted in June 1949, and another for the rhythm and blues market, Professor Longhair’s “Hadacol Bounce.” The publicity generated by “Hadacol Boogie” convinced LeBlanc that country music was an effective medium for promoting his product, so he was primed when Mack Hedrick of WSM approached him with the idea of sponsoring Hank Williams’ Health and Happiness shows in October 1949. Even then, Hank was just a bit player on LeBlanc’s stage. In 1950, LeBlanc spent more than one million dollars a month on advertising, making him the nation’s second-largest advertiser after Coca-Cola. His enterprise grew to the point that Hadacol was shipped by a wholly owned fleet of trucks from the plants in Lafayette, where the employees were now dressed in white starched uniforms to simulate a lab environment (a far cry from the barn in which Hadacol had been concocted). Sales were astronomical at the peak of the operation in 1950 and 1951.