"[34], On March 10, Marshall was called again to testify. Alabamians mourned the death of their Hank, expressing themselves to newspapers, radio stations and to relatives staying at the home of the stars mother, that report continued. [32] During the same year, he participated in a talent show at the Empire Theater. [120] The same year, Hank Williams: The Complete Mother's Best RecordingsPlus! A 3-CD selection of the tracks, restored by Joe Palmaccio, was released by Time-Life in October 2008 titled The Unreleased Recordings. The investigating officer in Oak Hill declared later that Carr told him that he had pulled over at the Skyline Drive-In restaurant outside Oak Hill, and found Williams dead. The important thing is that he made millions of people happy, an editorial in The Advertiser stated on Jan. 3, 1953. He purchased the DSC title for $25 from the Chicago School of Applied Science; in the diploma, he requested that the DSc be spelled out as "Doctor of Science and Psychology". [10] Carr and Williams headed out of Knoxville from the Andrew Johnson Hotel via Gay Street to Magnolia Ave to 11w. [98][99] Williams' remains are interred at the Oakwood Annex in Montgomery. If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation. Carr was 17, a freshman on break from Auburn. Lillie was unwilling to let him reclaim his position as the head of the household. It was her second marriage and his first. Carr and Williams checked out of the hotel at around 10:45p.m. Hotel porters had to carry Williams to his vehicle, an Olympic Blue 1952 Cadillac Series 62 convertible, as he was coughing and hiccupping. The local record shops sold out of all of their records, and customers were asking for all records ever released by Williams. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. Country music historian Bill Malone wrote that Williams sang with the quality that has characterized every great hillbilly singer: utter sincerity. Despite Williamss many well-known heartbreak songs, it should also be remembered that he was capable of writing and singing with great joy and humour, as on, for example, Howlin at the Moon., The last years of his life were suffused in increasing sadness and substance abuse. A doctor injected Williams with two shots of vitamin B12 that contained morphine. Here are more vintage images and stories of Alabamas past. On New Year's Day in 1953 the heart of country music was broken; the Shakespeare of Country Music died in the backseat of a powder blue Cadillac in Oak Hill, West Virginia on his way to a booking in Canton, Ohio. The result of the original autopsy indicated that Williams died of a heart attack. [38] The same day, the District Attorney's office declared that after a new review of the autopsy report of Faye Marshall, toxicological and microscopic tests confirmed that her death on March 3 was not related to the medication prescribed by her husband. Police found empty beer cans and unfinished song lyrics in the Cadillac where Williams died. In 1946 Williams landed a songwriting contract with Acuff-Rose Publications and began composing material for singer Molly ODay. The pain and anguish that led him to drink could be heard in his songs. Hank Williams, Jr., was only 3 years old when his father died ("Hank".Bio para.4). The break had to come, he added. His funeral took place on January 4 at the Montgomery Auditorium, with his casket placed on the flower-covered stage. The marriage was always turbulent and rapidly disintegrated, and 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. His song "Your Cheatin' Heart" was written and recorded in September 1952, but released in late January 1953 after his death. However, she was to marry someone else before the . Lyons recalled how Hank rose from being a shoeshine boy to star of the stage. [35] On March 12, 1953, Billie Jean Jones appeared before the Oklahoma committee. [97], Williams' final single, released in November 1952 while he was still alive, was titled "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive". His funeral took place on January 4 at the Montgomery Auditorium,[23] with his coffin placed on the flower-covered stage. Heart failure and hard living did him in. It was placed in a silver coffin that was first shown at his mother's boarding house at 318 McDounough Street for two days. In 1951, Williams fell during a hunting trip in Tennessee, reactivating his old back pains and causing him to be dependent on alcohol and prescription drugs. Discover Hank Williams' Death Car in Montgomery, Alabama: Cadillac where country's first big star was found dead. The Pulitzer Prize jury awarded him a posthumous special citation in 2010 for his "craftsmanship as a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life". Carr and Williams checked out of the hotel, but the porters had to carry Williams to the car as he was coughing and hiccuping. [32] The Cadillac in which Williams was riding just before he died is now preserved at the Hank Williams Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. [26] His final single released during his lifetime was ironically titled "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive." A year after first meeting with Rose, Williams had his first hit, "Move It On Over." His first wife and his mother were the driving forces behind having the marriage declared invalid, and they pursued the matter for years. He showed up unannounced at the family's home in Montgomery. Having interviewed Carr, the best that Peter Cooper of The Tennessean could offer was that "somewhere between Mount Hope and Oak Hill", Carr noticed Williams' blanket had fallen off. A friend of the family denied his claims, but singer Billy Walker remembered that Williams mentioned to him the presence of men in the house being led upstairs. His substance abuse problems continued to spiral out of control as he moved to Nashville and officially divorced Sheppard. Carr stopped at a small all-night restaurant and asked Williams if he wanted to eat. Jones agreed to Williams's terms. The song resonated with music fans, as well as executives at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, who invited Williams to perform. However, much of what led to his non-sobriety is exactly what made his music as good as it was. [33] In 1943, Williams met Audrey Sheppard at a medicine show in Banks, Alabama. [36] So many listeners contacted the radio station asking for more of "the singing kid", possibly influenced by his mother, that the producers hired him to host his own 15-minute show twice a week for a weekly salary of US$15 (equivalent to $300 in 2021). Williams had married his second wife, Billie Jean Jones in October 1952, as 14,000 people looked on in Louisiana where Williams hosted radio shows after being fired from the Grand Ole Opry in August of that year. A picture from the past came slowly stealing As I brushed your arm and walked so close to you Then suddenly I got that old time feeling I can't help it if I'm still in love with you. The prolific musician and performer wrote songs such as "Your Cheatin' Heart," drank too much whiskey, had family problems. [30] Williams's remains are interred at the Oakwood Annex in Montgomery. The album included unreleased songs. After Hawkshaw Hawkins and other performers started singing "I Saw the Light" as a tribute to Williams, the crowd, now realizing that he was indeed dead, followed them. [129][130], Material recorded by Williams, originally intended for radio broadcasts to be played when he was on tour or for its distribution to radio stations nationwide, resurfaced throughout time. He was unable to read or notate music to any significant degree. On December 11, 1946, in his first recording session, he 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", which was misprinted as "When God Comes and Fathers His Jewels". In 2010 the Pulitzer Prize board awarded Williams a special citation for his craftsmanship as a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life.. That day, Williams could not fly because of an ice storm in the Nashville area; he hired a college student, Charles Carr, to drive him to the concerts. [37], In August 1938, Elonzo Williams was temporarily released from the hospital. [16] The couple divorced on May 29, 1952. Red Foley, Roy Acuff, and Ernest Tubb, among others, sang Williamss gospel-influenced I Saw the Light at his funeral, which was attended by thousands. The song was number one on the country charts for six weeks. In April 1948, he scored a second Billboard success with "Honky Tonkin.'". ), He was racked by physical and emotional afflictions, and these coupled with his gift of song, made him kin to millions.. A year later he was entering talent shows and had his own band, Hank. A quick study, Williams learned how to play folk, country and, thanks to an African-American street musician named Rufus Payne, the blues. "Tom [Hiddleston, the actor portraying Williams] puts across that impending sense of doom. Father and son rarely saw each other over the next decade, with Williams' mother, who ran rooming houses, moving the family to Greenville and later Montgomery, Alabama. In 1948, he moved to Shreveport, Louisiana, and he joined the Louisiana Hayride, a radio show broadcast that propelled him into living rooms all over the Southeast appearing on weekend shows. While Jett was a college junior at the University of Alabama in Montgomery majoring in recreation therapy, her adoptive . The house had a small garden on which they grew diverse crops that Williams and his sister Irene sold around Georgiana. When he played on his guitar, he played on the heart-strings of millions, pastor Henry Lyons of Highland Avenue Baptist Church told the crowd gathered on Perry Street. Jett was then legally adopted. [22] At a chance meeting in Georgiana, Williams met U.S. Representative J. Lister Hill while Hill was campaigning across Alabama. [80] In June 1952, Williams moved in with his mother, even as he released numerous hit songs such as "Half as Much" in April, "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)" in July, "You Win Again" in September, and "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive" in November. Audrey Williams asked Rose if her husband could sing a song for him on that moment,[51] Rose agreed, and he liked Williams' musical style. [25][26] Payne's base musical style was blues. Williams was scheduled to perform at the Municipal Auditorium in Charleston, West Virginia on Wednesday, December 31 (New Year's Eve), 1952. Advance ticket sales totaled $3,500. 7. "[25] An estimated 15,000 to 25,000 people passed by the silver coffin, and the auditorium was filled with 2,750 mourners. The suit demanded that both of the publishing companies continue to pay her half of the royalties from Hank Williams' records. He sang "Cold, Cold Heart", "Hey Good Lookin''", "Glory Bound Train" and "I Saw the Light" with other cast members, and a duet, "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You)" with Anita Carter. [142], For other people named Hank Williams, see. During one of his concerts, Williams met his idol, Grand Ole Opry star Roy Acuff backstage,[43] who later warned him of the dangers of alcohol, saying, "You've got a million-dollar talent, son, but a ten-cent brain. In 1977, a national organization of CB truck drivers voted "Your Cheatin' Heart" as their favorite record of all time. Due to Williams' excesses, Fred Rose stopped working with him. Because a corpse was involved, Stamey called in radio officer Howard Janney. Hank jr. was three years old when his father died in 1959. It was swelling in him like a great body of water behind a massive dam, Lyons said. Liquored up and abusing morphine, he collapsed in a hotel room in Knoxville, Tennessee. The world he seemed to identify most with was the musical sounds that poured out of the radio and emanated from church choirs. His name was misspelled as "Hiriam" on his birth certificate, which was prepared and signed when he was 10 years old. Williams married singer Audrey Sheppard, who was his manager for nearly a decade. Later life and death. He died in 1939, but his musical legacy would live on in Williams. Williams and his wife approached Fred Rose, the president of the company, during one of his habitual ping-pong games at WSM radio studios. [15] That evening, when the announcer at Canton announced Williams's death to the gathered crowd, they started laughing, thinking that it was just another excuse. Picking up the guitar for the first time at the age of eight, Williams was just 13 when he made his radio debut. It was at this time that Williams decided to change his name informally from Hiram to Hank. Carr was exhausted and, according to the police reports, nervous enough to invite suspicion that foul play had been involved in Williams' death. The identity of her famous father remained a mystery to her until her early twenties. [125][126] In July 2020, his granddaughter Katherine (Hank Jr.'s daughter) died in a car crash at the age of 27. [132] Broadcast in 1949, the shows were recorded for the promotion of Hadacol. Instead of performing, Williams died 70 years ago today, on Jan. 1, 1953. A little more than a year later, on December 30, 1952, Williams, newly married to a younger woman named Billie Jean, left his mother's home in Montgomery for Charlestown, West Virginia. He also requested a doctor for Williams, as Williams was feeling the combination of the chloral hydrate and alcohol he had drunk on the way from Montgomery to Knoxville. [54] After a few more moderate hits, in 1949 he released his version of the 1922 Cliff Friend and Irving Mills song "Lovesick Blues",[55] made popular by Rex Griffin. He made his radio debut at age 13; formed his first band, Hank Williams and his Drifting Cowboys, at age 14; and early on began wearing the cowboy hats and western clothing that later were so associated with him. Payne,[1] along with Roy Acuff and Ernest Tubb,[2] had a major influence on Williams' later musical style. It included 10 songs: "Mother Is Gone", "Won't You Please Come Back", "My Darling Baby Girl" (with Audrey Sheppard), "Grandad's Musket", "I Just Wish I Could Forget", "Let's Turn Back the Years", "Honkey-Tonkey", "I Loved No One But You", "A Tramp on the Street", and "You'll Love Me Again". She worked in a cannery and served as a night-shift nurse in the local hospital. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. [43] The recordings "Never Again" and "Honky Tonkin'" became successful, and earned Williams the attention of MGM Records. Ernest Tubbs began the funeral with Beyond the Sunset and Red Foley and The Statesman Quartet sang Peace In The Valley.. [60] Williams released seven hit songs after "Lovesick Blues", including "Wedding Bells",[55] "Mind Your Own Business", "You're Gonna Change (Or I'm Gonna Leave)", and "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It". As people across his native Alabama picked up their newspapers that day, they were greeted with the tragic news Williams had died. His mother was Audrey, and his step mothers were Bobbie Jett, who had his stepsister, and Billie Gean who was a widow just months after she married Williams, Sr. (Williams para.14). The two were often rivals for Williams' time and attention. The Montgomery Auditorium, located at the intersection of Perry and Monroe Street, "Long forgotten Montgomery auditorium to see new life", "Convict Says Williams Depressed Singer Said Possible Suicide", "Name is Forged to Prescriptions, Expert Says", I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Death_of_Hank_Williams&oldid=1137643276, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from December 2016, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Insufficiency of the right ventricle of the heart, January 4, 1953 at Oakwood Annex Cemetery in, January 1, 1953 in Oak Hill, West Virginia, This page was last edited on 5 February 2023, at 18:47. Rock Icon KISS Is Saying Goodbye (For Real), Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads, Name: Hank Williams, Birth Year: 1923, Birth date: September 17, 1923, Birth State: Alabama, Birth City: Mount Olive, Birth Country: United States. What we do know is that Williams died when he was just 29 years old. The court rejected claims made by PolyGram Records and Legacy Entertainment in releasing recordings Williams made for the Mother's Best Flour Show. 1 on the country charts. [30] Payne and Williams lost touch, though Payne also eventually moved to Montgomery, where he died in poverty in 1939. Williams said he did not, and those are believed to be his last words. And he looked so satisfied I can't help it if I'm still in love with you. Picking up the guitar for the first time at the age of eight, Williams was just 13 when he made his radio debut. [77] It was the second marriage for both (each being divorced with children). That night, the singers body was taken back to Montgomery. With Hill's help, the family began collecting the money. He purchased the DSC title for $35 from the "Chicago School of Applied Science"; in the diploma, he requested that the DSc was spelled out as "Doctor of Science and Psychology". [122] On April 12, 2010, the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded Williams a posthumous special citation that paid tribute to his "craftsmanship as a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life". Omissions? In full support of Williams' musical aspirations was his mother, Lillie. The set was re-released on Hank Williams: The Legend Begins in 2011. "Long Gone Daddy: A Biography of Hank Williams, Country Music's Tragic Hero". Advertisement. While he was medically disqualified from military service after suffering a back injury caused by falling from a bull during a rodeo in Texas, his band members were all drafted to serve. Hiram "Hank" Williams died on January 1, 1953, at the age of 29. Williamss music itself was not especially groundbreaking, though he was a deft synthesizer of blues, honky-tonk country, western swing, and other genres. 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. PolyGram contended that Williams' contract with MGM Records, whose back catalogue they owned at the time, prior to current owner Universal Music's absorption of PolyGram the next year, gave them rights to release the radio recordings. [83], 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. [45] Sheppard later told Williams that she wanted to move to Montgomery with him and start a band together and help him regain his radio show. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local. This being the days of Jim Crow, the 200 Black mourners were in a segregated balcony. In 1952, he divorced Sheppard and married singer Billie Jean Horton. [95] That evening, when the announcer in Canton announced Williams' death to the gathered crowd, they started laughing because they thought it was just another excuse. [34] Instead of performing, Williams died 70 years ago today, on Jan. 1, 1953. The station's owner called the local police chief. If a song can't be written in 20 minutes, it ain't worth writing. He won the first prize of $15, singing his first original song "WPA Blues". Payne gave Williams guitar lessons in exchange for money or meals prepared by Lillie. He was only 29. Williams and her son, Hank Jr., became estranged after he turned 18. Both women had been using the description professionally. [94] He also wrote that Williams had been severely beaten and kicked in the groin recently (during a fight in a Montgomery bar a few days earlier), and local magistrate Virgil F. Lyons ordered an inquest into Williams' death concerning a welt that was visible on his head. Marshall had been previously convicted for forgery, and had been paroled and released from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in 1951. [6] The family's first child, Ernest Huble Williams, was born on July 5, 1921; he died two days later. The Georgiana . For a time his relationship with Fred Rose deteriorated, but the two were able to mend fences, paving the way for Williams to become a regular on the "Louisiana Hayride," a regular Saturday night performance hosted by a radio station in Shreveport. She drove her son and his band to shows throughout southern Alabama. [112] He was ranked second in CMT's 40 Greatest Men of Country Music in 2003, behind only Johnny Cash who recorded the song "The Night Hank Williams Came To Town". [77], 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". One woman was carried out after she collapsed. Buy newspaper front pages, posters and more. The lanky guitar player with twangy voice began his musical career in Montgomery, singing over WSFA, the newspaper reported. Since Williams' parents were both followers of Freemasonry,[7] Williams was named after Hiram I. Williams was scheduled to perform at the Municipal Auditorium in Charleston, West Virginia. Tributes to Williams took place the day after his death. Before it was over, some 20,000 people had filled the auditorium and the street outside for what was described as the largest funeral in Montgomerys history. I told Carr that Williams looked dead but I did not press the point when Carr explained that Williams had been given two sedatives, Kitts was quoted as saying. [38] The band traveled throughout central and southern Alabama performing in clubs and at private gatherings. The Journal that day reported WSFA received hundreds of calls and telegrams requesting the station play his songs. Lillie Stone, Audrey Williams, and Hank Williams, Jr., seated on a bed while looking through letters and cards received after the death of Hank Williams, Sr. [75], On August 11, 1952, Williams was dismissed from the Grand Ole Opry for habitual drunkenness and missing shows. [27] Payne taught Williams chords, chord progressions, bass turns, and the musical style of accompaniment that he would use in most of his future songwriting. The ceremony featured Ferlin Husky interpreting "I Saw the Light". Hank Williams Sr. Meanwhile, between tour schedules, Williams returned to Montgomery to host his radio show. Their son, Randall Hank Williams (now known as Hank Williams Jr.), was born on May 26, 1949. He returned to perform in KWKH and WBAM shows and in the Louisiana Hayride, for which he toured again. If Williams had lived, it's not entirely certain that the Nashville music community, so eager to shed its hillbilly roots, would have continued to embrace Williams' music. [101] Released in July, "I Won't Be Home No More" went to No. Long plagued by alcoholism, Williams fell ill at the Andrew Johnson Hotel in Knoxville on the last night of 1952. Carr requested a doctor for Williams, who was feeling the combination of the chloral hydrate and alcohol he consumed on the way from Montgomery. "[44], He worked for the rest of the war for a shipbuilding company in Mobile, Alabama, as well as singing in bars for soldiers. Most of the material was written by Williams himself, in some cases with the help of Fred Rose and his son Wesley. Montgomery, Alabama Hank Williams was country music's first megastar. However, his plaintive, bluesy phrasing was unique and became a touchstone of country music. His breakthrough moment came in 1949 with the release of Lovesick Blues, an old show tune that Williams parlayed into a chart-topping hit, an invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, and international fame. It's hard to know another's lips will kiss you And hold you just the way I used to do Marshall stated that Williams told him that he had decided to "destroy the Hank Williams that was making the money they were getting". [97] His funeral was said to have been far larger than any ever held for any other citizen of Alabama, and the largest event ever held in Montgomery. Chief Winfred Patterson who arrested Hank said to the Alabama Journal in 1971 that Hank was "more or less having DT's (delirium tremens). Among other fake titles, he said that he was a Doctor of Science. [76] In October 1952 he married Billie Jean Jones. For Hank to have lived even a normal life span, he would have had to avoid chemical dependence. The unfinished lyrics were later returned to Sony/ATV, which handed them to Bob Dylan in 2008 to complete the songs for a new album. Fearful that disc jockeys and jukebox operators would hesitate to accept these unusual recordings, Williams used this alias to avoid hurting the marketability of his name. [128], In 2006, a janitor of Sony/ATV Music Publishing found in a dumpster the unfinished lyrics written by Williams that had been found in his car the night he died. [52] Rose signed Williams to a six-song contract, and leveraged this deal to sign Williams with Sterling Records. Jett was 21 when she realized Williams could be her biological father. [68] In October, Williams recorded a demo, "There's a Tear in My Beer" for a friend, "Big Bill Lister", who recorded it in the studio. Stamey. 4. He was driving Hank Williams, 29, who died that night. Hanks first and second wives watched from the front pew. 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. During an initial hearing, Marshall insisted that he was a doctor, refusing to answer further statements. [79], On December 15, 1944, Williams married Audrey Sheppard. Years of back pain, alcoholism, and prescription drug abuse severely compromised Williams' health. Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site.

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