Original subtitles

FIDDLE MUSIC PLAYS

# When you are sad and lonely

# And have no place to go

# Come to see me baby

# And bring along some dough

# And we'll go Honky Tonkin' Honky Tonkin'

# Honky Tonkin'...#

Two things - beer and dancing.

Well, that's what we like to say about dancing,

if you're dancing, you got a chance!

They call them honky-tonks. Road houses.

Ice houses. Skull orchards.

Skull orchard!

Well, that's just a way of describing a nightclub that

has regular fights in it, you know?

Someone is always getting popped in the skull.

But there literally were places where they put chicken wire

over the front of the stage to keep people from getting hit

with beer bottles.

# When you and your baby...#

In the heyday of honky-tonk music, the beer was flowing,

the cigarettes were lit.

Couples were dancing, they would rub stomach to stomach, cheek to cheek.

# Honky Tonkin'

# Honky Tonkin' honey baby

# We'll go Honky Tonkin' around this town. #

Usually, someone would get out of hand

and make a pass at the wrong woman.

Lines were crossed. Propriety blurred.

Music good, you know? The dancing good.

Fights would break out.

Lips would be busted, blood would be flowing and then they'd make up

and go back to dancing, smoke some more cigarettes

and drink some more whiskey. Great culture.

# Honky Tonkin' honey baby

# We're going Honky Tonkin' around this town. #

After the war, everybody came home supercharged.

One of the things that went with that was an electricity,

and a bit of an energy that called for something besides fiddle tunes.

All of a sudden, it was about stomping and dancing.

That called for drums and that called for twanging guitars

and a steel guitar that would cut through the noise

and get above the noise of the crowd and the fights.

And the hooping and hollering as the night went on,

it always gets louder, the honky-tonk, and more rambunctious.

As you move towards midnight, the edge moves closer to you.

So you need an edgy sound, you know, that cuts through that.

And electricity was your friend.

And the new songs had a new sound - a piercing, electric guitar,

a driving drumbeat, insistent bass,

and the voice that delivered lyrics about both good times

and heartbreak with an emotional urgency.

But the new sound would be just one way country music changed

after World War II.

The leader of a string band from Kentucky

now assembled a new group of musicians, including a young

textile mill worker from North Carolina.

Together, they would push the boundaries of one of the oldest

forms of country music into its own category, with its own name.

# Six more miles and leave my darling... #

But it was a skinny singer-songwriter from Alabama who

rocketed to fame and was gone before he reached the age of 30

who would leave an imperishable mark on American music.

# Six more miles long and sad... #

He could get any crowd dancing to his goodtime beat,

then bring them to tears with his songs of almost inexpressible

heartache, written from his own personal torments.

# Oh, I hear the train a-coming

# Bringing my darling back home

# Six more miles to the graveyard

# Then I'll be left here all alone. #

He made you think he was singing strictly to you.

"This guy understands me, he knows the pain I feel,

"he knows what I've done. And what I've experienced.

"He knows it just as well as I do and this song he's singing,

"he's singing directly to me."

Hank Williams had the guts to put into words what

we were all thinking and feeling but were too embarrassed to say.

He cut right to the bone.

FIDDLE MUSIC PLAYS

There's a saying in Nashville -

"it all begins with a song".

Songs are the magic carpets that change things.

Everything remains the same until you find the right song

and then things change.

The world changed because of Hank Williams' songs.

One of my grandfather's most famous quotes, he used to say,

"I don't know what you mean by country music, I just write songs

"the way I know how."

In the late summer of 1946,

Hank Williams was just a few days shy of his 23rd birthday.

They had been a hard 23 years.

He was born on September 17, 1923

in a dirt-floor log house

his parents rented in Mount Olive, Alabama

and was christened Hiram, after one of the kings in the Old Testament.

His father, Lon, who had returned from World War I suffering

from shellshock, worked a variety of jobs

until his condition forced him to enter a veterans' hospital

in Louisiana, in effect, departing from his son's life.

His mother, Lilly, was a strong and ambitious woman.

She moved her son

and daughter to a succession of towns in southern Alabama,

finally ending up in Montgomery,

where she opened up a boarding house.

Her son was frail and skinny,

probably the result of a congenital spinal defect.

But he was fun-loving and outgoing,

and preferred that people call him Hank, not Hiram.

Lilly encouraged his interest in music, sending him to

a gospel singing school and getting him his first guitar at age eight.

Along the way, he met a black street musician, Rufus Payne,

known to everyone as Tee Tot, who taught him

chords on the guitar and let the boy follow along as he

and his band roamed the streets playing for hand-outs.

"All the music training I ever had...", Williams said later, "..was from him."

The black musical influence in country music is

immeasurable, as far as I'm concerned.

If you took Mr Lesley Riddle out of the AP Carter equation as a song

catcher and a song gatherer, if you took Arnold Shultz out

of Bill Monroe's life, or if you took Tee Tot out of Hank Williams'

life, just those three alone,

look how different it would have turned out.

In Montgomery, Williams shined shoes, sang on street corners

while he hawked peanuts his mother had roasted, and quit school early.

He developed a taste for alcohol at 11,

and when he won a local talent contest singing a song

he had written - WPA Blues -

he immediately spent his 15 prize partying with his friends.

Radio station WSFA soon featured him

on broadcasts as The Singing Kid.

Encouraged, he formed a band called The Drifting Cowboys, which played

small-time gigs at theatres

and schoolhouses in Alabama, Georgia, and the Florida Panhandle.

Lilly was the driving force behind it,

putting up handbills, collecting the money at the door,

and constantly scolding her son whenever he strayed,

which was often.

It's hard to explain Hank unless you go back to where he was raised.

He worked those little joints.

His mother, Lilly, would take him.

And if he didn't play them just right she'd cuff him.

He grew up with that, "You do it right, boy."

But she also sometimes came to his defence

when drunks in the audience picked a fight with him.

"There ain't nobody in this here world that I'd rather have

"standing next to me in a beer-joint brawl", Hank said,

"than my maw, with a broken bottle in her hand."

But by 1942, his own binge drinking had become such a problem

the Montgomery station fired him.

A year later, working in a medicine show in Brundage, Alabama,

he met a pretty drugstore clerk

who turned out to possess the same steely determination as his mother.

Audrey Mae Shepherd was still technically married to

another man, who had abandoned her and her young daughter,

but she was irresistibly drawn to Williams.

"I knew what I wanted and I went after it," she recalled.

"He was lucky, with a God-given talent,

"and I was lucky, with a few brains."

His back problems kept him out of World War II.

For a while, he and Audrey worked at the Alabama Drydock

and Shipbuilding Company in Mobile until she pushed him

to go back to Montgomery and his music.

My mother said, "Look, you're good, your music is good,

"your songs are good."

You take out mama and then maybe the guy sits down there, welds

ships together, and then goes to the next job.

Maybe if there was no Audrey there was no Hank.

By the war's end, they were married.

In 1946, he and Audrey boarded a train for Nashville, where

he hoped to make a name for himself.

There, he met with the renowned songwriter Fred Rose, who ran

Acuff-Rose Publishing, one of the first music publishers in town.

Rose took an immediate liking to Williams and helped him

get a recording deal of his own,

before he and Audrey returned home to Montgomery.

Among the songs Williams recorded was one that showed

the influence of Rufus Tee Tot Payne.

It was called Move It On Over.

# So move it on over (Move it on over)

# Move it on over (Move it on over)

# Move over little dog cos the big dog's movin' in... #

When it was released in June of 1947, it became Williams' first hit.

# So get it on over (Move it on over)

# Scoot it on over (Move it on over)

# Move over skinny dog cos the fat dog's movin' in. #

They say Rock Around The Clock is the first rock song.

I don't agree with that.

Rock Around The Clock is a direct steal of Move It On Over.

Listen to them, compare them sometime.

# Came in last night at half past...

# Daa-daa-da

# Rock around the clock

# Move it on over. #

# So shove it on over (Move it on over)

# Sweep it on over (Move it on over)

# Move over cold dog cos the hot dog's movin' in. #

RADIO: It's WSM, Nashville, Tennessee.

The broadcasting service

of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company.

Presenting the Grand Ole Opry.

Let her go, boys.

STEEL GUITAR PLAYS

National Life and Accident Insurance Company would

tell their agents to walk through neighbourhoods on a Saturday

night and if the door was open, the window was up,

and they heard the Grand Ole Opry coming through either

the screen door or the window,

out in the street, they made a note, they wrote down the address.

They were back in there, into that neighbourhood, on Monday morning.

DOOR KNOCKS

I'd knock on the door and I'd introduce myself.

Say, "I'm Bud Wendell, I'm with the National Life

"and Accident Insurance Company of Nashville.

"We own WSM and the Grand Ole Opry,

"perhaps you've heard of the Grand Ole Opry?

"And I have a little gift here I'd like to give you. May I step in?"

And they would have canvassing items,

souvenirs from the Grand Ole Opry, these agents.

They would have Grand Ole Opry WSM calendars,

they would have rulers, fly swotters.

Just little things that they could use to entice,

and then they would get around to talking about insurance.

Hundreds of radio stations across the nation now broadcast weekly

barn dance programmes,

from Philadelphia's Hayloft Hoedown to the Carolina Hayride

in Charlotte, from the Ozark Jubilee in Springfield, Missouri,

to Dallas's Big D Jamboree and California's Hollywood Barn Dance.

But the line-up of stars at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry

was unequalled.

And WSM's powerful 50,000-watt signal could beam the show

to both coasts from the Ryman Auditorium,

the mother church of country music.

Oh, my goodness, for a country musician to be asked to join the

Opry, that's kind of like saying you want to go to heaven when you die!

It's the top of the ladder, it's the ultimate.

Do you want to play first base for the New York Yankees?

Do you want to pitch for the Boston Red Sox? What do you want to do?

And to say that about do you want to be a member of the Grand Ole

Opry, that's just about as good a question as anybody could

ever ask and there's only one answer - yeah!

The first star that I ever saw in my life, in person,

was Bill Monroe.

He could do things that nobody else in country music could do, you know.

He could do that!

And he required everybody around him to do that, at that level, too.

MUSIC: It's Mighty Dark to Travel by Bill Monroe

# It's mighty dark for me to travel... #

I think there are cosmic forces, by way of human beings,

that get the planet.

They all know what we want.

They just want Bill Monroe.

They just want Mark Twain.

You know, they just want Einstein...

..want Hemingway.

When Bill put his band together and came to Nashville in 1939,

and got to be a member of the Grand Ole Opry, his music

started changing, and he started looking for a different sound.

I think, in his brain, he was hearing something that was unique,

but he didn't know exactly what it was.

Bill Monroe was temperamental, quick to take offence.

And a perfectionist, never entirely satisfied with the music

he had been playing with the Bluegrass Boys,

named in honour of his home state of Kentucky.

In late 1945, he began reconfiguring the band, bringing in Chubby Wise,

who had popularised Orange Blossom Special on the fiddle.

Cedric Rainwater on bass.

Lester Flatt from Duncans Chapel, Tennessee, singing lead and playing guitar.

On banjo, Monroe hired a quiet 21-year-old from Flint Hill, North Carolina, named Earl Scruggs.

Scruggs had been playing banjo since age four, and as a boy,

started experimenting with a three-fingered technique popular in North Carolina's Piedmont.

BANJO MUSIC PLAYS

After working in a textile mill to support his widowed mother during the war,

Scruggs joined a band in Knoxville, and further refined his propulsive rolling style.

Scruggs was almost painfully shy.

He overcame his stage fright by concentrating on making

his lightning-like finger work appear effortless.

MUSIC: Bluegrass Breakdown by Bill Monroe & The Bluegrass Boys

When Earl walked up anywhere near that mic, he was picking so hard

and definite that his excitement would penetrate the audience.

I mean, he was a 21-year-old kid playing the banjo in a way

that no-one had ever heard before.

He wasn't the first person to play with a three-finger roll,

but he was the first person who came to Nashville with it.

Earl Scruggs is one of the single most important musicians,

not just in the history of country music,

not just as an architect of what we know as bluegrass music,

but he is one of the single most

important instrumentalists in the history of the music of the world.

When Bill heard Earl play that fiery three-fingered roll,

it was the last cog that the machine needed to run on and really make the engine go.

Monroe's new sound now featured individual solo breaks in each song.

Wise's furious fiddle, Monroe's extraordinary mandolin,

and Scruggs's syncopated banjo, with Flatt keeping pace

on his guitar, and providing a strong vocal lead,

while Monroe added his own high tenor harmony.

# There's folks building homes

# As sweet as can be... #

In a country band, the music is built around the lead singer,

then you have the band back behind it.

In a bluegrass band, it's the band.

The fiddle player's as important as the mandolin player.

Don't tell Mr Monroe that.

But the banjo player is equally as important as the mandolin player.

Don't tell Mr Monroe that.

But I'm telling you, it's a band sound.

Bill Monroe, he never made it about him.

# A mansion for me

# A mansion for me... #

Thanks to their Grand Ole Opry broadcasts

and Monroe's relentless schedule of touring throughout the South,

the band's style began influencing other string bands.

# Lord Jesus is building a mansion for me. #

If Hank would drink a little beer, he's all right.

When Hank got on the hard stuff, drinking,

you didn't want to be around him.

Hank Williams's marriage to Audrey had been turbulent from the start.

At their home in Montgomery, there were constant tensions

about her insistence on being part of his act.

Troubles over money.

Angry fights during his recurrent bouts of heavy drinking.

His friend, Jimmy Key, saw it first-hand.

I had an apartment, so when Hank and Audrey would have a fight,

Hank would come move in with me.

I came home from work for lunch, and he's sitting in the hallway,

and he was just completely snookered.

And he was wailing away on Lovesick Blues.

And it ticked me off, I don't know, it just hit me wrong,

cos he was middle of the day in the juice too much.

He said, "What you think about this song?"

And I said...

"..It ain't worth a damn, it won't sell ten records."

He constantly, I think, was dealing with the battle of...

..I don't want to say good and bad, but more light and dark.

He believed in the real redemptive nature of Christ,

and that, you know, "I have struggles like everyone else does.

"And I'm a sinner, and I do this wrong and do this wrong.

"But, you know, I have faith in my salvation."

And he wrote many songs about that.

Once, Williams had been in the back-seat of his band's touring car

sleeping off yet another bender, when his mother - who was driving -

saw the beacon light of Montgomery's airport in the distance and tried to rouse him from his stupor.

"Hank, wake up," she shouted,

"We're nearly home, I just saw the light."

By the time they arrived, he had turned it into a song,

closely based on a gospel tune called, He Set Me Free.

I Saw The Light, everyone knows it, everyone loves it, slap your hip.

Whether you love Jesus or not, whether you're religious or not,

it's a song that just sticks in your head like glue, you know, and you can't stop singing it.

It's happy, it's up-tempo.

At the same time, it's a song of redemption and this broken man

who has seen the light.

# Praise the Lord, I saw the light

# I saw the light, I saw the light

# No more darkness, no more night

# Now I'm so happy no sorrow in sight

# Praise the Lord I saw the light... #

When you go howling at the moon on Friday and Saturday nights,

you'd wreck your car, you know, you'd chase women,

you'd come in drunk.

But then, Sunday morning, you face the music

cos somebody's mom and somebody's favourite aunt is going to

grab you by the ear and drag you out of that bed and take you to church.

Everybody out there who's had Saturday night and Sunday morning, can say,

"He's telling us about our lives."

And when you get it right, when an artist gets it right for themselves,

it's right for everybody.

# Now I'm so happy no sorrow in sight

# Praise the Lord I saw the light. #

The Grand Ole Opry is the big top of folk music...

One day in 1950, as a WSM announcer introduced

a popular morning programme, he improvised a little.

The show, he said, was coming from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee.

It was more an offhand comment than a statement of fact,

but for more and more country artists, Nashville had become

the promised land they all wanted to reach.

That now included four members of the first family of country music.

# I got a man

# Sweet talking man

# Sweet talking's all for me

# I got a man

# Sweet talking man

# Sweet talking man

# I can't be free

# And I don't care if he hasn't got a dime

# All I need to know is that

# He's all mine

# I got a man

# Sweet talking man

# Sweet talking's all for me

# I got a man... #

I was asking Maybelle one night in Knoxville.

She was doing a sound check and she had the autoharp

and she was trying to get it louder and it was starting to feed back.

I said, "Maybelle, what do you do "when you have trouble with that mic?"

"Oh, I just did what I tell the girls to do when they have trouble with the mic.

"Just smile real loud."

Good advice.

# I got a man

# Sweet talking man

# Sweet talking's all for me

# Yes his

# Sweet talking's all for me

# I said his

# Sweet talking's all for me. #

APPLAUSE

Back in 1927,

Maybelle Carter had been part of the original Carter family

when they made their ground-breaking recordings in Bristol, Tennessee.

Now, she was performing with her three daughters.

Helen Carter was the instrumentalist in the group.

She played acoustic guitar, she played the accordion, she also sang.

She was a wonderful guitar player.

As strong as her mother in her own style.

Anita was the youngest of the Carter sisters.

Anita had the most beautiful, pitch-perfect, clear, soprano voice.

My mother, the middle child, June Carter,

was not the vocalist that her sister Anita was.

My mother had this energy and this vibrance and this vitality

that came through with everything she did.

My mom was born an entertainer.

She had a great comedic sense.

And Mom made herself out to be not as good a singer as she was,

because her sisters teased her all the time

that she couldn't sing as good as them.

So Mommy kind of turned it into an act, you know,

where she'd go, "Hum-hum-hum-hum, mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi, muh-muh-muh."

And people would crack up laughing,

so she would just go on with it, trying to find her note.

But she knew exactly where it was.

# Hear that lonesome whippoorwill... #

Songwriting is the most mysterious of all the trades.

It cannot be explained.

There's a craft that goes along with it,

but at the same time, it's the divine gift,

it's that thing you can't explain.

# I'm so lonesome I could cry

# I've never seen... #

I guess he said it best when somebody asked him,

"Hank, how do you write them old sad songs?"

And he said, "I don't write them.

"I just hang on to the pen and God sends them through."

The way I see it,

if you're collaborating with God the creator,

who made the mountains and the stars and the moon and the sky,

a three-minute country song's not that big of a stretch.

But those kind of songs like I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry,

Your Cheating Heart...

..unexplainable.

# Can you hear that lonesome whippoorwill

# He sounds too blue to fly. #

Now what a line is that?

Have you ever thought of a bird being too blue to fly?

Apparently, Hank did.

# Did you ever see a robin weep. #

Hank would sing,

Hear that lonesome whippoorwill, he sounds too blue to fly,

the midnight train is whining low, I'm so lonesome I could cry.

So it's this stunning, beautiful, heartbreaking loneliness.

It's simple enough English but it's just put together in these

perfect little mazes of words that just cut right at your heart.

# The silence of a falling star

# Lights up a purple sky

# And as I wonder where you are

# I'm so lonesome I could cry. #

Like Jimmie Rodgers,

Hank Williams could neither read nor write musical notations.

But he was now cranking out hit after hit.

His secret, he said, can be explained in just one word.

Sincerity.

# I went down to the river to watch the fish swim by... #

Most of his songs were honky-tonk.

# But I got to the river so lonesome I wanted to die

# Oh, Lord. #

And he drew adoring crowds wherever he went.

He held them in the palm of his hand,

one of The Drifting Cowboys remembered.

"Once Hank walked out there

"and curled up around that microphone", he added,

"a naked lady could have rode an African elephant behind him

"and wouldn't nobody have seen her."

At the end of each tour,

Hank would return with a suitcase bulging with money

that he emptied onto the cashier's counter at his Nashville bank.

Then he and Audrey spent it as fast as they could.

She bought them his and hers Cadillacs.

He left extravagant tips at restaurants,

sent money to people who wrote him with hard luck stories.

Williams was constantly composing,

writing new lyrics while he travelled,

on scraps of paper he stuffed into his wallet.

On hotel stationery.

Even on the cardboard that came with his pressed shirts.

Backstage at the Opry, where he was now the show's biggest star,

he would sometimes try out a new song for other artists

and ask if they wanted it.

If they really liked it he would usually record it himself.

In 1951, when Montgomery, Alabama, staged a huge homecoming

for their favourite son, 9,000 people showed up.

The programme included The Carter Sisters

and Mother Maybelle with Chet Atkins.

That same year, the makers of Mother's Best Flour

saw Williams as a draw for their products

and he pre-recorded 70 15-minute radio shows for them to distribute.

Besides his hits and always a hymn or Gospel song,

the broadcasts often included recitations

from an alter ego he created, Luke The Drifter,

who dispensed moral advice Hank Williams himself never followed.

# Praise the Lord I saw the light. #

And sometimes, over the objections of the band,

the shows included vocals by Audrey, who despite her limited talent

seemed to crave the limelight that increasingly focused only on Hank.

# Praise the Lord

# I saw the light. #

Though Hank and Audrey presented a public image of a happy couple,

their relationship was as explosive as ever,

filled with fights and broken furniture.

She suspected him of cheating on her

and when he was on the road, he suspected her of the same thing.

They loved each other. I think they truly did love each other.

But for some reason, they fought a battle, I think, every day.

After a few months of sobriety,

Hank had resumed his bouts of heavy drinking.

Once, when Audrey had locked him from their home,

Williams checked into the Tulane Hotel

and fell asleep in his room with a lit cigarette,

which started a fire that resulted in him being arrested.

Occasionally, he turned to Mother Maybelle.

My mother would tell me that he would come to the house

sometimes late at night and would just sit in the living room

or in the kitchen area and have coffee and talk to Maybelle.

They worried about him a lot

and they tried to steal his liquor, pour it out.

There was never any judgment there and her door was always open.

There was some corn bread and some stew

and some pinto beans with ham hock in it.

No matter what, she'd feed you and lift you back up

and talk to you and counsel you.

She'd just love on you until you felt better.

Williams continued to pour his troubles into his songs.

When Audrey refused to let him kiss her, one day,

he told the children's baby-sitter his wife had a cold, cold heart.

Then he sat down, and in an hour wrote out a song.

# I've tried so hard my dear to show

# That you're my every dream

# Yet you're afraid each thing I do

# Is just some evil scheme

# A memory from your lonesome past

# Keeps us so far apart

# Why can't I free your doubtful mind

# And melt your cold, cold heart. #

I think there is such beauty in the storytelling and in the lyrics.

If you hear the words,

"why can't I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart?"

If that doesn't stir something up in you,

then we'll pass, we'll just let you go on by.

But to me, that's as poetic as anything you could ever hear,

and it's real.

# In anger, unkind words are said

# That make the teardrops start... #

As Cold, Cold Heart rose in the country charts,

many popular artists, including Tony Bennett,

Perry Como, Dinah Washington

and Louis Armstrong recorded their own versions.

It was said one time that his songs could go to places that he couldn't

because he was so pure as a country boy and as a country singer.

And his hillbilly fence might have stopped him,

but the songs could go beyond the fence.

More troubles plagued him.

He fell off a stage in Canada,

further aggravating his chronic back problem,

and sending him to the hospital to be fitted

for a steel and leather brace that made life on the road excruciating.

Over Christmas of 1951, he and Audrey argued and fought for a week.

By New Year's Eve, she had moved out with the children.

Ten days later, she filed for divorce.

I think when he split with Audrey...

..I think that was the beginning of the end.

# This heart of mine

# Could never see... #

Williams moved in briefly with Ray Price, a rising country star,

who remembered Hank calling Audrey every day, only to have her hang up.

# Just trusting you

# Was my great sin

# What can I do?

# You win again. #

# Oh, please

# Don't let me love you... #

He was still writing and recording hit after hit.

# I'm feeling blue

# And please... #

His publisher reported that 89 songs that Williams had written

were recorded in the first half of 1952 alone.

# You'll be untrue... #

But his physical condition was deteriorating.

Nothing eased his constant back pain.

And now he added a steady mix of drugs to combat it.

Amphetamines to get himself going.

Sedatives to help him sleep.

Sometimes morphine to numb the pain.

The drinking was bad enough, but he progressed to other things.

# You'll be untrue. #

I went on out to the house and he came out in his underwear.

And he stood like death eating a cracker. I mean he just...

It was just really, really sad to see.

In a recording session in Nashville, Williams was so weak

he would collapse into a chair to rest between takes.

As he finished the last song,

I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive,

Chet Atkins, who played guitar in the session

remembered thinking, "Hoss, you ain't jiving".

On tour, Williams continued drawing huge crowds,

though he often was drunk or surly on stage,

or simply failed to appear.

In Richmond, Virginia, with Ray Price as the opening act,

he had trouble remembering the lyrics and staying on key,

and walked off after three songs,

leaving Price and The Drifting Cowboys

to try to appease the angry crowd.

After another ragged performance, a disgusted Roy Acuff told him,

"You've got a million-dollar voice and a ten-cent brain."

At a concert in El Paso, he was in such bad shape

that Minnie Pearl was asked to stay with him between performances,

to make sure he didn't miss the second show.

She tried to brighten his mood by singing I Saw The Light.

And he paused and said, "Minnie, there ain't no light."

That's exactly what he said.

"There ain't no light for me, Minnie."

Not a good thought.

On August 11th, 1952, after hearing reports that Williams

was drunk during a show in Pennsylvania,

the manager of the Grand Ole Opry called him up and fired him.

On October 19th, he married 19-year-old Billie Jean Jones.

The ceremony took place in New Orleans

in as public a manner as possible.

For tickets ranging from 1 to 2.80,

people could attend the afternoon rehearsal or the evening ceremony,

complete with a musical performance.

14,000 fans attended.

Then Williams went back on tour for the remainder of 1952.

Those last days must have been a physical challenge

because the disease of alcoholism and drug addiction

on top of whatever physical ailments,

and riding up and down the road in the back-seat of a car

to sing country music, was not a glamorous life.

So it must have been just a physical nightmare and a soul nightmare.

# I'm a rolling stone... #

His health worsened.

Chest pains made it hard to catch his breath.

His back hurt so much,

he sometimes laid on the floorboard of his touring car, crying.

"Every time I close my eyes", he said,

"I see Jesus coming down the road.

"He's coming after old Hank."

On December 30th, 1952, Williams prepared to leave Montgomery

for two shows in West Virginia and Ohio.

A freak winter storm cancelled his plans to fly,

so he hired 17-year-old Charles Carr to drive him in Williams's Cadillac.

They started late and made several stops for Williams to buy beer

and find a doctor who would provide him with a shot of morphine,

before stopping for the night.

On the 31st, they set out early.

Hank was in good spirits.

After breakfast, he bought a bottle of bourbon

and sang along with the radio at times.

Stopping in Chattanooga for lunch,

he played Tony Bennett's version of Cold, Cold Heart on the jukebox

and left a 50 tip.

It was snowing when they reached Knoxville

and learned that the first show,

scheduled for that night in Charleston, West Virginia,

had been cancelled, and they were to proceed directly to Canton, Ohio.

Hank persuaded a doctor to give him two more shots of morphine

before they departed at 10:45pm.

Williams was lying down in the back-seat,

covered by his overcoat and a blanket, as they headed for Canton.

He never made it.

Somewhere on the mountain roads between Bristol, Tennessee,

and Oak Hill, West Virginia, in the early hours of January 1st 1953,

Hank Williams, the Hillbilly Shakespeare,

died in the back-seat of his car.

He was 29 years old.

There was a radio behind the counter playing a Hank Williams song.

So I ordered my breakfast, and the DJ comes on and says,

"Well, there he is, folks, the late and great Hank Williams."

I said to the waitress, "What? Is Hank Williams dead?"

She said, "Honey, haven't you heard? He's dead."

And I wept.

I couldn't help it.

Because that was a loss, man.

For all mankind, I thought.

On Sunday, January 4th,

20,000 mourners gathered outside Montgomery's Municipal Auditorium

for the funeral of Hank Williams.

The largest crowd in the city's history

since the day Jefferson Davis was inaugurated

as president of the Confederacy in 1861.

Only 2,750 could fit inside,

including 200 African-Americans who filled the segregated balcony

as his open casket was placed at the foot of the stage,

flanked by floral arrangements in the shape of a guitar.

Ernest Tubb comforted Lilly Williams in the audience,

then sang a hymn with The Drifting Cowboys.

Red Foley performed Peace In The Valley,

and Roy Acuff joined him and Carl Smith and Webb Pierce

to sing I Saw The Light,

while Little Jimmy Dickens, June Carter

and Bill Monroe sat with the crowd.

The Southwind Singers sang an old Gospel hymn.

Then Williams was laid to rest in Oakwood cemetery.

# Your cheatin' heart

# Will make you weep

# You'll cry and cry

# And try to sleep

# But sleep won't come... #

Your Cheatin' Heart, released after his death,

would go on to become one of his best-known songs

and for many people define country music.

I loved Hank Williams.

He had his heart and soul into every word.

Emotionally it moved you and it's still the same.

I still love to hear his records.

I wish that he'd lived to be as old as I am

cos I know there's a lot of great songs in there.

# Your cheatin' heart will tell on you... #

What I loved about Hank Williams were those songs.

And the way he made you feel.

How much he must have hurt.

# And call my name

# You'll walk the floor... #

I was always drawn to the melancholy ones more than the fun ones.

Your Cheatin' Heart, So Lonesome I Could Cry.

# Your cheatin' heart will tell on you. #

You can't say it any more plain or any more poetic than,

I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry.

# Hear that lonesome whippoorwill

# He sounds too blue to fly

# The midnight train is whining low

# I'm so lonesome I could cry. #

# I've never seen a night so long

# When time goes crawling by

# The moon just went behind the clouds

# To hide its face and cry. #