Williams eventually started to host a show on KWKH and started touring across western Louisiana and eastern Texas, always returning on Saturdays for the weekly broadcast of the Hayride. However, she was to marry someone else before the . The song resonated with music fans, as well as executives at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, who invited Williams to perform. He had 2 stepmothers and a mother. [137], Williams was portrayed by English actor Tom Hiddleston in the 2016 biopic I Saw the Light, based on Colin Escott's 1994 book Hank Williams: The Biography. 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. Because a corpse was involved, Stamey called in radio officer Howard Janney. [4], Due to Williams's excesses, Fred Rose stopped working with him. He was unable to read or notate music to any significant degree. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. The day after Williams died, The Montgomery Advertiser recalled Williams as a former peanut vendor who learned to play guitar at age 6. Hank Williams decided he wanted to go ahead with the performances he had scheduled on . [9] Dr. P.H. On New Year's Day 1953, at the age of 29, Williams suffered from heart failure while being driven to his next scheduled concert in Charleston, West Virginia, and died suddenly in the back seat of the car in Oak Hill, West Virginia. Stopping for gas in Oak Hill, West Virginia, Carr realized Williams was dead. [106], On February 8, 1960, Williams' star was placed at 6400 Hollywood Boulevard on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Long plagued by alcoholism, Williams fell ill at the Andrew Johnson Hotel in Knoxville on the last night of 1952. As his driver, college student Charles Carr, barreled toward a concert venue in Canton, Ohio, Williams' health took a turn for the worse. [18], In the fall of 1934, the Williams family moved to Greenville, Alabama, where Lillie opened a boarding house next to the Butler County courthouse. The couple were married in 1944 at a Texaco Station in Andalusia, Alabama, by a justice of the peace. His iconic status was amplified by his death at age 29 and by his reputation for hard living and heart-on-the-sleeve vulnerability. 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. His passing did not bring about the end to his stardom, however. Williams, who was recently separated from WSM "for failure to make appearances," was a resident of Montgomery, Ala. As a youth he sold peanuts and shined shoes, meanwhile strumming on a. After Hawkshaw Hawkins and other performers started singing Williams' song "I Saw the Light" as a tribute to him, the crowd realized that he was indeed dead and began to sing along. A year later he was entering talent shows and had his own band, Hank. Jett, whose legal name is Cathy Deupree Adkinson, was raised by Williams' mother for two years until she died. One year later, he released a cover of "Lovesick Blues", a huge country hit, which propelled him to stardom on the Grand Ole Opry. Jett Williams, 39, was born to Bobbie Jett five days after Williams died. The original members were guitarist Braxton Schuffert, fiddler Freddie Beach, and comedian Smith "Hezzy" Adair. 29, January 1st 1953. Marshall admitted that he had also prescribed chloral hydrate to his recently deceased wife, Faye, as a headache medicine. Many artists have covered his songs and he has influenced Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, George Jones, George Strait, Charley Pride, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, among others. In the years since his death, Williams' impact has only grown, with artists as varied as Perry Como, Dinah Washington, Norah Jones and Bob Dylan all covering his work. [142], For other people named Hank Williams, see. At 11:25 p.m., Hank Williams was arrested in Alexander City at the Russell Hotel for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. [134] Gimarc contacted Williams' daughter Jett, and Colin Escott, writer of a biography book on Williams. Hank Williams, the 29-year-old King of Country Music, was to have flown to Charleston, West Virginia for a New Year's Eve concert but an ice storm near Nashville kept him away. [47] As a result of the new variety of his repertoire, Williams published his first songbook, Original Songs of Hank Williams. [30] Payne and Williams lost touch, though Payne also eventually moved to Montgomery, where he died in poverty in 1939. Contribute to chinapedia/wikipedia.en development by creating an account on GitHub. The marriage was technically invalid, since Sheppard's divorce from her previous husband did not comply with the legally required 60-day trial reconciliation. Hank Williams, Sr. passed away on January 1, 1953 at 29 years old.Hank Williams Net Worth. Arthur Whiting was also a guitarist for the Drifting Cowboys. Wiki User. Jeff Wallenfeldt, manager of Geography and History, has worked as an editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica since 1992. [16] Williams' father was frequently relocated by the lumber company railway for which he worked, and the family lived in many southern Alabama towns. The break had to come, he added. While her son was not on the stage, his song I Saw The Light opened the show. While Jett was a college junior at the University of Alabama in Montgomery majoring in recreation therapy, her adoptive . Advance ticket sales totaled $3,500. The funeral took place on January 4 at the Montgomery Auditorium, where an estimated 15,000 to 25,000 attended while the auditorium was filled with 2,750 mourners. Williams was among the first class of artists inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1961, and in 2010, the Pulitzer Board awarded him a special citation for songwriting. The prolific musician and performer wrote songs such as "Your Cheatin' Heart," drank too much whiskey, had family problems. The president of MGM Records told Billboard magazine that the company got only about five requests for pictures of Williams during the weeks before his death, but over 300 afterwards. In February 2005, the Tennessee Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling stating that Williams' heirsson, Hank Williams Jr, and daughter, Jett Williamshave the sole rights to sell his recordings made for a Nashville radio station in 1951. The Journal that day reported WSFA received hundreds of calls and telegrams requesting the station play his songs. A doctor injected Williams with B12 and morphine and porters carried the legendary singer-songwriter to the car. Less than 48 hours later, Hank Williams was dead. He attributed the decision to Williams' declining career: "Most of his bookings were of the honky-tonk beer joint variety that he simply hated. 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. In 2011, Williams' 1949 MGM number one hit, "Lovesick Blues", was inducted into the Recording Academy Grammy Hall of Fame. A year later he was entering talent shows and had his own band, Hank Williams and his Drifting Cowboys. Williams and Sheppard lived and worked together in Mobile. He was dismissed by the Grand Ole Opry because of his unreliability and alcoholism. Williams said he did not, and those are thought to be his last words. The result of the original autopsy indicated that Williams died of a heart attack. 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. [46], In 1945, when he was back in Montgomery, Williams started to perform again for the WSFA radio station. 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. It provided the title for the 1964 biographic film of the same name, which starred George Hamilton. He also wrote a number of religious songs under the pseudonym Luke the Drifter. After school and on weekends, Williams sang and played his Silvertone guitar on the sidewalk in front of the WSFA radio studio. He denied any responsibility in both deaths. One woman was carried out after she collapsed. His funeral was held the next day, Sunday Jan. 4, 1953, at Montgomerys City Auditorium. Marshall gave Cunningham a list of his patients, including Hank Williams. (An audio recording of the funeral begins at the 7:30 mark of the video below. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. Site contains certain content that is owned A&E Television Networks, LLC. By the end of 1952, Williams had started to suffer heart problems. Hank jr. was three years old when his father died in 1959. On the evening of December 30, 1952, the restless, rail-thin 29-year-old tossed and turned in bed at his home in Montgomery, Ala. [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". [37] On March 21, Robert Travis of the State Crime Bureau determined that Marshall's handwriting corresponded to that of Dr. Cecil W. Lemmon on six prescriptions written for Williams. [33], He never learned to read music; instead he based his compositions in storytelling and personal experience. [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. 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. Stars of the Grand Ole Opry were expected along with thousands of fans to bid farewell to Williams. Williams' version became a huge country hit; the song stayed at number one on the Billboard charts for four consecutive months,[56] and gained Williams a place in the Grand Ole Opry. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1961, the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, and the Native American Music Awards Hall of Fame in 1999. [109] When Downbeat magazine took a poll the year after Williams' death, he was voted the most popular country and Western performer of all timeahead of such giants as Jimmie Rodgers, Roy Acuff, Red Foley, and Ernest Tubb.[110]. By the end of 1952, Williams had started to have heart problems. [78] His final concert was held in Austin, Texas, at the Skyline Club on December 19. [85] In 2005, the BBC documentary series Arena featured an episode on Williams. 4. [67], Williams' career reached a peak in the late summer of 1951 with his Hadacol tour of the U.S. with Bob Hope and other actors. [16], The circumstances of Williams's death are still controversial. [91] Carr later drove on until he stopped for fuel at a gas station in Oak Hill, West Virginia, where he realized that Williams had been dead for so long that rigor mortis had already set in. They began to fill the auditorium hours before the afternoon funeral. [57] On June 11, 1949, Williams made his debut at the Grand Ole Opry, where he became the first performer to receive six encores. 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). [73] That same year, Williams had a brief extramarital affair with dancer Bobbie Jett, with whom he fathered a daughter, Jett Williams. The recordings, which Legacy Entertainment acquired in 1997, include live versions of Williams' hits and his cover version of other songs. 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. He had a message. [15] He was born with spina bifida occulta, a birth defect of the spinal column, which gave him lifelong pain; this became a factor in his later alcohol and drug abuse. He was severely injured after falling from a truck, breaking his collarbone and suffering a severe blow to the head. medically disqualified from military service, I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You), Grammy for Best Country Vocal Collaboration, "Luke the Drifter and the Secrets of Country | ABCtales", "Cowtown Birthplace of Western Swing - Hank Williams", Escott, Colin, Merritt, George & MacEwen, William 2015, "Show 9 Tennessee Firebird: American country music before and after Elvis. Hank Williams Sr. was 29 Years, 3 Months, 15 Days old. Marshall stated that Williams told him that he had decided to "destroy the Hank Williams that was making the money they were getting". [84], A man named Lewis Fitzgerald (born 1943) claimed to be Williams' illegitimate son; he was the son of Marie McNeil, Williams' cousin.
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