The blue Cadillac roared to life as country music superstar Hank Williams headed north out of Montgomery, Alabama for a New Year’s Day performance in faraway Canton, Ohio. It would take two days to travel the 800 miles, but at least he’d be traveling in comfort. Selling 10 million records in about five years will do that for you. Songs the whole country was singing. Cold Cold, Heart... Jambalaya... and Hey, Good Lookin'. Of course, Hank had no idea the whole country would still be singing his songs 50 years later. He certainly didn’t know that he would become an American musical legend. The fact that he’d be dead in two days might not have surprised him, though. Over the next hour, you’ll find out why, as we retrace Hank’s last trip. Stay tuned for Hank Williams - Still Cookin’.

This program is a production of 90.3 WCPN ideastream, in association with the American Music Masters Series, a collaboration between Case Western Reserve University and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio. This past September, the American Music Masters Series celebrated the life of a lanky young singer from Montgomery, Alabama.

Montgomery has a history of conflict. In the 1860s, it was the capitol of the Confederacy. Tourist signs will lead you to the home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Other signs will lead you to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where activists like Martin Luther King, Jr. gave birth to the Civil Rights movement. Alabama’s capital city was also the home of a very conflicted, and very famous, performer - Hank Williams. “Ol’ Hank”, as his buddies called him, wrote down-to-earth songs that anyone could relate to and most everybody knows. Just ask someone to complete the line, “Hey Good Lookin’…”

Hank wrote dozens of tunes like that in the late Forties and early Fifties, and they’ve been recorded by hundreds of musicians ever since. Hank’s country twang may be hard for some city slickers to take, but plenty of performers know a good song when they hear it.

Ray Charles, Tony Bennett, Bob Dylan, Sheryl Crow and Beck have all recorded the songs of Hank Williams. For singers ranging from soul shouters to raucous rockers, there’s something about Hank’s music that sets it apart. George Thorogood had a big hit with his version of Hank’s comical tale of a guy in the dog house. There’s a Hank song to match every mood, from sassy sing-a-longs, to heart-felt ballads. Musicians like Linda Ronstadt are still in love with the songs of Hank Williams, just like many in Montgomery loved their hometown hero when he walked the streets, fifty years ago. But, biographer Colin Escott wonders how deep that affection really went

Colin Escott: Everyone wanted to cement themselves to him. More surprisingly, everyone called themselves Hank’s best friend. And I don’t think Hank had ANY best friends. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have died at 29.

A big symbol of Hank’s success is on display at the Hank Williams Museum, in downtown Montgomery.

Cecil Jackson: This was Hank Williams Sr’s pride and joy - a 1952 Cadillac convertible. Notice the eggshell blue exterior and its two-tone blue interior. In the early fifties, it was considered quite fashionable, even luxurious, for a car to have power windows, power steering, automatic transmission and a powered convertible top.

Hank’s “pride and joy” sits behind a railing that protects it from the hands of fans from around the world who visit the museum. Museum owner Cecil Jackson says the car looks pretty much the way it did when he saw it tooling around town as a kid.

Cecil Jackson: For someone to have a $5,000 Cadillac in 1952 was quite a big deal. Of course, $5,000 in those days was $50,000 like we see it today.

Charles Carr stands at the rail with his own memories. Carr’s father used to own a local limousine service and whenever Charles was on break from classes at nearby Auburn University, he’d help out with chauffeuring duties. And so it was, in late December of 1952, Charles got the call to be a driver for Montgomery’s most prominent celebrity, in this very car. Not that that was such a big deal to him.

Charles Carr: You’re talking about someone who’s been driving limousines all his life and my dad had a car bigger than this so...

But, hey, it was a slick thing. I’m not downplaying it. Any time you’re driving a beautiful Cadillac convertible, with a continental kit on the back, with a special engine in it - a young man’s got to be impressed by automobiles and I’ve always done that.

Matching the car’s interior, Hank was dressed in two shades of blue that morning as he and Charles packed their things in the trunk. An overcoat protected his western-styled suit from the chilly rain. He ducked his head and famous white felt hat under the convertible roof and slid into the front seat.

They had intended to depart earlier in the day to get a good head start, but Hank got to talking with one of his buddies and, before you knew it, afternoon had rolled around. Before leaving town, they made one last stop at a local drive-thru.

Charles Carr: We bought a six-pack of beer, I think it was at the Hollywood Drive-In. I do recall that we got Falstaff. But, by the end of the trip, I think there were three cans of beer still in the car. He did buy a half-pint of bonded whiskey and that was not all gone either. That was still in the car. That was the only liquor.

Charles Carr doesn’t like talking about the liquor. That comes from years of stories about Hank Williams, and his rowdy ways. As his fame grew, the singer developed a reputation for missing or messing-up shows. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why this trip was so important. It was vital for Hank to stay sober and demonstrate that he was cleaning up his act. For someone who hadn’t worked for a while, a successful New Year’s Day show in Canton, Ohio could begin to restore a tarnished image.

Highway 31 is a two-lane blacktop that heads north out of Montgomery and straight up through Birmingham. Pine trees line both sides of the road, broken by occasional pastures of grazing cattle and Scripture-quoting billboards. Hank had been to the big cities like New York and Los Angeles. He’d even been on road shows through Canada and Europe, but this is was home. Country music historian Bill Malone says this land and this life were touchstones of his music.

Bill Malone: Hank once said in an interview that, to be a hillbilly singer, you’ve got to have smelt a lot of mule manure in your life, and you’ve got to sing with feeling. If you sing about Momma in the casket, you can actually see her in the casket as you sing. So, he believed his songs when he was singing about drinking and carousing and cheating. And when he sang about Momma and about the old country church. It’s all a part of the same package.

“Momma” and the “old country church” were powerful parts of Hiram “Hank” Williams’ background. In fact, Lillie Williams had hopes that her boy would be a gospel singer. Miss Lillie was a tough woman who pretty much raised Hank and his sister alone, after her husband became ill and was hospitalized. Hank was a gangly kid, with health problems of his own - he was born with a spinal deformity that kept him from strenuous physical activity. He didn’t play sports like the rest of the boys, but he sure did play music. Hank and his guitar were a familiar sight on the streets.

One of the reasons that the music of Hank Williams has survived for a half century is that it’s not easy to categorize. As a kid growing up in England, biographer Colin Escott heard Hank through different ears.

Colin Escott: It sounded more like blues to me, than country, so I never really thought of Hank Williams as a country singer until I came here.

Even other musicians said there was something that made him different.

Steven Tracy: I think it was Lefty Frizzell who said “He was the bluest and lonesomest man I ever met." And so many people seemed to sense that blue haze around Hank Williams.

Steven Tracy is a professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts.

Steven Tracy: Of course, he was tutored by a black street musician named Rufus Payne, who called himself “Tee-Tot”. It’s very interesting to think that someone named “Payne (Pain)” tutored Hank Williams, because, in a sense, his music IS tutored by pain.

Donald Jenkins: Rufus Payne lived the last couple of years of his life here in Centennial Hill on Bainbridge Street.

Centennial Hill is a century-old African American community on the southeast side of downtown Montgomery. Donald Jenkins is president of the Centennial Hill Neighborhood Association and he says that despite the enforced separation of white and black in the Jim Crow South, a certain amount of mixing took place anyway. Especially in the small towns outside of Montgomery where Lillie Williams is said to have encouraged her son’s relationship with Rufus Payne by giving the musician food in exchange for music lessons.

Donald Jenkins: You normally only had only a Sheriff with a couple of deputies and they had other things to be concerned with, other than enforcing Jim Crow laws. A poor man is a poor man, whether he’s black or white, so the poor people had to live together. They didn’t just tolerate each other. Now, if that meant that this scrawny little white kid whose mother asked for some help, and it was a black man who had something to offer, they would do it. It was a matter of surviving. And they had to survive together.

Modern Blues musician Keb Mo recently recorded (this) Hank Williams song
(I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry), despite the fact that some purists say that whites can’t sing the Blues. They argue that the power of this music comes from the African-American experience of slavery. Steven Tracy says it’s hard to be so clear-cut, and suggests that Hank tapped into a universal notion of pain.

Steven Tracy: There is a kind of mythology around Hank Williams, the same kind of mythology that we find around Robert Johnson, and Billie Holiday and a number of people. And that is, the kind of lonesome spirit who is facing despair, but still faces the music with a kind of buoyant spirit and a restless one, that is in lots of ways tragic, but ultimately triumphant through this kind of celebration of music. I really think it’s especially the spirit, but I wouldn’t rule out the notion that Hank’s just a damned good poet and songwriter.

It was a blues song that would turn Hank into a superstar, but nobody wanted him to record it. Nobody except Hank. That story straight ahead, as our journey continues. You’re listening to Hank Williams - Still Cookin’.

This bouncy Cajun classic (Jambalaya) is often associated with New Orleans singers like Fats Domino, but it’s really a Hank Williams tune. And it’s been done by hundreds of artists, including John Fogerty, the Beatles, and the Carpenters. Pop singers have been covering Hank’s music since 1952, when a young Tony Bennett took a chance on a song he didn’t really like.

In a few minutes, we’ll drop a nickel in the jukebox to hear the result, but right now, we’ve reached Birmingham, Alabama, as Charles Carr drives Hank Williams to a New Year’s Day concert date in far away Canton, Ohio.

Charles Carr: We stopped the first night in Birmingham. As we went along, it was raining, it was getting colder and by the time we got to Birmingham it was raining very hard.

So, they decided to call it a day and pulled up next to the best hotel in town - the Tutwiler. Hank was America’s top country performer, so why not go first class? Charles Carr recalls that being famous didn’t always get you out of a parking ticket.

Charles Carr: We were coming down the opposite side of the street and I did a U-turn there to pull up in front of the hotel. There was a policeman there directing traffic and the officer said, you’ve got to move your car. And I said, well, we planned on checking in here. And he said, you’ve gotta move the car. And Hank says, well, you don’t know who I am. He said, I know if you don’t move that car, I’m gonna give you a ticket! So, we went on down to the Redmont.

Hank and Charles headed over to the Redmont Hotel, knowing they weren’t making much progress. After a day, they’d barely covered a hundred miles. Which meant that they’d have to start off early the next morning in order to make Canton in time. That meant more time cooped up in the car with a bad back. A nasty fall, about a year ago, had further damaged Hank’s deformed spine, sending him to the hospital. Surgery hadn’t done much good. A back brace helped some. And when the pain became unbearable, there was always a strong sedative called chloral hydrate. If fame didn’t always get you the best parking privileges, it surely made it easier to get prescriptions filled.

While Hank was sitting on top of the country charts, another Montgomery native - Nat King Cole - was selling big on the pop side. Between Nat’s sophisticated stylings and Hank’s down-home delivery, you couldn’t find two fellas that sounded more different. And yet, they shared the ability to cast a spell on their listeners. Charles Carr saw it the next day when they pulled into the little Alabama town of Ft. Payne, about a hundred miles out of Birmingham .

Charles Carr: Hank wanted to get a shave. And the first thing you know, people found out who it was and gathered quite a crowd. And he enjoyed that.

Hank never seemed to have any problems drawing crowds throughout his performing career. From local talent contests, to regional clubs, there was just something, some mysterious attraction, you couldn’t quite put your finger on.

Don Helms: With Hank, the first thing I noticed about him when we went to work with him, was that when he would sing and we would play, people didn’t dance - not all of them.

Don Helms had played steel guitar for other bands, but this was different.

Don Helms: I was used to seeing just everybody dance. But, they’d gather around the bandstand and just watch him. Watch him do whatever he does. And I had never seen that before. I thought that was strange.

Betty Stephens: He had “it” - the charisma, before there was a word (for "it").

Betty Stephens was an impressionable Texas teenager when she saw Hank at a 4th of July concert.

Betty Stephens: Hank just stood there and sang. Hank’s songs were so real and so meaningful to him, that you could just see it and feel it when he sang them. He seemed sensitive to what the people wanted and he just GAVE it to them.

Hank called his band the Drifting Cowboys, and as they drifted from city to city. They sometimes faced audiences who weren’t always focused on the music.

Don Helms: Some of the clubs had chicken wire around the bandstand to keep bottles from flying on the stage and stuff. These people were not necessarily mad with us. But, sometimes, you can just get in the way and get hurt. Sometimes, there would be a half dozen people just fighting and cussing and carrying on. And it wasn’t only in south Alabama, they did that all over the country in clubs toward the end of WWII. It’s not a safe place to be in a Honky-tonk.

Honky-tonks were hangouts for working-class folks looking to blow-off steam at the end of the week by drinking and dancing. As the crowds got louder, the bands took to electric instruments in order to be heard above all the commotion.

For record companies, the challenge was to make songs that were loud enough to be heard on Honky-tonk jukeboxes. Nashville producer Fred Rose played a key part in making the music of Hank Williams stand out. One way was to have side man Don Helms start each song with a steel guitar blast. It easily cut through crowd noise and alerted fans that a Hank song was on the way. The singing steel has become a signature sound for many other country artists ever since.

Rex Griffin! Hank had always loved this song. He’d first heard Griffin sing it several years ago. The song actually dated back to the 1920s and was first made famous by a black face entertainer named Emmett Miller.

Now, Rex Griffin took Emmett Miller’s version and rearranged it a little bit - he moved the front part of the tune to the center, so that it flowed better. But, recorder producer Fred Rose still didn’t like it. It had a strange key change. It was out of meter. And, above all, it wasn’t written by Hank, so they wouldn’t get any publishing royalties out of it. But, Hank put his foot down.

Three weeks after it’s release, Hank’s version of Lovesick Blues had sold 48,000 copies. It stayed at #1 on the country charts for 16 weeks and it launched Hank’s career. This presented a dilemma to the Grand Ole Opry - Nashville’s legendary country music showcase. Opry management had heard reports from Alabama that Hank had a drinking problem, so why should they take a chance on a fella that might not even show up for a live radio broadcast? But, how could they ignore one of the hottest acts in the country? On June 18th, 1949, Hank stepped onto the Opry stage, with an NBC radio network radio audience, estimated at 10 million listeners.

Hank Williams captivated his crowds in the same way that Elvis Presley or the Beatles would do in coming years. The few filmed performances show Williams slowly bouncing to the beat. His piercing eyes sparkling... a teenaged Betty Stephens says she couldn’t take HER eyes off HIM.

Betty Stephens: You know these dolls that they shake and the legs fling and the arms fling, he was so lanky that, that’s the kind of picture you feel or see.

Fan favorite Little Jimmy Dickens has a similar picture in his memory.

Little Jimmy Dickens: He kind of bowed his knees a bit and humped up in the shoulders, but garsh [laughs], a lot of people do that! There was a magnetism there somewhere. When he walked on the stage and went into a song, the audience simply went wild. They loved everything he did. He couldn’t do anything wrong.

As the first snowflakes fell, Hank and Charles still had a good six hundred miles to go before reaching Canton, but it was time to stop and get a bite to eat.

Charles Carr: That was outside of Chattanooga. We walked in. It was a little diner. While we were eating, you know, every place has a jukebox. And he loved to play Tony Bennett’s version of Cold, Cold Heart. That was played several times.

If Lovesick Blues introduced the nation to a dynamic young performer named Hank Williams, Tony Bennett’s recording of a Hank Williams song alerted the music industry that there was gold in them thar country hills.

As head of Artists and Repertoire at Columbia Records, Mitch Miller was very impressed when he first heard Hank’s version of Cold, Cold Heart. But, he had a tough time selling it to his own up-and-coming crooner.

Mitch Miller: All I could hear was those great last two lines: “Why can’t I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart.” I thought, what poetry to come from a simple man of the soil. All Tony Bennett heard was the then-orchestration - the scratchy fiddle and Hank Williams emoting right from his gut - and his first reaction was “You want me to do this cowboy song?” [laughs]

In a deal worked out with Nashville’s Fred Rose, Mitch Miller was given first crack at Hank’s songs for the pop market. As a result, a number of Columbia artists scored hits with their cover versions.

Mitch Miller: The people today talk as if they’re making big discoveries. They get fancy names: acid rock, country rock, country-folk. They’re looking to put labels on everything. A song is a song and you DO it. And when these country songs crossed over - you know, Jambalaya, Cold Cold Heart, Your Cheatin’ Heart - we didn’t give it any names. It was a song that suited the artist.

Sometimes it was a loose-fitting suit - as in the case when the Cajun energy of Jambalaya was reinterpreted by Jo Stafford.

Many of Hank’s songs were written during the course of a trip like this - on the road, between two dates, the boys jabbering away in the back seat, and suddenly Hank yells out:

Don Helms: “Hand me that paper bag up there. “

Steel guitarist Don Helms says Hank wasn’t choosy when it came to jotting down a quick inspiration.

Don Helms: We were heading to Birmingham one Sunday morning to play a matinee at night and he said, "Hand me that paper bag up there" and he wrote Hey Good Lookin' on the way to Birmingham.

Hank was good at turning a joyful thought into a toe-tapping tune. But, his most powerful songs came from less happy parts of his life. Stay tuned as we trace the path of some sad songs that went down in American music history. You’re listening to Hank Williams - Still Cookin’.

On her recent multi-Grammy Award-winning debut album, 23-year-old jazz-pop singer Norah Jones included a 53-year-old song by Hank Williams.

We’re riding along with Hank and driver Charles Carr as they head to a New Year’s Day concert date in Canton Ohio, about 500 miles away. We’re also tracing the path that Hank Williams cut through the American musical landscape. One of the reasons that jazz, pop, blues, and country musicians continue to sing Hank’s music can be found in a simple writing style that still speaks to the lives of ordinary people. To hear a Hank Williams song is to feel the anticipation of a hot date. Or to listen-in on a hot argument between a husband and wife. Or to share a quiet moment of sadness

B.J. Thomas’s 1966 cover of a 1949 Hank Williams song was a revelation to a new generation of musicians, including a teen-aged Ray Benson, who would go on to found the Western Swing group, Asleep at the Wheel.

Ray Benson: My first recollection was I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry. And hearing that and loving that song and finding out that it was this guy named Hank Williams, somewhere it filtered into my head. And I remember exactly - I was 15 years old and I bought a Hank Williams record - it was called The Essential Hank Williams - a picture of Hank with a cigar in his mouth, kicked back in a chair, and it had all the songs and I was just mesmerized.

Evocative images of loneliness, such as silent, falling stars lighting-up purple skies have few parallels in popular music, even today. Mary Davis is an assistant professor of music at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Mary Davis: It’s pure poetry. From the first line, “Hear that lonesome whippoorwill…” You don’t need more than that. The song’s done.

Hank matched his poetic words to very basic melodies, often borrowing from older songs or even church hymns. The simplicity of the music made it easy for others to learn and play. Mary Davis demonstrates. (Mary demonstrates chord progressions for I’m So Lonesone… on piano)

Blues scholar Steven Tracy marvels at Hank’s ability to make music out of his personal problems.

Steven Tracy: The kinds of difficulties that Hank describes, for example, domestic squabbles, [chuckles] are things that everyone can identify with. And are, incidentally, something that are very common in the blues. The primary subject matter of the blues are the difficulties between two partners, the kinds of difficulties they would have in their relationships.

Stories of Hank’s stormy marriage to Audrey Shepard are plentiful. The birth of Hank Jr. had settled things for awhile. But the tension always returned. Their roller coaster relationship fueled the fire behind some of his best songs. The popularity of those songs reflected a new mood in post-war America as marriages came apart across the country. Hank’s own parents had divorced in 1947 and, soon after, Miss Lillie married Bill Stone, one of her boarders. And you could always gauge Hank’s current mood by turning on the radio.

Colin Escott: He might have put up a kind of knucklehead facade for the world, but when he sat down in front of a little recorder, he was painfully honest. He confronted all the truths about himself, his weaknesses and his failings.

When Colin Escott was researching a scrapbook of Hank’s life, he and co-author Kira Florita poured through many unpublished lyrics that provided even more insight into Hank’s troubled soul. Florita reads from one of their more disturbing discoveries.

Kira Florita: This one’s called I Hope You Shed a Million Tears:
"I gave my heart and soul to you,
You done me wrong so many years.
Yes, I hope you suffer now,
I hope you shed a million tears.
I hope your dreams all fade and die,
and your smiles all turn to fears,
May you suffer same as me,
I hope you shed a million tears”

As Charles Carr and Hank Williams reached Knoxville, Tennessee, tomorrow’s date in Canton, Ohio still seemed like a million miles away. They tried hiring a plane for the rest of the journey. But, the weather was so bad that the pilot had to turn around and come back to Knoxville. It was a little after 7:00 pm when they checked into the Andrew Johnson Hotel.

Charles Carr: We ordered dinner in the room. And Hank had the hiccups. Very severe case of hiccups. And so, that’s when we called the house doctor, who gave Hank two vitamin shots of some type, and possibly, it may have been something more than the hiccups, but at that time, we didn’t know that.

Biographer Colin Escott reports that there was morphine mixed in with the two shots of B-12, yet another depressant in a body weakened in recent months by alcohol and chloral hydrate. After the medication, it would have made sense to stay the night, but the concert promoter was eager to get Hank to Canton.

Charles Carr: There was a penalty clause in Hank’s contract if he missed a show. And he was just coming back now, after having been away from the business for a while and he didn’t want to miss any shows himself and the people at the show didn’t want him to miss the show. Because he WAS the show.

And so, at about a quarter to eleven, on New Year’s Eve, the blue Cadillac started up again, with the weary teenager back behind the wheel and Hank now in the back seat, under a blanket, trying to get some sleep.

Colin Escott: There were no manuals for what Hank was doing. He was really working without a net.

And biographer Colin Escott says Williams needed more than a blanket to protect him. So much had happened.

Colin Escott: He had gone from the Honky-tonks of Alabama to Vegas to Hollywood (and) to New York. That’s a hell of a transition in three or four years for someone with very little education, and an almost paranoid mistrust of the business. So, I think he drank to escape the pressures that were being exerted on him and I think he drank to escape the physical pain that just grew and grew and grew with the road taking such a terrible toll on his back.

And his marriage had finally fallen apart. Audrey Williams filed for divorce in January of 1952, citing his violent temper and abusive language. Hank recorded this recitation the next day.

Why when I married you
You were such a meek little thing
But Honey, among tigers,
you’d be queen.
If a poor little rabbit
Had you on his side
Every hound in the county
Would run off and hide
There just ain’t nobody knows
What I go through
Won’t you please make up your mind
[MUSIC STOPS]
What in the confound, cat–hair
Do you WANT me to do?

The divorce was granted in July. One month later, Hank was fired from the Grand Ole Opry. Little Jimmy Dickens says his friend had gone too far.

Little Jimmy Dickens: The Opry, they didn’t allow - and still don’t - any of the entertainers to come to work with whiskey on their breath and perform on the Grand Ole Opry. And I think that’s a good thing, but Hank was getting to where he was coming to work half-loaded and probably loaded by the time he went on. And that’s just a policy of theirs. They didn’t tolerate it.

As a member of a family gospel group, Betty Stephens saw Hank a couple of times outside of Fort Worth, that summer.

Betty Stephens: This is awful to say, but backstage, he seemed very shy, but I think he may have been either medicated or drunk. He didn’t spend a lot of time talking to people. And then at Hodges Park, which was an outside event, seemed like (he) went to his car and sat in his car.

Tennessee turns into West Virginia in the middle of the sleepy little border town of Bristol. This is where a new era had begun, back in 1927. Both the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers cut their first professional records within days of each other here in a famous recording session. It’s gone down in history as the “Big Bang” of country music.

As the blue Cadillac passed through this hallowed ground, Ol’ Hank was charting his own road on the map of country music - a road that had turned into a highway, paved with an uncanny string of more than 30 top ten hits in a little over five years. But, once you’re rolling down that highway, it gets difficult to slow down. The scenery starts to blur. And it’s hard to see where you’re going.

At a gas station outside of Oak HiIl, West Virginia, Charles Carr glanced back at his passenger.

Charles Carr: Hank had a topcoat and a blanket. And the blanket had slid from Hank and his head was the opposite side from me where I could see him and I pulled over to the side of the road. He had his arm across his chest. And when I started to pull the blanket back up, I moved his arm and it gave some resistance.

Charles got directions to the nearest hospital.

Charles Carr: I went to the emergency room and there were two interns standing back there. And I asked them to come and check Hank. And they went out and checked and said, well, "He’s dead." And I said, there’s not anything you can do for him? They said, no, he’s just dead. I went upstairs and called my dad and told him Hank was dead. He called back 30 minutes later and said the AP had called saying Hank and I had been killed in an automobile accident.

So, as things were coming along, Mrs. Stone called - that’s Hank’s mother - and I told her the situation and we talked for a few minutes. And she made a comment: “Don’t let anything happen to the car.”
I said, “Yes, Ma’m.”

Hank’s funeral is said to have attracted the largest crowd in Montgomery since the end of the Civil War. Upwards of 20,000 people stood outside the Municipal Auditorium as his casket was placed in the hearse for one more ride.

Hank’s blue Cadillac stayed in the family and occasionally could be seen motoring around Montgomery, through the years. It was restored to mint condition in 1984 and eventually donated to Cecil Jackson’s museum.

Sound from museum display: This is the actual car that Hank Williams, Sr. was traveling in on January 1st, 1953 on the way to a concert in Canton, Ohio. Unfortunately for the music world, and for all of those who loved Hank Williams, he didn’t get to Canton. Hank’s chauffeur pulled into a gas station in Oakhill, West Virginia, and discovered that the legendary Hank Williams had passed away in the back seat of his pride and joy - this handsome 1952 Cadillac.

Charles Carr walks around Hank’s pride and joy. It really looks good. New leather, new top, new tires, chrome details shining again. It brings back many memories - mostly good. But, then his smile takes on a slightly sad quality.

Charles Carr: The only time it’s bothered me is... I drove it the day they brought it into the museum. I was sitting in the driver’s side there, and I just looked back and for a minute, I saw him laying there. I could just see him there. That just brought back something.

Hank Williams (on air check): Hello Friends, this is Hank Williams. I’m going to ask Miss Audrey, and all the boys, to gather around the mic here and sing an old time “shout tune”. I know you folks will enjoy - I hope you will, at least, I know you all know it…and like it:

On that resurrection morning
When all dead in Christ shall rise
I’ll have a new body
I’ll have a new life.
Won’t it be so bright and fair
When we meet our loved ones there
I’ll have a new body,
I’ll have a new life

Hank Williams’ body rests on top of a hill in Oakwood Cemetery, where he’s buried next to Miss Audrey and Miss Lillie. The site overlooks a wooded valley and three huge wooden crosses that rise from the ground. Hank has returned to the red clay soil of Alabama that so defined his life. His music continues to live through the voices of modern performers. Hank paved a new highway through American culture, with a growing music industry following in hot pursuit. And yet, for all the benefits of life in the fast lane, Hank felt most at home on the small rural routes - where regular folks lived ordinary lives.

Hank Williams – Still Cookin’ was written and produced by David C. Barnett, with help from Mary E. Davis, Robson Junior Professor at Case Western Reserve University and Jim Henke, Chief Curator at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Production Engineering by Al Dahlhausen. Production Assistance by Elaine Falk. Additional Music provided by Dave Giegerich, Bunky Markert, and Al Schlimm.

Special thanks go out to: Cecil Jackson and staff at the Hank Williams Museum (Montgomery Alabama); The Country Music Hall of Fame (Nashville Tennessee); The Grand Ole Opry (Nashville Tennessee); Alabama State University (Montgomery Alabama); The Centennial Hill Neighborhood Association (Montgomery Alabama); The Western Reserve Historical Society (found us a vintage Cadillac to use for sound); The Beachland Ballroom (provided honky-tonk crowd noise & jukebox ambience); Bill Randle (provided the Mitch Miller quotes); Merle Kilgore; Terry Stewart (Rock Hall, director cameo as Alabama DJ); Paul Courson; John Yankey; and our disc jockeys: Bob Friedman from WJLD in Birmingham, Alabama, Carl Brady from WAAX in Gadsden, Alabama, and Earl Freudenburg at WDOD in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Creative and administrative direction provided by Dave Kanzeg and Mark Smukler. Executive Producer, Mark A. Rosenberger.

Hank Williams – Still Cookin’ is a production of 90.3 WCPN ideastream, in association with the American Music Masters Series, a collaboration between Case Western Reserve University and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio.

Hank Williams – Still Cookin’ was made possible by a grant from the Kulas Foundation.

Hank Williams: We’ll see you next time if the good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise...

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