58 Fun Facts About Hank Williams

In which make of car did Hank Williams die, aged 29?

Cadillac: the baby-blue 1952 model in which he made his last journey is now a centrepiece of the Hank Williams Museum in Montgomery.

What was Hank Williams's real first name?

Hiram. Under the name Hank he was singing on the radio at 13 and leading his own band a year later.

In which US state was Hank Williams born and raised?

Alabama. His father went into a veterans' hospital when Hank was six, and the household lived on the boarding houses Lillie Williams ran in one town after another.

On which holiday in 1953 was Hank Williams pronounced dead, aged 29?

New Year's Day. He was being driven through the night to a show when he was found lifeless in the back seat, and he may in fact have died hours earlier, on New Year's Eve.

What was the name of Hank Williams's backing band?

The Drifting Cowboys were named on his record labels, yet until 1950 the playing in the studio was usually done by hired session men.

Which 1949 number one, a cover of a 1922 Tin Pan Alley song, propelled Hank Williams to Opry stardom?

Lovesick Blues brought Williams six encores at his Opry debut in June 1949, though he had not written it: he learned the old show tune from earlier records.

Which record label released Hank Williams's music from 1947 until his death?

MGM Records was a start-up label when it signed Williams in 1947, won over by the regional sales of his first records for a small independent company.

Which Nashville publisher signed Hank Williams as a songwriter in 1946 and went on to produce his records?

Fred Rose first wanted Williams only as a writer, to supply songs for the singer Molly O'Day; he then found him a record deal and edited his songs for the rest of his career.

Which crooner's 1951 cover of Hank Williams's 'Cold, Cold Heart' topped the pop charts?

Tony Bennett's hit carried a country song to pop listeners Williams could not reach himself, and other pop singers were soon rushing to record his work.

Which English actor played Hank Williams in the biopic "I Saw the Light"?

Tom Hiddleston did his own singing in the film, after working with the country songwriter Rodney Crowell to master Williams's style.

Who starred as Hank Williams in the 1964 biopic "Your Cheatin' Heart"?

George Hamilton did not sing a note of it: he mimed every song to another singer's voice.

Which song about a wooden Indian statue was Williams's posthumous number one for 14 weeks?

It was the A-side to "Your Cheatin' Heart" and, unusually for a Williams record, opens in a minor key and features a drummer.

Which radio show did Hank Williams join in 1948, two years after the Opry first turned him down?

Louisiana Hayride took him back in 1952 after the Opry fired him, and two years later the same Shreveport show booked a young Elvis Presley, another Opry reject.

Why was Hank Williams dismissed from the Grand Ole Opry in August 1952?

Habitual drunkenness and missed shows got him fired about three years after his debut made him the Opry's leading star, and he died without being taken back.

What was the last single released in Hank Williams's lifetime?

I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive was his current single when he died and reached number one soon afterwards, a title that could hardly have been more ironic.

Which street musician gave the young Hank Williams the only musical training he ever acknowledged?

Rufus "Tee-Tot" Payne, a Black street singer he trailed around as a boy, taught him guitar, and the blues feel of Williams's songs is usually traced to him.

Under what pseudonym did Hank Williams record moralising recitations so that jukebox customers would not get a sermon?

Luke the Drifter fooled nobody: the label never seriously tried to hide who he was, and Williams often performed the recitations on stage himself.

Which woman did Hank Williams marry at a gas station in December 1944?

Audrey Sheppard's divorce had come through only ten days earlier, and the venue was no whim: the justice of the peace who married them owned the gas station.

What nickname did Hank Williams give his son Randall, later famous as Hank Williams Jr.?

Bocephus was the name of the ventriloquist's dummy used by the Opry comedian Rod Brasfield, and the nickname stuck to the boy for life.

Whom did Hank Williams marry in October 1952, having met her at the Opry when she was dating Faron Young?

Billie Jean Jones, the 19-year-old daughter of a police officer, married him in three ceremonies, at least two of them on stage before paying crowds.

Which singer, born five days after Hank Williams's death, went to court to prove she was his daughter?

Jett Williams was adopted as a child and learned who her father was only as an adult; a state supreme court later ruled her an equal heir to his estate.

Which spinal condition is blamed for the back pain that dogged Hank Williams all his life?

Spina bifida occulta, a defect he was in all likelihood born with, went untreated; a fall on a hunting trip in 1951 made it worse, and surgery that December did not cure it.

What was Hank Williams's first hit, a 1947 comic number about a man banished to the doghouse?

Move It On Over climbed into the country top five, the first real hit of his career, and earned him a place on a far bigger radio show the following year.

For which fellow Opry star is Hank Williams said to have written 'Hey, Good Lookin'' before keeping it himself?

Jimmy Dickens said Williams dashed it off in about twenty minutes while they were touring together, then recorded it himself a week later, joking that it was too good to give away.

Which patent medicine sponsored the 1951 caravan tour on which Hank Williams shared the bill with Bob Hope?

Hadacol was sold as a vitamin tonic, but its real draw was that it was 12 percent alcohol; the star-packed caravan is remembered as the last of the great medicine shows.

On which programme did Hank Williams make his first television appearance, in November 1951?

The Perry Como Show had him sing 'Hey, Good Lookin''; a week later the host opened in a cowboy hat, singing the same song with an apology to Williams.

Which country legend told the young Hank Williams he had a million-dollar gift but 'a ten-cent brain'?

Roy Acuff was the idol Williams had copied as a young singer; the scolding did not end the friendship, and Acuff sang 'I Saw the Light' at his funeral.

Which Hank Williams hit borrowed the melody of the older song "Grand Texas"?

Jambalaya (On the Bayou) kept only the tune of the Cajun standard; with new English words it became one of the best-selling records of 1952.

By which nickname is Hank Williams widely known?

The Hillbilly Shakespeare earned the name for lyrics that said the deepest things in the plainest words; Ken Burns used it as an episode title in his Country Music series.

Who gave Hank Williams the title "I Saw the Light" with a remark about an airport beacon?

His mother, Lilly, was driving the band home to Montgomery in January 1947 and woke her sleeping son to say they were nearly there: 'I just saw the light.'

In which West Virginia town was Hank Williams found dead in the back seat of his car?

Oak Hill is where his driver pulled in before dawn, after hours of silence from the back seat, and where the singer was pronounced dead.

Hank Williams was being driven to a concert in which city when he died?

Canton, Ohio had not been his next stop: an earlier show in West Virginia came first, but bad weather grounded his flight and he never reached it.

Who was at the wheel for most of Hank Williams's final journey?

A college student he hired: Charles Carr, still in his teens, kept driving through the night, taking the silent figure on the back seat to be asleep.

Which honour did Hank Williams receive posthumously in 2010?

Pulitzer Prize: the board gave him a special citation, crediting him with a pivotal role in turning country music into a major force in American life, 57 years after his death.

Which skill did Hank Williams never acquire, despite writing dozens of standards?

Reading or notating music was beyond him: he took his song ideas to his publisher, who sat at the piano and helped polish them into shape.

Which small label released Hank Williams's first records after his December 1946 session?

Sterling Records was a small New York label; the sides he cut for it sold well enough around the South for his publisher to take him to a far bigger company within months.

Which Montgomery radio station kept hiring, firing and rehiring the young Hank Williams?

WSFA first noticed him busking on the pavement outside its own studio and put the boy on the air, where he came and went for years.

Hank Williams recorded "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" not in Nashville but in which city?

Cincinnati: he cut it at the Herzog studio there in August 1949, and the label then tucked the ballad away on a B-side, behind a livelier blues.

Which future honky-tonk star shared a Nashville house with Hank Williams in 1952?

Ray Price had been taken on tour by Williams the year before, and when the older man's career fell apart his band went to work for Price instead.

Which instrument did Don Helms play on nearly all of Hank Williams's hits?

Steel guitar: at his producer's suggestion Helms played high on the neck, so the notes would cut through the noise of the bars where the records were heard.

Which small town keeps Hank Williams's boyhood home open as a museum?

Georgiana: the house on Rose Street was one of the family's boarding houses, and the stretch of Interstate 65 that passes the town is signed the 'Lost Highway' in his honour.

On which 1989 hit does Hank Williams Jr. sing along with his late father's voice?

There's a Tear in My Beer began as a recording his father left behind unreleased; decades later the son's voice was added, and the duet won a Grammy.

Hank Williams was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 under which category?

Early Influence, since renamed Musical Influence, is for artists who shaped rock from outside it; his son argues one of his 1947 records got there seven years before 'Rock Around the Clock'.

Which earlier star joined Hank Williams among the Country Music Hall of Fame's first three inductees in 1961?

Jimmie Rodgers had died in 1933 and the third man, Williams's own producer, in 1954, so none of the hall's first three members lived to see the honour.

Which artist got first pick of the unpublished lyrics set to music on 'The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams'?

Bob Dylan was offered all twelve songs, found the job too daunting and finished just one, 'The Love That Faded'; the rest went to other singers.

Which flour company sponsored Hank Williams's own radio show in 1951?

Mother's Best shows were tied up in court for years: two record companies claimed the recordings, and his son and daughter had to win the rights before Time Life could issue them in 2008.

Hank Williams Jr. nearly died in 1975 after falling almost 500 feet from Ajax Peak in which state?

Montana: the fall shattered his face and skull, and it took repeated surgery before he could sing again; he came back with a harder, rowdier sound.

Hank Williams Jr. won four Emmys for which broadcast's theme?

Monday Night Football got its theme in 1989, when he reworked his own 1984 party hit into a question for viewers: 'Are you ready for some football?'

Hank Williams spent his last months in the hands of Toby Marshall, a con man posing as what?

A doctor: Marshall was nothing of the kind, yet the drugs he supplied for Williams's back and heart trouble made a sick man sicker.

Which Depression-era original won the teenage Hank Williams a $15 prize at a Montgomery talent show?

WPA Blues was a schoolboy's dig at President Roosevelt's work-relief programme, and is probably the first song he ever wrote.

During World War II Hank Williams worked in the shipyards of which Gulf Coast city?

Mobile: turned down for military service because of his back, he spent the war shuttling between the shipyards there and his music in Montgomery.

Hank Williams repeated his second wedding vows before a paying crowd at an auditorium in which city?

New Orleans: thousands bought tickets to watch the singer marry on stage, in a show put on more than once; ten weeks later the bride was a widow.

Which singer had a 1952 pop hit with 'Half as Much', which Hank Williams took into the country top ten?

Rosemary Clooney carried the song to listeners who never bought country records; pop covers like hers comfortably outsold his own versions in the early 1950s.

Which Hank Williams number one got its opening line from a fishing partner's jibe out on Kentucky Lake?

Long Gone Lonesome Blues was only a title until Vic McAlpin asked whether he had come to fish or to watch the fish swim by; Williams shouted that this was his first line.

Hank Williams III played bass in Superjoint Ritual, a band fronted by the singer of which metal group?

Pantera's Phil Anselmo led Superjoint Ritual; Hank III had started out drumming in punk bands and took a Nashville country deal only when child-support bills forced him to.

Before he ever owned a guitar, the six-year-old Hank Williams was given which instrument?

A harmonica came first, and church did the rest: Lillie Williams played the organ, and her small son sat beside her on the stool, singing, as he recalled, louder than anyone.

Which cemetery in Montgomery holds Hank Williams's grave?

Oakwood Annex received him after a funeral at which stars of the Opry, which had fired him only months before, sang in tribute, among them Red Foley with 'Peace in the Valley'.

On which 1952 TV programme was Hank Williams filmed performing 'Cold, Cold Heart' and 'Hey, Good Lookin''?

The Kate Smith Evening Hour brought an Opry troupe to New York twice that spring, and its footage is among the very few films of Williams singing live.