Tag

Hank Williams

Blog

The Ride

In 1989, Papaw bought a brand new Ford pickup, white with a blue stripe. This was a gift to himself for surviving life for eighty years I suppose. That truck was the first new vehicle he had ever owned, his first ride being a two-horsepower convertible wagon with a split-rail oak seat. After leaving Murphy’s Ford dealership, his first stop…
Brandon Meeks
October 5, 2023
Blog

What Makes This Musician Great?–Hank Williams

This is the second installment of the series ‘What Makes this Musician Great,” and will focus on the man from Butler County, Alabama – Hank Williams.  In this ongoing series, I explain what makes Southern musicians and their music so great and worth remembering while using non-technical language that can hopefully be understood by non-musicians, and this is the perfect…
Tom Daniel
August 4, 2021
Blog

Hank Williams Was Their Prophet and Tradition Was Their King

The story I’m about to tell is one of the many coming from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. Hardscrabble existence was a way of life with our pioneers, and it was no different in my own bloodline. The Holts, James Simpson, and sons settled on a land grant in Newton County, Arkansas in the 1850s. They were some of the…
Travis Holt
October 21, 2020
Blog

30 Years From Hank Williams

This piece was originally printed in Southern Partisan magazine in 1985. Hank Williams has now been dead longer than he lived. And outside of a hundred or more fine songs, his thrity-year-old memory survives best among some of his cousins down in Georgiana, Alabama, about sixty miles south of Montgomery. Among them are Taft and Erleen Skipper (Taft’s daddy and…
Bill Koon
March 28, 2018
Review Posts

Hank Williams and the Elusive Redneck

A review of George William Koon, Hank Williams: A Bio-Bibliography, Greenwood Press, 1983. Like it or not, the most lasting symbol of the South is the Redneck. My eight-year-old son thinks General Lee is a car; many of my students don't know in what century the War Between the States was fought, although they are quick to tell me that…
Warren Leamon
May 30, 2017
Blog

Who Should Play Hank?

Tom Hiddleston, an English actor best known for playing Loki in the Thor and Avengers movies, has been cast to play country music icon Hank William Sr. in an upcoming movie about Williams’ life. Hank Williams’ grandson, Hank Williams III, recently made waves when he panned the selection of Hiddleston and suggested that the American icon should be played by…
Dan E. Phillips
June 23, 2014