Hank Williams died in the early hours of New Year’s Day in 1953, seventy years ago today. If you have any relationship to Country music, you certainly know his music and the story of his life and death at the age of 29. He recorded 55 top ten songs, twelve of which became number one hits. To country music aficionados, this night in 1953 was the day the music died in the back seat of his powder blue Cadillac somewhere on a highway near Oak Hill, West Virginia. The Atlanta Journal Constitution published an interesting interview in 2013 of his driver that night, Charles Carr, though the story continues to hold its mysteries.
Williams’ songs were both simple and profound and have been covered by countless artists ranging from Bob Dylan to Linda Ronstadt and continue to be recorded by many to this day. His achingly most beautiful lines ring to me of the poetry of Robert Burns gleaned from the desolate countryside of Scotland or, in Hank’s case, the rural Southland. He penned lines that seem fresh today:
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.
I wrote some lines myself about Williams some years ago, and this seems an appropriate time to share them here.
