Hank Williams Quotes

“If Hank had started his career a few years earlier, he would have lived and died in almost total obscurity because the social and market conditions that brought about the wider acceptance of hillbilly music weren’t in place, and the country was mired deep in the Depression. If he had lived a few years longer, he would have become an embarassment to the changing face of country music—too hillbilly by half. But, in arriving when he did and dying when and how he did, he became a prophet with honor.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“His songs now accompany television commercials and have been reinterpreted across the musical spectrum, from the British punk acts to jazz divas like Cassandra Wilson and Norah Jones. Hank’s songs, in fact, are almost everywhere. As the records grow smaller, Hank Williams grows bigger.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“Within ten weeks of his death, Hank had as many albums on the market as he did all the years he lived; hundreds more would follow. The oil well that Hank Williams became in death was starting to gush”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“Audrey was the first of many who found Hank more lovable dead.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“The official cause of death was listed as heart failure, aggravated by acute alcoholism.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“The combination of his traveling position, his drug intake, and his already weakened heart probably killed him.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“Jumbalaya,’ [sic] ‘Cold, Cold Heart,’ ‘You Win Again,’ and ‘Lovesick Blues”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“Hank had a stray-cat quality that made women want to take him in and nourish him with food and affection, but like most alcoholics, he would soon abuse that love, frustrate it, and ultimately alienate it”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“The irony of Hank Williams’ relationship with the Opry is that some Opry stars were on the show for forty, fifty, or even sixty years, but Hank Williams remains the star associated in most people’s minds with the Grand Ole Opry, despite the fact that he was on the show for only three years.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“Fame seems to carry with it an inability to be alone, or to be yourself without an audience, and the Hank Williams who encountered himself on Natchez Trace didn’t like the company he found.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“Hank’s self-defeating conduct stemmed in part from his perception that he was being marketed as a commodity.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“When the spotlight was switched off, or the red recording light went off, and the people had gone home, Hank was left with Hiram Williams, who was wretched company for himself.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“The paradox of Hank Williams was that he was easygoing on the outside, yet tense and querulous inside. He pretended that he’d just ridden into town on a mule, yet had a lively intelligence combined with what Minnie Pearl described as a “woods-animal distrust” of anyone who appeared to have any more learning than he did.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“Joining an organization like Alcoholics Anonymous was also out of the question for Hank, partly because of his intensely private nature, but mostly because it would have been an acknowlegment that he had a problem.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“Hank drank. It was a behavior he had acquired in his youth—before Audrey, before his back gave him much trouble, before his career took him over. It was a behavior to which he turned at moments both predictable and unpredictable. It was a behavior that took him over and acquired its own momentum as his personal and professional problems mounted.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“every night as he performed. The reception even surprised Hank. He knew he was the king of the honky-tonks, but now he had stadium crowds eating out of his hand, and legit entertainers working as his supporting acts”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“Lonesome Whistle.” Credited to Hank and Jimmie Davis, it was one of a long line of prison songs.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“Hank was happy to cash the checks as the palm court orchestras played his songs, but on a far deeper level he was suspicious of the trend, seeing it as a dilution of his music. “These pop bands,” he told an interviewer in Charleston, South Carolina, “will play our hillbilly songs when they cain’t eat any other way.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“Grand Ole Opry appearances were a loss leader. Like”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“Hank, like most other songwriters, kept his song titles to fewer than five words so that they would fit onto the jukebox cards, and made sure his records timed out at under three minutes and twelve seconds, the time at which a record would automatically eject from a jukebox turntable.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“In 1950, there were four hundred thousand jukeboxes on location serviced by fifty-five hundred jukebox operators.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“The Grand Ole Opry formally hired Hank on Monday, July 11, 1949,”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“Helms had probably figured out that the steel guitar was the crucial instrument for Hank; its notes were the wordless cry that completed his vocal lines. The steel guitar sustained the mood and took most of the solos”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“The hokiness, in which the Opry took a great deal of inverted pride, disguised ruthlessly aggressive management and shrewd organization.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“if Rose had set aside his musicianship he would have heard something strangely compelling in Hank’s treatment of “Lovesick Blues.” The brisk tempo and unusual structure, together with the yodels and little flashes of falsetto, made it wholly unlike any other country record.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“IT wasn’t a blues, it wasn’t a country song, and it wasn’t even from Hank Williams’ pen, but “Lovesick Blues” was the spark that ignited his career. It”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“On August 7, 1948, Hank made his first appearance on the Louisiana Hayride. He was the fifth act on the opening 8:00–8:30 p.m. segment.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“Like Lilly, she saw the alcoholism in terms of self-control, a view that was reinforced by the fact that there were times when Hank could control it”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“During the downward spirals, Hank would go to the brink, then pull himself back in the nick of time. He did it so many times that he probably made the fatal mistake of thinking he could always do it”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams

“Remember that women are revengeful and do all in their power to wreck a man when they separate from him and the only way to win is for the man to become successful.”
― Colin Escott, I Saw the Light: The Story of Hank Williams