Lovesick Blues: The Life Of Hank Williams

One of the first and best serious writers about country music (his 1970 book, The Nashville Sound, remains a pioneering classic), Paul Hemphills credentials are impeccable. So, inevitably, he comes back to the often-told story of Hank Williams.

He tells the story with grace and elegance; and without footnotes. A note at the end acknowledges his debt to Colin Escotts definitive biography, to the box set The Complete Hank Williams, and to the interviews with mostly deceased collaborators already on file at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Which is to say theres nothing original here save for Hemphills point of view as a working class guy from Alabama, and his considerable skill at telling a story.

Nor does it really pretend otherwise. This is a popular biography, plain and simple, made to sit on library shelves. Why Hemphill might be interested in such a project (save for the obvious reasons writers take work) is clear from the prologue, in which he writes eloquently of his first road trip with his truck-driving father, and the music on their radio in 1949.

The problem is, that story and those characters Hemphill and his father and the world they inhabited in 1949 is far more interesting, possibly even more revealing, than the Hank Williams he draws in comparatively frank detail. But I really wish hed written that other book, the one about truck drivers and waitresses and long solitary drives far from home, though its likely fewer publishers would touch it.

The book he did write is an easy read, save for the inevitable sadness of Hanks life, and the fact that we all know it ended badly, and in too much of a hurry. Maybe too easy a read. Take, for example, Hanks breakthrough hit, the song which gives this volume its title. Nick Tosches has made a pretty compelling case that Hank had to have heard minstrel Emmett Millers version of that song, and the audio evidence of Millers vocals would argue that Hank acquired no small amount of his style from that recording. None of which, alas, is mentioned here, only the difficulty Hank had convincing Fred Rose to record and release the song.

For that matter, Fred Rose, who was Hanks publisher and editor, and, arguably, uncredited co-writer, peers largely unknowable through these pages, though he is one of the central figures to the story. As are Hanks mother and wives: Central and unknowable.

As is Hank. Thats the real problem. Hank is unknowable. Its probably dangerous to try, and Hemphill seems reluctant to give up the fascinated innocence of the child drumming on the dashboard in 1949.