DISGRACELAND - Hank Williams: Sanatoriums, Poison Pills, and Fired from the Grand Ole Opry

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

Hank Williams defined the genre we now call country with a guitar in one hand and a bottle of booze in the other. In between stints in the local drunk tank, he cultivated a knack for blue-collar blues that would spread far beyond the backwoods South Hank called home. His self-proclaimed “hillbilly music” logged him more than 30 hit songs and membership at the Grand Ole Opry, fulfilling Hank’s lifelong dream. But his frequent bouts with the bottle would ultimately strip him of that membership, sending him from the Ryman Auditorium to the sanatorium – and ultimately, an early grave. This episode was originally published on February 22, 2022. For the full list of contributors, visit ⁠disgracelandpod.com⁠ To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠X⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ ⁠TikTokSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor? That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on, from blockbusters to deep cuts.

Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move.

And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Podcasts. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Hank Williams are insane. He drunkenly fired rounds into his own home and didn't think twice about where he aimed. He was repeatedly pummeled to a pulp by police officers, fellow musicians, and anyone else he was

foolish enough to pick a fight with. His benders often lasted the better part of a week as he drifted in between bars and stints at the sanatorium. His hours spent in the local drunk tank exceeded his number of hit songs, and Hank Williams logged a lot of hit songs. He established a distinct line between folk and quote-unquote country and western, a newfangled genre he helped pioneer with his signature yodel and blue-collar blues. He didn't shape the face of country. He is the face of country. And it's because Hank Williams made great music, some of the greatest music ever made. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Schlock Around the Clock MK1.

I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Off Whederson's sweetheart by Vera Lynn. And why would I play you that specific slice of drowsy Deutschland cheese could I afford? it. Because that was the number one song in America on August 11, 1952. And that was the day Hank Williams was fired from the grand old Opry, sending him further down a spiral of alcoholism and shattering his greatest dream. On this episode, week-long benders stints at the sanatorium. Blue-collar blues shattered dreams in the face of country music, Hank Williams. I'm Jake Brennan. And this is disgrace land. Williams was drunk, plastered actually.

And his wife, Audrey, was not happy about it. Neither were his touring partners on the Louisiana hayride. This was supposed to be a family event, a picnic a little north of Shreveport at Caddo Lake. Egg hunts, roasted weaners, sack races for the kids, that sort of thing. But there was also a tub of beer and a bottle of tranquilizers

and nasal inhalers boosted by bentoners. a dream. Hank Williams was into all of it that weekend, which came as a surprise to those who knew Hank. This weekend was for the kids, and Hank was normally more discerning in choosing his drunks. Usually they were while he was away from his young family, his wife, Audrey, and her daughter from another marriage, Lucretia. But something set him off this weekend. Most likely Audrey. Hank Williams was the type of drunk who controlled his alcohol as a minfits. and starts. He'd go long stretches of time without a drink, and then when the notion took him, he'd have a beer, then quickly another, then some whiskey, and pretty soon he'd forget he was drinking,

and he'd go on forgetting and drinking for the next three to six days until someone either hauled him out of whatever local drunk tank was nearest or to the nearest local sanatorium to dry out. Then Hank would fly sober for a bit, fall victim to the drink soon enough, and right back into the same routine. Repeat, repeat, repeat. It made for a hard life, made achieving his dream of performing on the grand old opera, especially hard. But it made for great songwriting. The darkness Hank Williams tapped into for the songs he wrote and performed came from some sort of place that previous country musicians had yet to mind. He knew it, even when others didn't. Like Fred Rose, Hank's music publisher.

Rose knew his shit, especially when it came to recording hit songs. He had seriously elevated Roy Acuff's profile, after all, and Roy Acuff was the model for Hank, a Smoky Mountain Country singer whose star had seriously ascended and left a major shine on old Hank. Hank loved Roy Aikoff. And Hank loved the new tune he was fiddling with in the studio on Fred Rose's dime. But Fred didn't believe in the tune, Love Sick Blues,

the old Emmett Miller song. Only Hank did. Emmett pulled the song from some old Tin Pan Alley composer and made it country. Hank made it hillbilly. But Fred Rose didn't care. Fred didn't want to record it. Neither really did the session players Fred had hired to back Hank on that recording session. But Hank knew his version of the song had something.

So Hank dug in. He was mule-like in his insistence. This may have been a Fred Rose finance production, but Hank was the artist. They recorded Lovesick Blank. lose last without much thought. The first take breezed by and Fred Rose was so offended by the unconventional timing Hank had insisted on to match the natural length of his yodeling rather than any conventional songwriting meter that Fred Rose decided to leave the studio in hopes that this whole debacle would just go away before we returned. It didn't go away. Hank and the band nailed

the song on the second take. And when they were done, no one in the room knew what Hank Williams knew that they had just recorded Hank Williams' first smash hit. Lovesick Blues rocketed up the charts. Hank and his band The Drifting Cowboys would close with the song and audiences would lose their collective mind. They'd insist Hank play it again and again and again. Sometimes the band would play the song at the ends of their sets up to seven times in a row to get the crowd to finally settle down.

Hank Williams' version of Lovesick Blues had something that no other country song had. Hank would tell you it's quote unquote hillbilly, meaning it's a perfect meld of folk and blues, but it's more than that. There's a drive to it. The drive is very much intentional. The song takes you somewhere, but does so with loose abandon. Hank's yodels are less woe as me and more life-affirming,

as if he's saying, yeah, I'm love-sick, but so what? At least I've lived. Lovesick Blues made Hank Williams the premier performer on the Louisiana Hayride. Back in the late 1940s, the Louisiana Hayride was the farm team to the big lead Grand Ole Opry. The Hayride launched not only Hank Williams but country stars, Webb Pierce, Kitty Wells, and eventually, after Hank had long since moved on from the traveling jamboree, the Louisiana Hayride gave Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley their starts as well. But the Hayride, for Hank Williams, was never meant to be a long-term play.

It was just a step toward his near-term goal of being invited to perform regularly on the Grand Ole Opry. The Opry was without a doubt for country musicians, the big leagues. The Opry was where legends began and where legends stayed forever. Membership meant lifelong status next to the best in the business. Roy Acuff, Minnie Pearl, Ernest Tub, Red Foley. There was no higher privilege in country music than to entertain at that level, to thousands of homes over WSM's far-reaching airwaves every week. But the challenge of the Grand Ole Opry seemed to weighs off.

Right now, Hank Williams' biggest challenge was his wife, Audrey. The chair flew across the cattle lake cabin. It nearly missed Hank's head. He was drunk, unable to react, so he got lucky. The legs of the small wooden chair bust off its seat when it missed him and hit the wide wood-paneled floor. Audrey was undeterred and not any less pissed at hand. for ruining their family getaway.

The Williams's had a reputation to uphold. Didn't Hank know that? Audrey had her own singing career to think about. Didn't Hank know that? Hank Williams didn't know shit. So Audrey Williams did her best Warren spawn and rocketed the glass tumbler in Hank's belly. Hank took it in stride.

As the air spurted out of his lungs from the impact of the hard glassware, he fell back on the cheap cabin sofa and laughed to himself, obliterated yet again. When he awoke, finally, whether it was the next morning or the morning after that or the morning after that, Hank woke to good news.

Lovesick blues had paid off. The song owned the charts in 1949 and the grand old Opry had noticed. Hank didn't quite have an invitation. He had a meeting with the WSM program director. Based on the strength of that meeting and perhaps, oh Lord Hank hoped not, in audition, then Hank would maybe be invited to perform as, part of the Grand Ole Opry. Hank was on his way,

stretched out in the back of his American sedan with his bandmates up front. Hank's back eight. He tried extending his lanky legs to take some of the pressure off his back. As far back as he could remember, his back was an issue and today was worse than normal. The car ride from Hank's current home

in Shreveport, Louisiana to Nashville, was going to be a bear. And there were pills that no doubt, out whiskey along the way to help delve the pain. But whiskey and pills presented their own complications. Diminishing returns, Hank knew this. He knew he needed to be sober for the opera. He leaned back in the backseat and listened to the radio, WSFA, the station that helped launch Hank Williams. Hank had been performing live on the station since 1936. It was his first taste to professionalism, and it was his unprofessionalism that led to his deprecognition. He was his

departure from the station. No skin off his back. WSFA was small potatoes. The grand ol'operry was his destiny. Hank closed his eyes and let the gravel grind of the rubber meeting the road lull him to sleep. The dream would keep him company. It always did. It wasn't scary anymore. Not like it was when he was a kid. Hank felt a sharp surge of pain shoot through his back and thought, Just hold on. It'll be all right. It isn't my time. It's only a dream. Death is only a dream. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield. And in this new season of the girlfriends,

Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target.

He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in.

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And I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting.

I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies?

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New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to your movies I love you on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. you get your podcasts. 11-year-old Hank Williams was transported. He learned this song as a hymn in his own Sunday school lessons. The version he learned was nothing like the version floating through the Alabama breeze right now, drifting on the back of the southern wind from the open windows of the black church located down the road from Hank's mother's boarding house.

Death is only a dream. The words took him somewhere else, away from the pain. The pain in his back, Spina bifida, the adult said, whatever that was. Why should we weep when weary ones rest in the bosom of Jesus Supreme?

Even at 11, that sounded like a better deal to Hank. It sounded like peace, which was a far cry from what he was experiencing. His father was gone, ill, they said, disabled, unable to provide. His mother was all he had and she was busy trying to make a living, setting up a boarding house, bringing in transients, those passing through.

Some overstayed their welcome. Ramblers, gamblers, women, lots of women, experienced women. Some of the boys in town talked. What were those women up to? What exactly did they do for work over at old Hank's mother's place? Hank didn't know, but he wished the rumors weren't there. But there was little he could do about it. Same as the pain in his back.

It wasn't going anywhere. He'd learned to live with it. The music helped, listening to it, even playing it. His mother took some of that boarding house money and sent Hank to singing school. He learned out of shaped notes in his mouth, how to take those hymns he heard drifting through the Alabama countryside and meld them into something that suited him that kept him occupied, and that was enough for the moment.

That and the alcohol. Alcohol, hooch, white lightning, moonshine, moonshine, whatever. It was hard to come by for an 11-year-old, but there was plenty around rural Alabama if you knew where to look. Just follow the loggers. The local blue-collar workers would stash their bottles in the woods on the way to work and pick them up on their way out. In the meantime, Hank would raid their stash and hit various bottles to make his head spin.

Then he'd sit and strum the guitar as mother had given him and attempt to mow the hymns he'd become familiar with. All of it, the high of the alcohol, the thrill of the illicit take, the music. It was a perfect distraction from the fifth. physical pain and the confusion of early adolescence. And then, Hank met T-Tot. T-Tot was a black Alabama street musician whose real name was Rufus Payne. T-Tot was young Hank Williams' two obsessions, music and alcohol, personified.

The name T-Totot was a silly ironic pun on the word teetotaler. T-Tot was seldom found without a bottle of home-brewed hooch and an array of home-fashioned instruments he'd take to perform as a one-man band. Symbols strapped to his knees, stomporeed under his foot, harp around his neck, guitar, and hands singing to the heavens. Local kids were plenty amused and took to following T-Tot all over, but young Hank Williams was the only one among them who wanted to do more than listen. He wanted to learn. Where and how T-Tot learned his craft is a matter of debate, but most places musical education to New Orleans. Early 20th century, gone of the jazz age.

T-Tot swung lazy. T-Tot also drove hard. T-Tot hit you with that sock rhythm. T-Tot hit him high. T-T-Tot hit him low. T-Tot rocked, rolled. T-Tot roiled those emotions, those sneaky feelings. T-Tot connected.

Hank Williams took note. And by the time he was 16 and had dropped out of school to play music full-time in his own group, the drifting cowboys, Hank Williams had distilled down the infectious jazz and blues feel of T-T-T-Tunes with the sharp directness of folk and country music by way of Jimmy Rogers and the Carter family, and all of it underpinned by the eerie darkness of Hank's beloved gospel music. It made for a particularly unique musical style, one that's now been emulated so much that it's hard to hear its special qualities. But when Hank Williams

made the scene, showing up in dive bars around Alabama and the Florida Panhandle and on air at Montgomery, Alabama's WFSA radio station, Hank Williams didn't sound like anyone else. He was country, but lacking almost completely in sophistication. He hinted at blues and gospel, but he was whiter than a ghost. His music swung, but with tiny instrumentation compared to the big bands of the day. Hank just called it hillbilly music, and the people loved it. Folks. Ordinary folks.

Plain spoken folks, hardworking folks, hard drinking folks. Radio station managers, promoters, record label bosses, not so much, but ordinary folks. They went wild for Hank Williams's music. even in those early days. His music was primal. It moved people, compelled them. Just like T-Tot, it hit high and it hit low. It connected on a purely visceral level.

It was driving, sexual, and it hit you in the heart. It tapped into the darkness you felt when the lights were low and no one else was around. Those feelings you thought only you felt. You were wrong. Hank felt them too. You could tell from his words, and that meant other people felt them as well. You weren't alone after all, at least for the moment.

At least for the moment, the moments were fleeting. The harder Hank went at his career and at life in general, the faster the moments flew by. Hank's relationship with alcohol didn't slow things down. Neither did his relationship with his new bride, Audrey. Alcohol and Audrey both were enough to send Hank Williams spinning off the planet. Audrey fancied herself a singing callant and wanted her own career. She also wanted a husband.

Hank Williams' alcoholism made him ill-equipped to give her ease. either. So he chose among the two, alcohol and Audrey. Alcohol won out. And Hank Williams spun out repeatedly. Hank Williams was in his and his wife's new front yard howling at the moon. Hank was in the mud, howling like a wolf rolling around like a pig. They'd been married barely a minute and Audrey had thrown him out already over what Hank didn't know, but his drunkenness surely had something to do with it. And now Audrey was throwing Hank's clothes out the door and into the mud with him in the front yard. Hank howled some more. Audrey screamed at him to shut the hell up. Hank kept at it. Audrey went in the house and called the police. It let up and the police didn't play.

Hank Williams was a well-known local nuisance. Cuffs, arrested, in the drunk tank. Hank's steel guitar player Don Helms bailed him out. On Hank's way out of the station, the cops told him cheekily to come back and see them soon, and Hank told him to go to hell, but he surely would. Not before sobering up and putting in some work again with the drifting cowboys and trying to fly right as Audrey's husband, but soon enough, Hank would find a bottle, and when he did a couple months later, he went looking for a fight. Hank knew just where to look. Wherever Dad Chrysle and his band of local wannabe Western Swing Cowboys were slinging that tired, pseudo-sophisticated crap, Hank hated Western Swing, thought it was for long hairs. It was hillbilly, and Dad Chrysle should have known better than to take

to the stage. Hank Williams' bum-rushed Dad set, heckled him and his band from right there on the dance floor for playing that garbage. Dad and his boys were more than happy to drop their fiddles and jump into the audience and pummel Hank to a pulp. Hank had it coming, penance he reckoned. Hank knew he had to atone for any number of things. Most things were forgivable, however, blowing it on stage was not, which is why he counted himself among the lucky ones. No matter how legless he drank He could nearly always bring it on stage. Nearly always. There was that time in Southern Alabama when Hank started singing

there's a moon over my shoulder in one key and playing it on guitar in another key. The band politely ushered him off stage to save Hank from further embarrassment. Hank wandered off stage out into the parking lot and promptly picked a fistfight with a policeman. You going to pick a fight with me, boy? Hank was promptly beat to a pulp and then thrown into jail once. again, penance once more. Then the sanatorium in Pratville, Alabama, to dry out. That was back in 45. Here in 1949, in the backseat of his sedan on route to Nashville for his shot at the Opry, the pain Hank felt in his back reminded him of the sanatorium. Hank would dry out in numerous

facilities over the years, and each time the pain of getting sober drifted away, the pain at his back would return. It was a vicious cycle, one pain to replace a different pain. Hank let his head sink back on top of the car seat. On the car radio, the Carter family's version of death is only a dream crackled out of the speakers. Only a dream, only a dream of glory beyond the dark stream. Darkness, pain. Despite the pain Hank was in, he knew it still was in his time, there was still much to be done, too much life to live. Death may only have been a dream, but the grand old Opry was life. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl.

You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care, so they take matters into their own hands.

I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler,

we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, and my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary.

I wake up and I'm hitting a amazing. in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance, like he's about to attack me, like, making karate noises. And his entire, the Kardashians family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming.

And I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yello-O. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships, or religion, or sex, or addiction, or you just go straight for the guts. I Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Thurban.

Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Madarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena, Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says she's gone. She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists, who cover them changed forever.

Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you do. You know, you look back at it, and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Nashville, 1940. Country music had just become quote-unquote country music. Up until that year, Billboard Magazine and the rest of the music industry categorized the new genre as folk tunes. And if country music had a Super Bowl back in the 40s, it happened weekly on Saturday nights at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, and broadcast over 150 stations via WSM's 50,000 watts straight into the homes of hillbillies and country sophisticates alike from muscle shows to many ends. In Newapolis. Inside the walls of the rhyme in that evening, past, present, and future country royalty assembled offstage. Minnie Pearl, Little Jimmy Dickens, Roy Acuff, Porter Wagoner, Eddie Arnold.

On stage, 25-year-old Hank Williams hit his mark, under the Opry spotlight seemingly shown by the Lord himself, highlighting the darkness imbued into the young songwriter. Hank swung that darkness in the form of his signature song, the Emmett Miller tune, Love, Love sick blues. From the jump, the discerning opera audience in the room was with Hank Williams in his band The Drifting Cowboys. And by the time the second chorus hit, all in attendance were affirming from the top of their lungs that they, like Hank, the wiry, gaunt, intense hillbilly musician on stage before them, had a feeling too. The lovesick blues. Jenny said goodbye.

Patsy would do you, but then do your best friend. Marianne would call you sweet daddy one minute, but make it clear she didn't care about you in the Next. Ruthie had that kind of love, and you grew used to her, but couldn't make her stay. She, like Audrey, was the leaving kind, and old Janie was surely going to say goodbye. You, like everyone else, didn't know what you were going to do. You were nobody's sugar daddy, not now, not ever. You were just regular folk, like Hank up there singing into the opera mic. And your girl, Lucinda, she was, just like the others, just like all the girls who occupied

all the dreams of all your friends and all your neighbors. One day she was going to say goodbye, but until then, old Hank up there could lay it out for you. for everyone, the truth, and the truth was this. Despite your girl, despite your troubles, despite the darkness, life was such a beautiful dream. When Hank finished Lovesick Blues, the Opry crowd erupted. Hank made quick work of his momentum and called off the next tune,

his recent hit, Mind Your Own Business. And when he finished that one, the crowd went nuts. Hank Williams' grand old Opry debut made an immediate impact on country music. From there, Hank Williams took country music by storm. Fred Rose hooked Hank up with a recording contract with MGM in a matter of days. Soon, his time crooning before audiences at the Rhyman Auditorium became time crooning before crowds across the country. He strutted his leather cowboy boots across the south, the West Coast,

even pieces of Canada. As it turned out, touring paid even better than royalties did, which were also pouring in now thanks to new hits, like My Buckets Got a Hole in it and Wedding Bell. The year's excitement peaked in November when Hank packed up his guitar in nicest suit to join the grand old Opry on their first ever tour of Europe. For two weeks, he spent his nights bringing cheer to American military bases with other members of the Opry. Minnie Roy Redd, his heroes were family now. Upon his return, he found a surprise when he flipped open a new copy of Billboard.

There was, his name, Hank Williams, listed as the second best-selling. country artist of 1949, second only to Eddie Arnold. But despite what his wife Audrey thought, and despite what Dad Chryssel or any of the local PD back in Mobile or Shreveport or from parts surrounding the Panhandle thought, success had not gone to Hank Williams's head. Hank was still Hank. He sang, he drank, drank and sang, drank some more, got himself in trouble, then locked up, then dried out, then got sober, stayed that way long enough for those around him to justify tolerating his bullshit, and then just when anyone would least expect it, he'd do the whole routine over again. For those in Hank's circle, his wife, Audrey, Fred Rose,

his bandmates, his fellow opera performers, it was maddening. But none of that deterred MGM. MGM knew what they had. Despite Hank Williams' very well-publicized troubles with alcohol and the law, MGM knew they had a star on their hands, and stars were meant to shine. on the biggest stage possible, or in this case, on the biggest screen possible. The Grand Old Opry was one thing, but having your face blasted on a movie screen's 30 feet tall all over America was another thing entirely. And that's exactly what MGM intended to do.

That's why Hank was there, in New York City, to meet with MGM to hear them out on their pitch to put him in pictures. Hank Williams wasn't just Old Hank from the Grand Ole Opry. No, Hank Williams was potentially just like Old Bolians. blue eyes from the saloon. Hank had appeal everywhere, from the smoky mountains to the streets of Manhattan. Hank Williams' songs connected, his words, his themes, they were relatable all over. I saw the light, mansion on the hill, lost highway, in the big daddy of all big daddies, the king of the heartbreak songs, I'm so lonesome I could cry. This kind of relatability was rare,

the ability to cross cultures, the ability to cross over, just as Frank Sinatra was capable of appealing to blue-collar working-class Joes and their girlfriends, Hank Williams could just as easily turn on that shine for urbane intellectuals in their one-night stands. Hank's appeal was potentially even broader. Sure, at the moment it was quote-unquote country, but his songs took flight, his words had wings, his music was not going to be restricted by geographical regions. The proof was right there in front of Hank. He sat in the posh Manhattan Hotel lounge after his meeting with him. MGM, annoyed by the whole experience.

Him? A star? On screen? What the hell did they know about it anyway? Hank was just Hank, a hillbilly. He was a regular folk, just like his fans. Hank eagerly pulled on a tumbler of cheap whiskey, the cheapest the bar had, and filling the air from the speakers of the jukebox was one of his songs.

Damn, right there in Manhattan, not in Mobile, not in Shreveport, hell, not even in the Athens of the South, Nashville, in Manhattan. But it wasn't Hank's voice. It was Tony Bennett's voice, the Tony Bennett, the pop star, singing his cover version of Hank's cold, cold heart. Hank let the whiskey drown Tony Bennett out.

He lay his head back on the plush fabric of the oversized armchair he was sitting in and thought back to Dad Chrysler. That brawl back in Shreveport, or wasn't Mobile, did it even matter? In Hank's mind, he was now winning the brawl with Dad and his boys, taking them all on and fending them off with that long reach of his, beating them back. But the fantasy was short-lived. Soon enough, the pain in his back beat back the fantasy of it all, and the real memory crept in alongside the back pain,

the memory of getting pummeled and deservedly so. Hank knew deep down it wasn't his place to heckle another man while he worked. That was just the whiskey barking. But that pain, that pain was something else. That pain took away the other pain and that meant something. Hank belted back the rest of his whiskey, then another and another. When Hank Williams woke up, he was back in Nashville and contemplating, taking the cure. The sanatorium in Louisville sealed it, as if Hank didn't know it already.

The doctors at this institution officially pronounced Hank to be an alcoholic. His binge drinking now with the pressures of success, the busier than ever schedule, and the increased back pain that went along with the stress and physical exertion, led to more frequent bouts with the bottle. And increasingly, when Hank wasn't drinking, he was twisted up in some sort of withdrawal pain. It got so that not drinking was just as painful as drinking. The circle was closing.

The snake was eating itself. Hank knew what was happening. He hated it, hated the feeling, but was helpless to the pain. He carried around with him his medicine. They called it the cure. It was basically a poison pill. Alcoholics took it to curb the craving, but the rub was that if you drank any alcohol

while you had the cure in your system, you'd likely die if you didn't make it to a hospital in short order. Hank took the cure, and of course, then he drank, and then he wound up in the hospital, and then again the sanatorium to dry out. The cycle continued, but Hank's career continued to thrive. But when he wasn't filling his time with performances and recording engagements, Hank did his time at home.

It was not a happy example. experience. He and Audrey were constantly on the outs. Hank tried to beat back the beast, but to little success. Audrey was a problem. Audrey was unfaithful. Hank was too, but what did that matter? He reasoned. He was a traveling musician. He wore the pants, brought home the bacon, that sort of thing. What did Audrey do besides spend his money? There was that state trooper. Hank knew what he and Audrey were up to. What was the point of staying sober for someone if that someone was up to something with someone else. There was a lyric in there somewhere if Hank could only keep his head clear enough to fish it out. Fuck it. He sat in his and Audrey's home and stued. She'd be home soon, but at his pistol,

the gun in his hand comforted him. The gun was true. The gun shot straight, more than he could say for Audrey. She shot herself all over town. Hank sat on his back porch. He took aim, randomly, had something off in the distance and fired off around. And then he took him. took a slug from his tumbler. Then another shot. Just then, a scream. Shit. Audrey was home.

Hell on wheels to the front door. Screaming bloody murder. What the hell, Hank Williams, was your drunk ass up to now? Hank screamed something back. Another shot went off. This one, inside of the house. Audrey lost it. Tears, fear.

The door slammed. Audrey was gone for good. Hank pulled another slug from the tumbler. When he emerged from his bender, divorce was on the horizon. Hank drowned his pain and more alcohol. He performed. He wrote. He drank.

Dried out. Performed some more. Recorded. Performed. Drink. Fought. Sobered up. Drank and played some more.

Inevitably missed some shows. Then he missed even more shows. Hank Williams was an electric but unreliable performer. It was too much for the grand old Opry. Too many missed performances and sponsors started to worry. And maybe the opera wasn't such a scene. safe bet. Maybe the Opry wasn't such a good place to park all those advertising dollars. Hank Williams was warned. Hank Williams didn't listen. Hank Williams was fired from the grand

old Opry. Hank Williams hit his personal rock bottom. Sadly, we sing with tremulous breath as we stand by the mystical stream, in the valley and by the dark river of death, and yet tis no more than a dream. The gunplay, the errant bullet, lying around his and Audrey's home. The random beating from the police, the beating from Dad Chrysel and his boys, the horror-filled nightmares in the various sanatoriums, the poison pills,

none of it spelled death for Hank Williams. Not then anyway. It wasn't his time, yet, was still only a dream. Hank Williams hadn't yet filled his bucket. Life sometimes escaped from the bucket's hole, sure, but Hank just went on living, went on filling that bucket.

carried on, not just with living, but loving, fighting, drinking, connecting. Whether he knew it or not, despite the pain, the physical pain, the mental pain from the breakup of his family, or perhaps from the early abandonment of his father, from the humility and shame of being kicked off the grand ol'operie from whatever, the pain gave Hank Williams purpose. He wrote, he was the hillbilly Shakespeare, his words mattered, his songs mattered. His music gave others regular people, good folk, a light, a path, a way, a conduit, a connection. His songs were relatable enough to comfortably be programmed on the radio alongside other poppits the day, but also heavy enough to drive listeners back again and again for repeat

listening. And that is what the best pop music does. It connects on both levels. By 1952, due to his chronic and now debilitating back pain, which originated as a child and was exacerbated by his constant drinking as an adult and made even worse by a recent hunting accident. By 52, what little life Hank had left in him, he funneled into his songwriting, and for good reason. Songwriting was one of the only things that worked for Hank Williams. In his short time as a professional, dating back to 1947, Hank Williams had landed 32 songs in the top 10. 11 of them went to number one. This from a man who couldn't read or write music, but who just sang what he felt, who tapped into the darkness we all have in us, and was brave enough to bear it in the service of his art.

A word he would have hated to hear used to describe his music, by the way. Nevertheless, Hank Williams wrote about the pain and wrote through the pain. And in 1952, Hank recorded what would become his final statement, the expertly penned emotional harpoon entitled, I'll never get out of this world alive. The title said it all. As 1952 started to turn into 1953, Hank Williams' bucket was close to full. That hole, the one where life gushed out,

had seemingly been plugged by the pain. The pain was ever-present now. Performing had long since lost its luster, and after the writing and recording of I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive, there didn't seem to be much left to say. Hank filled the void and buried the pain with more alcohol. And more recently, with a dangerous cocktail of pharmaceutical narcotics, morphine injections for his back during his waking hours,

and chlorohydrate to help him sleep through the agony. But on December 30, 1952, Hank Williams was up early. There was money to make, shows to do. He had a new driver, a 17-year-old son of a friend. The boy's name was Charles. He looked silly peering over the massive steering wheel of Hank's kid. Cadillac, but he'd get the job done. So long as Hank could stretch out in the backseat on route to gigs in Charlestown, West Virginia,

in Canton, Ohio. First stop, however, was a general store for a six-pack of Flagstaff. Hank got to the bottom of all six cans in no time. He and his driver spent the night in a Birmingham Hotel. Hank bonded with a bottle of bonded bourbon. He was leveled. He spread some cash out for the hotel staff, crashed and woke up early to a fresh snowfall on New Year's Eve Day.

Hank and Charles drove through the snow. It whipped up and down the two-lane highway. This could be the day. This could be his time. In the back of that car, it was hard to see anything else through the blinding worlds of snow and sharp tusks of pain.

Over the turbid and onrushing tide thought the light of eternity gleam. In the ransom, the darkness and storm shall outride. To wake with glad, miles from the dream. Hank lay his weary head back on the car seat. All six feet two inches of him stretched out, trying to grab a wink, trying to push his consciousness into the slipstream of slumber, trying to outrun the pain, trying. As the Cadillac rambled north through the snow, through the darkness toward Ohio, Hank slipped into a half sleep. His back pain raged. And they stopped for gas.

Hank woke, got out of the car, stretched his legs, his driver asked him if he wanted anything to eat. Nah, Hank replied, I just want to get some sleep. They were the last words Hank Williams said. And like the words Hank Williams wrote, he meant them deeply. He was done negotiating with the pain. Sleep, he reasoned in the moment, is the answer, and death is only a dream. Hank Williams crammed his body into the back seat of his Cadillac and settled in for his last ride. He wrapped his bespoke blazer over his chest, laid himself out, closed his eyes, and heard that distant traditional roll through his memory. Only a dream, only a dream of glory beyond the dark stream. How peaceful the slumber, how happy the waking, were death. The Cadillac rolled softly into

the parking lot of the Oak Hill West Virginia Hospital on New Year's Day, 1953. The sun had yet to break through the darkness of Appalachia. In darkness rested peacefully at long last in the back seat of the Cadillac. The driver in his heart knew the worst was true, but still he hoped for death to be forgiving. He pulled two interns from the hospital to attend to the matter of the unconscious songwriter in his back seat. One look was all it took. He's dead. The driver asked if there wasn't anything they could do.

Of course there wasn't. And there wasn't anything left for Hank Williams to do. At the age of 29, by then, for him anyway, he'd done it all, written all he could write, loved as hard as he could have loved, lived. His bucket was full. Death came as a welcomed friend, as a dream. The driver asks the interns again. Nothing? You can't do anything? This is Hank Williams.

One intern looked at the driver coldly. No, he's just dead. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership.

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Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.