Song of the Day: Yes, Hank Did It This Way

Hank Williams took his last ride, 70 years ago today.

Every year at this time I mark the day the greatest of them all, Hank Williams, took his last ride, on Dec. 31, 1952—seventy years ago tonight. He never woke up, in the iconic “back seat of a Cadillac,” paving the way for future rockers not just with his music, attitude, and knee-shaking (and sadly a dramatic way to “go out” if you are indeed doomed to die young). He was 29. Imagine the songs he might have written for another forty or fifty years.

The “Hank Williams Syndrome,” according to Waylon Jennings, who penned a song with that title: “Come to Nashville, write some good songs, cut some hit records, make money, take all the drugs you can and drink all you can, become a wild man and all of a sudden die.”

There’s a must-read 2022 essay on the man by David Ramsay that includes this on that fateful New Year’s Eve. Hank would owe his demise partly to a quack doctor “treating” his crippling back pain (he was probably born with spina bifida):

A lot happened on the trip and it’s hard to make out what’s what: He had some liquor and maybe a morphine shot in Montgomery before they left and bought a six-pack of Falstaff beer on their way out of town; might have had a few women stop by his hotel room in Birmingham; got a haircut, shave, and some whiskey in Fort Payne; perhaps had another morphine shot and got on a plane in Knoxville when he realized he wouldn’t make it to Charleston in time; the plane turned around and went back to Knoxville about an hour and a half into the flight because of bad weather and that night, Hank had to be carried by the porters into his room at the Andrew Johnson Hotel in Knoxville; then a doctor came to the hotel to give him two shots that likely contained morphine, to cure convulsive hiccups.

They kept driving, now heading to Canton for the New Year’s Day show. Somewhere around Blaine, Tennessee, their car was pulled over by the cops (for the second time on the trip). “He’s not dead is he?” the patrolman asked.

So to mark the day (but first please subscribe, it’s still free):

Hank introduced by, yes, June Carter, in her early goofy stage persona, long before she met Johnny Cash. Note the knee wobbles, pre-Elvis, on “Hey, Good Lookin’.”

And another classic, “Cold Cold Heart”—the first adult 78 given to me as a wee lad, in the hit Tony Bennett version.

Terrific tribute to Hank’s final hours: Emmylou Harris with “Rollin’ and Ramblin.”

There have been hundreds of tribute songs, some swell, many weak or tacky. Here’s a great one from another terrific songwriter who threw it all away, Tim Hardin.

Waylon captured the spirit here:

Pretty shitass movie, The Last Ride, with E.T’s young friend, Henry Thomas, as Ol’ Hank, but you can watch trailer below. In a more recent flick, Tom Hiddleston played Hank—after losing weight, Tom was a dead ringer—but the movie still was a bust.

And back to the master himself. First, suggesting why he was driven (literally) to death, as he was “Alone and Forsaken.” Perhaps the most haunting song ever. Featured as the theme in a current popular video game:

And finally, dropping in on Anita Carter, who appears to be a bit frightened or just in awe as he tells her “I Can’t Help It.”

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Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), the current The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s atomic bomb movie twisted by the White House and Pentagon), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. His 2021 film, Atomic Cover-up, drew extraordinary acclaim, and his current one, The First Attack Ads, aired over hundreds of PBS stations this past fall. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher magazine. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.