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Jamming backstage at Frankfurt's Festhalle, Germany October 6, 1970
By Dick Waterman

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Topic: Hank Williams Remembered in Opry Tribute Return to archive
01-06-03 12:37 PM
Martha
Full Story 01/06/2003��06:57:45�EST

Hank Williams Remembered in Opry Tribute
By JOHN GEROME
Associated Press Writer


The Grand Ole Opry paid tribute to Hank Williams 50 years after his death, recalling a man whose honest, cutting songs about cheating, drinking and loneliness changed the direction of country music.

Williams' son, Hank Williams Jr., and grandson, Hank Williams III, took the stage with a string of other performers Saturday at the Ryman Auditorium.

"Everybody who ever sang a country song since Hank Williams came along has been influenced," Sharon White Skaggs of The Whites said after the group played "Move It On Over" for the packed auditorium.

Vince Gill called Williams "the greatest singer-songwriter who ever lived," and sang the melancholy "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." Little Jimmy Dickens performed the Cajun-tinged "Jambalaya," Hank Williams III performed "Howlin' at the Moon," and Hank Williams Jr. did the thumping "Kaw-Liga" and other classics.

Hank Williams' June 11, 1949, Opry debut is etched in country music lore. He sang "Lovesick Blues" and was called back for an unheard-of six encores. Williams would spend the next few years as a regular on the program, but alcoholism hurt his performances and caused him to miss shows.

He was asked to leave in 1952 with the intention that he would sober up and return.

But Williams never played the Opry again. At age 29, while on the way to a concert in Canton, Ohio, he was found dead in the back seat of his Cadillac on New Year's Day 1953. The official cause of death was heart failure.

Williams' songs, with their twangy expression of lost love and sadness, seem better suited to the honky-tonk than the Opry stage. The lyrics are often brooding, with lines such as "I'm gonna find me a river, one that's cold as ice. And when I find me that river, I'm gonna pay the price."

Until Williams, country music and the Opry had been dominated by a brighter, upbeat style.

Williams' songs have been recorded by pop and rock icons as well as country stars, and he is enshrined in both the rock and country music halls of fame. A 2001 tribute album, "Timeless," includes covers of his music by Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Keith Richards, Sheryl Crow and Beck, among others.

During Saturday's show, Hank Williams Jr. honored one of his father's earliest influences, the late Rufus Payne, a black blues musician in Alabama known as "Tee-Tot," whom he says taught his father to play guitar and sing the blues. Payne's son, Henderson Payne, joined him on stage in a wheelchair.

As he began to pick the blues on an acoustic guitar, Hank Williams Jr. urged the crowd to "close your eyes and go back, and you can see him in 1932 on the streets of Montgomery (Ala.)"

The show's promoters had promised a pairing of Hank Williams Jr. and Hank Williams III for a rare joint performance, but it never happened. The two men, who by many accounts have a strained relationship, did not perform on stage together.

Hank Williams's daughter, Jett Williams, played tribute to her father in a separate performance at the Opry on Friday night.

___

On the Net:

Grand Ole Opry: http://www.opry.com


Copyright 2003 Associated Press.
01-07-03 06:28 AM
stonedinaustralia thanx for that martha
01-07-03 05:28 PM
sasca Have you heard the Waterboys' tribute to him?

'He ain't in the back of a limo
and he ain't in his bed,
he ain't in jail
and he ain't out on bail
.....
I don't care what he did with his women
I don't care what he did when he drank.
I want to hear just one note
From his loesome old throat,
Has anybody here seen Hank?'
01-07-03 06:31 PM
Martha

You are very welcome SID.
01-07-03 06:32 PM
Martha Ooops...I mean SIA...LOL!

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