From Dallasmusic.com

New from Time Life -
   Hank Williams:  The Unreleased Recordings

      Imagine that it's 7:15 a.m. in January 1951.  People are cooking biscuits, milking cows, driving to work or doing whatever they did on a daily basis, and they're treated to a fifteen minute radio show starring Hank Williams.  He sang songs he never recorded.  He sang his own hits and other people's hits.  He talked about his favorite songs, where he had been, and where he was going.  Whatever came into his head.  It was kind of like having him join you at your breakfast table for a good visit and a little pickin' and singin'. 
        If you weren't tuned in to WSM radio between 7:15 and 7:30 back then you would never have heard these recordings, and if you were you finally have a chance to hear them again.  They're guaranteed to take you right back to that simpler time.
        As the story goes WSM radio was purging  its library of unusable material which included 72 shows featuring Hank Williams.  It was decided that the only owner of these shows was the estate of Hank Williams: Hank's children Hank Jr. and Jett Williams.  They, with the help of  Time Life have released them to the public unaltered, undubbed and beautifully restored.  The compilation comes beautifully packaged with a forty page book telling the whole story and a little about the history of  each of the 53 tracks.  Along with the interesting stories the book offers a pictoral history which helps tell the story of the legend of country music's first superstar.  This a must for any collector and would make a perfect gift for the holiday season.  Don't forget to pick one up for yourself as well. 

Hank #2 Rolling Stone Reissue

Hank Blog Critics Review

"The Unreleased Recordings is a bit of a godsend. Like reading Virginia Woolf’s diaries or seeing the metamorphosis of Jackson Pollock through exhibit, this collection serves to help complete the picture of a human being we can never know too much about. The songs come from radio station WSM in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1951, Hank Williams stopped by every so often to record 15-minute segments that were then played early in the morning. He sang some of his own songs and covered many of his personal favorites. His backing bands and singers were always top-notch. Best of all, the quality is exceptional. WSM clearly knew to take care of these acetates and the transfer to digital could not be better. Taken together, these factors add up to a perfect treasure. This is a collection for the obsessive, the skeptic, and even the novice, who will feel grateful rather than overwhelmed that there are a full three discs worth of material to plunder."

Link to Original Article

Hank performs ten Roy Acuff covers on the Unreleased Recordings

by Brian Turpen

It is pretty well known that Hank had high regard and respect for Roy Acuff. In fact, on his shows during his early years, Hank was known to often sing songs by his idol. Hank is also known to have stated, “I was a pretty good imitator of Roy Acuff, but then I found out they already had a Roy Acuff, so I started singin’ like myself.” Even though Hank may have stopped trying to sing like Acuff, he didn’t stop singing songs Acuff had recorded. On the surviving Mother’s Best shows, there are many examples of Hank reviving Acuff’s tunes, or tunes associated with Acuff.

Time-Life’s compilation, Hank Williams, the Unreleased Recordings, includes 54 songs from the 72 surviving Mother’s Best shows, and 10 of those are associated with Acuff. Clearly, Hank’s respect for Acuff was still high even though his star had long eclipsed his idol’s. Hank gladly acknowledged his roots on the Mother’s Best shows, and no one influenced him more than Roy Acuff. The ten songs associated with Acuff or previously recorded by Acuff were Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain, Low And Lonely, Drifting Too Far From The Shore, The Prodigal Son, Searching For A Soldier’s Grave, Pins & Needles, Wait For The Light To Shine, The Pale Horse & His Rider, The Great Judgment Morning, and Thy Burdens Are Greater Than Mine. The latter has a slightly different story because it appears as though Hank demo’d the song on behalf of its writers for Acuff. It is thought that Hank did this as a favor to his producer/ music publisher, Fred Rose, and the song’s composers, Pee Wee King and Redd Stewart. Rose pitched the song to Acuff, who recorded it in September 1951.

Although these ten songs may have been put on disc by Acuff, one can tell that Hank didn’t just do covers of the song for his morning radio show. As one will notice when listening, Hank put his own indelible mark on his versions.

Latest Hank Online Reviews

Few artists lay claim to places in history like Hank Williams. He sits among the elite who pioneered not just a genre or style, but the music of an entire nation. Williams shares his lofty perch with the likes of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, The Beatles, Bill Monroe, Bob Wills, Jimi Hendrix, and Robert Johnson. You don’t often see Bird and Wills listed in the same sentence, but there you go.

With songs of loneliness and heartache, Hank Williams influenced the entirety of American songwriting. His work sits as a crucial link in the evolution of American music, marrying the traditions of western swing, bluegrass, and gospel. His style would pave way for the early rock n’ roll giants Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley, among others. More recently, his influence can be found in the alternative-country and folk worlds with artists like Gillian Welch, Ryan Adams, Darrell Scott, and Lyle Lovett.

Read more at Muzik Review

Hank Williams wasn't around very long to enjoy the spotlight, as he didn't come to the public's attention in a big way until 1949 and was dead four years later, so there has never been a huge library of his recordings available for fans to listen too. However, back in 1950-51 he recorded a series of radio shows that were sponsored by Mother's Best Flour, and because of his extensive touring schedule he was forced to pre-record the shows on acetate discs. It's these recordings that Time Life have used as the source for their new release Hank Williams: The Unreleased Recordings. The three CDs come handsomely packaged in a tall hard cover package that opens like a book. On the inside front cover are the first two CDs, followed by thirty-eight pages of photographs and text giving the history of the recordings and Williams' biography, with the third disc on the inside of the back cover.

Read more at Leap In The Dark

Hank treats his audience to many popular tunes such as “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You,” “When The Saints Go Marching In,” and “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain.” A song or two of his studio work has traces of what will become rock ‘n’ roll. Listen to the lyrics again to “Hey, Good Looking;” you got hot rods, soda, and dancing dates. He’s only a few steps away from truly being the granddaddy of rockabilly. Check out “Cherokee Boogie,” “California Zephyr” and “a little masterpiece of nonsense,” as Hank introduces it, titled “Mind Your Own Business” with its added edgy verse about getting knocked around by the missus.

Read More at The Masked Music Snobs Bullpen

Hank Williams Blogcritics Review

Nearly sixty years have gone by since the world lost Hank Williams Sr. yet his haunting voice and music continue to tug at our souls and pull us into the dark night of his own, expressed in his songs and the way he delivered them. Time Life has finally put out The Unreleased Recordings of Hank Williams. These recordings, drawn from remaining acetates cut in 1951 for his fifteen-minute radio show sponsored by Mother’s Best Flour on WSM Nashville, were to air while he was on the road touring and unable to make the 7:15am start time Monday through Friday. These 54 offerings of Hank’s heart show a different side of the man and allow us to see a bit further into his tragically short life.

Read the rest here

New York Times Article on The Unreleased Recordings

HANK WILLIAMS, ‘THE UNRELEASED RECORDINGS’

Many of Hank Williams’s studio records were nearly perfect, and his voice-and-guitar demos have a trudging, spooky power. But this is something new: three hours’ worth of radio performances with his band, recorded for 15-minute spots on the Nashville station WSM in 1951, at Williams’s commercial peak and before his health turned. (About a year later he would be dead.) Upbeat, he calls out to soloists in his band with satisfaction and pours himself into the performance. His wife Audrey, talentless at singing, is not here: a big plus. The repertory forms a trustworthy picture of his sound world: not just his own songs but white and black gospel, cowboy tunes, obscure contemporary nothings (“You Blotted My Happy Schooldays”), a weirdly breathtaking “On Top of Old Smoky.” And his voice! These recordings get the fullness and breadth of it, the cool, plummy croon turning to a hot laser through some trick of throat and nose. Truly one of the best records ever. (Time-Life, three CDs, $39.98.) BEN RATLIFF

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/arts/music/2008holidayboxe.html

New York Times proclaims "ONE OF THE BEST RECORDS EVER."

Yes, it's true.  

The article will be posted shortly.

Here's  a nice review from a British publication in the interim. 

Muzik Review

Highlights from the first disc include renditions of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”, “Hey Good Lookin’”, and “On Top of Old Smoky”. The recordings themselves are tastefully restored, capturing the warmth of Hank’s voice, and the delicate balance of these live performances.

The second disc opens with his classic “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still In Love With You)”. It goes on to feature his original “California Zephyr”, along with quite a few gospel classics. On the third disc, Hank does his interpretation of Albert Brumley’s “I’ll Fly Away”, a version of that tune can be heard on the acclaimed soundtrack to the film Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. The upbeat “Mind Your Own Business”, and one of the great under-rated ballads, “There’s Nothing As Sweet As My Baby” take center stage on this final set. Ominously, the set closes with “The Pale Horse and His Rider”.

Read the rest here

Hank Williams Pittsburgh Hear and Now: Believe Your Ears

Podcast about The Unreleased Recordings from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Listen to get to the Hank piece.

The Post-Gazette podcast:

Pittsburgh Hear and Now: Believe Your Ears

Peter King talks with Marty Ashby about "An Evening of Pittsburgh-Inspired Brazilian Jazz" with Ivan Lins Friday night at Heinz Hall (0-12:17). Plus, Rich Kienzle reviews a new 3-CD set of Hank Williams Sr.'s unreleased radio shows (12:17-19:30). (Total time: 19:30)

http://media.post-gazette.com/podcasts/20081111bye.mp3

Hank Williams BlogCritics Review

"For the longest time I could never understand how anybody could like country music. The problem was that it took me nearly forever to realize there was a huge difference between the music that's performed by people like Shania Twain, and country music. Growing up in urban centers, the only type of country music I heard for the longest time was the former. Someone must have decided that city audiences were too sophisticated to want to hear any of the old time, or more traditionally styled, examples of the genre.

Not having any incentive to search out country music, it took a series of accidents for me to stumble across the good stuff: walking into a record store and hearing my first Graham Parsons duet with Emmylou Harris, listening to my brother's Jerry Jeff Walker and Kris Kristofferson albums, and learning about Hank Williams by hearing a guy named Sneezy Waters singing his music."

Read the BlogCritics Review Here

Sonic Boomers Review

It should go without saying that Hank Williams was a genius. An absolute master. What Miles Davis is to jazz. What Bob Dylan is to songwriting. What Bruce Springsteen is to live performance. Hank Williams dominated country music in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s with songwriting and live performance that eclipsed everyone in his path. His voice is a marvel. He drew out notes until they broke. He never shied from the emotion of the moment and he milked every tear he could. And he did it without trivializing the content. Whether it was his publisher/editor Fred Rose -- the Maxwell Perkins to Williams’ Thomas Wolfe -- who helped distill his essence or not, Williams issued in six short years a catalog as dense and rich as any performer we’ve come to accept for their excellence. He never recorded a concept album, but his whole goddamn life was a concept, a massive collision course with alcoholism, drug abuse, chronic back pain and wild, wild women. When he sang “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” no one could question his authority.

The Unreleased Recordings is a welcome glimpse into the world that Hank Williams professionally occupied. These 54 performances over three CDs were recorded in 1951 for Nashville’s WSM-AM morning radio program. Fortunately, Williams was spared an early wake-up call and the 7:15 performances were pre-recorded to lacquered discs that were luckily preserved back in the 1980s, since someone had the common sense to realize that these might be of historical and musical interest someday. The music business doesn’t always get it wrong, but it did take, what, over two decades to get this material into our hands. But let us not complain about the slow cogs of industry. Let us praise what has now been given over to us for our reflection.

Read the rest at Sonic Boomers

A Hank Williams Journal

Hank blogger John Waugh has been running a Hank blog called A Hank Williams Journal.  

Very insightful, please check it out.   

Hank Publicity Updates

-The online home for GQ magazine, Men.Style.com, is going to include Hank’s project in their holiday gift guide that should be online soon.

-An interview is set with Jett Williams for Parade Magazine

Hank Promotions Country Aircheck

"Hanks For The Swag: Time Life is offering a variety of promotions to Classic Country and Country stations in support of its Hank Williams: The Unreleased Recordings set. Available as a three-disc box, as well as a single 16-track disc, the collection can be at the center of promotions including a Hank Williams Weekend, an E-blast or contest promotion and a Happy Hanksgiving campaign." 

Hank AP Story

"It's very intimate," Jett Williams, a 55-year-old country singer, said recently. "It's like he came over to your house and he's saying, `Let me tell you about this song I just wrote.'

"It's interesting because it's live, and you hear him make a mistake or the band make a mistake and you get to hear how he handles it," she added. "You hear him tell jokes and how quick his wit is."

Read th rest  here on Yahoo

The Unreleased Recordings Digital EP

If you haven't heard The Unreleased Recordings, don't forget that you can get a taste of the 3 CD set by downloading the 5 tracks below for only $4.95.

About.com Review

Snippet:
This three disc collection is a must-have item for any Hank Williams fan, or for any fan of Country Music. The quality of these recordings is outstanding and the included booklet of information is also worthy of praise. Not only do you get to hear the songs, but you can also read background information for each one of them. The songs in this collection were taken from previous unreleased performances on the "Mother's Best" program and are also part of a Time Life series with more to come.

Read the rest here

The Tennessean Feature

The Unreleased Recordings' offer glimpses of Hank Williams

By Peter Cooper • THE TENNESSEAN • October 26, 2008

In early 1981, 26-year-old Alan Stoker applied soap and water to some lacquer-coated, 16-inch aluminum discs.
And then three decades fell away, as Stoker transferred the material on the discs to reel-to-reel tape. Country music's most famous voice — a voice that had been silenced at age 29, somewhere on a dark road north of Knoxville and south of Oak Hill, W.Va. — burst through speakers and filled the room.
There, inside the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on Music Row, Stoker raised the hillbilly Atlantis, in the form of Hank Williams' "Mother's Best" recordings.
"I had in my mind this image of Hank Williams as a great singer and songwriter, but also as a dark and morose person," said Stoker, now the recorded-sound and moving-image curator at the hall, which moved downtown in 2001. "But on these recordings, which I had never heard before, I was struck by the warmth of his voice and the apparent warmth of his personality. He had a great laugh."
More than a quarter-century later, and more than 50 years since Williams and his Drifting Cowboys recorded radio shows sponsored by Mother's Best Flour and aired on WSM-AM 650, listeners can hear what Stoker heard in 1981. Williams' 143 performances were recorded onto "acetates," which are discs meant to be played only a few times. After airing, the acetates were bound for the WSM Dumpster but were rescued by photographer Les Leverett. The shutterbug held on to the acetates for many years, though Hall of Fame acquisitions director Bob Pinson talked Leverett into bringing them in so that Stoker could do a transfer in 1981.
A record company attempted to release the recordings, complete with overdubbed instruments, but the Williams estate — daughter Jett Williams and son Hank Williams Jr. — fought an eight-year court battle to secure the rights. In 2006, Tennessee's Court of Appeals ruled that the estate owned the performances. Jett Williams and husband/lawyer F. Keith Adkinson negotiated a deal with Time Life, and soon Stoker was back at work. This time, he was "baking" the reels to remove moisture, then transferring the reels onto a computer hard drive.
"Some people assume that since these were recorded in 1951, that they'll sound grainy," Jett Williams said. "But the recordings are fabulous, and it actually sounds better than his master recordings for MGM. It's not some old, scratchy radio show. It sounds like he's in your living room, singing to you."
He was not, of course, in a living room. He was at WSM's Nashville studio, pre-recording shows with his Drifting Cowboys since their touring schedule in 1951 didn't allow them to be in Nashville enough to cut the daily live shows. The shows were cut live to acetate, though, without fixes or massaging.
"He's singing live, like his life depended on it," Jett Williams said. "You can hear people move, or clear their throats. And you also hear him talk and tell jokes. My father died very young, and I didn't know him. So here, I hear his wit and his personality. For me, I get a chance to meet my daddy, and to hear the real human being who was Hank Williams."
The first 54 Mother's Best performances will be released to retail stores on Tuesday, in a three-disc set called Hank Williams: The Unreleased Recordings. The other 89 songs will be released over the next three years. The initial set includes live versions of hits such as "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love With You)" and "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," and obscurities like "You Blotted My Happy Schooldays" and "When the Fire Comes Down."
To Rolling Stone's David Fricke, The Unreleased Recordings — Hank Williams at the peak of his powers, transported, soaped, baked, litigated and transformed into the new digital century — are "as electrifying as Johnny Cash's '60s prison shows or Bob Dylan's early acoustic concerts." For his children, for a Hall of Fame curator and for those who care about such things, it's a smile from the grave.
Peter Cooper

New York Daily News Review

New York Daily News, 10/28/2008

By DAVID HINCKLEY

Once upon a time, artists the stature of Hank Williams sang live all the time on the radio.

Pop stars up to the level of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby did that, too. But it was particularly prevalent for blues, gospel and country singers, who used 15-minute live radio shows to keep their music in front of their fans.

The frustrating part 50-60 years later is that the live broadcast often was the only time it was heard.

Where transcriptions existed, sadly, almost all have been destroyed or lost.

That’s why a new Time-Life collection of live Hank Williams recordings is such a gift.

The three-CD set, available today, includes 54 performances by Williams on the Mother’s Best Flour show heard in 1951 over WSM in Nashville. Dozens of these songs he never recorded elsewhere, which is also true of the 89 additional songs coming over the next three years.

Bootlegs of Mother’s Best shows have circulated for years, as have some recordings of Hank’s earlier “Health & Happiness” radio shows. But a legal release is easier to find, with much better sound.

Most important, hearing “I’ll Fly Away” or “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You” or “Softly and Tenderly” is like Hank coming back and cutting whole new albums.

As was his habit, the live versions of hits like “I Can’t Help It” or “Wedding Bells” don’t sound radically different from the recordings. Still, they have different nuances and some great touches.

The general template for the radio show was a country song, an instrumental and a gospel song, so there’s a lot of gospel here. Standards like “From Jerusalem to Jericho,” “Dust on the Bible” and “When the Saints Go Marching In” are pure Williams, exuberant and all his own.

A couple of songs are oddities, like the obscure, dark “You Blotted My Happy Schooldays.” Hank loved dark and maudlin.

A particular gem for fans is “On Top of Old Smokey,” which he prefaces by saying he’ll do it in traditional mountain style – a reference to the string-drenched pop hit version then on the charts by the Weavers.

The one thing missing here is more of that banter – that is, the complete radio shows.

Time-Life figured, correctly, that most listeners would prefer getting more music. But Reader’s Digest is issuing a fourth CD that includes three complete radio shows, and who knows? Maybe someday more of them will come out (legally).

Meanwhile, there’s nothing here not to love.

Nashville Skyline Column

NASHVILLE SKYLINE: Hank Williams: Songs Are the Measure of a Man
New Boxed Set of Unreleased Recordings Is a Modern Landmark
October 30, 2008; Written by Chet Flippo

Nashville Skyline
(NASHVILLE SKYLINE is a column by CMT/CMT.com Editorial Director Chet Flippo.)

Songs are the measure of a man. And with the new Hank Williams CD set you can hear the man in the songs.

Williams was country's first superstar and deservedly so. His music lives on because it was what made him a superstar. It was not publicity's glare or intensive hype or celebrity friends or any other kind of flash that made you know who he was. He wrote and sang solid music that stopped you dead in your tracks when you heard it.

Hank Williams understood more than he knew. You can hear it in his songwriting and also in his song selection. He said things in his own songs that he could never say in real life. And he seemed to seek out larger truths in selecting compositions by other writers. As far as I can tell from researching and writing a biography of Williams, picking others' songs went against his grain because his ego called for him to record only his own songs insofar as far as he could. But, especially early on in his career he built up a repertoire of many and varied works.

You can hear many of those in the new boxed set, Hank: Unreleased Recordings (released Oct. 28), which I think is one of the most important recorded music projects in recent years. Why? Well, it can introduce a new generation to the architect of modern country music that Hank Williams was. It can display much of Hank's back-story, the music that got him to the point that he became country's first true superstar and legend-to-be. All by the time that he flamed out at age 29. And it can, through this glimpse of Hank, give us an accurate glimpse of what popular American country music really was in the 1940s and 1950s.

These recordings were made for an early-morning show on Nashville radio station WSM mainly in 1951. The sponsor was Mother's Best Flour. The shows were usually recorded because Williams was on the road throughout the week. That these shows were recorded on fragile acetate disks for later broadcast is the only reason they have been preserved at all. The acetates were later discarded by the radio station, which was pretty much standard practice in those days. Fortunately, someone rescued them from the trash bin and held onto them for years and they now can be heard by all of us.

Of the songs included in those radio shows, we will never fully know the extent to which Williams' alter ego, Fred Rose, figured in his selection process. Rose was Williams' song collaborator, de facto record producer, and father figure. He was a successful Tin Pan Alley songwriter long before he moved to Nashville and launched Acuff-Rose Music in 1942. It was country music's first song publishing house. It later took on other roles for its artists and songwriters. In Hank's case, Acuff-Rose filled the roles of publisher, manager, producer, co-writer, booking agent and accountant.

Unfortunately for history, Fred Rose left no journals or other written accounts of his work with Williams. Rose was much more sophisticated musically than was Williams, who also admittedly bought songs from writers he ran across -- standard practice in those days. But we can tell that Williams' song selection for his radio shows was much broader than his choices for his recordings.

Williams' listening habits were pretty wide for a country boy born in 1923 into poverty in Alabama. The songs he picked for his radio shows ranged far beyond what you might imagine he listened to. As a child in rural Alabama, his musical sources were limited to AM radio, old Southern folk songs sung locally, the rare phonograph recording, live church music, a street singer like Tee-Tot who taught him much and religious tent revivals. Songs that stayed with him ranged from the old folk standard "On Top of Old Smoky" to the gospel song "I'll Fly Away" to a weeper such as "The Blind Child's Lament" and even "When the Saints Go Marching In."

The 54 songs included here range widely across the spectrum, from traditional Southern gospel to Hank originals, from Appalachian ballads to a Western standard, from honky-tonk to cob-webby ancient tunes. They all share Hank Williams' formula for musical success: total emotional commitment to the song. If he couldn't identify with the song himself, Hank Williams could never sell it to anyone else and he well knew that.

I have enjoyed discussing these recordings with Hank's daughter Jett, who is very eloquent as a spokesperson for her father's legacy. Jett has spent much of her adult life in court, first establishing her identity as Hank Williams' daughter and then in recovering these lost recordings and making them available for the public to hear. She never got to meet her father, which makes these recordings especially poignant to her. "I finally heard my father laugh," she said. "I heard him as he was, as a man." On his radio shows, he discussed the songs and told corny jokes and displayed his human side.

For the greater listening audience, all of this means that you can hear one of America's most significant music figures at the height of his powers, playing and singing the music that he really liked and treasured personally. Not the music that he felt he should record professionally for Hank Williams, the big star. This is the music that Hank Williams, born Hiram King Williams in Mount Olive West, Ala., wanted to play and sing when he was just out there with his people.

Hank Online Clippings

The latest Hank online clippings:

HipOnline Review

Readjunk

Demonoid

Hillbilly Blog

TheBoot

Congoo

Cold, Cold Heart

Patty Loveless covered the Hank Williams track "Cold, Cold Heart" on Sleepless Nights. It just so happens that "Cold, Cold Heart" is also a featured track on the The Unreleased Recordings.

Get the Hank version @
Get the Patty version @

Country Air Check

Jett Williams visits Country Air Check. Picture here, scroll down to the bottom.

Hank Williams The Unreleased Recordings EP out NOW!

For those of you wanting a taste of some of the tracks on the The Unreleased Recordings, recommended is the 5 tracks up on . 

Mini Album Track Listing:  

Blues Eyes Crying In The Rain

I Can't Help It

Cherokee Boogie

Cold, Cold Heart

I'll Fly Away

 

Of course, if you want all 54 tracks for your collection recommended is the 3 disc set that you can buy on Amazon or Timelife.com

Thanks, and more Hank reviews and features on the way!!!

Hank NPR Special Edition - Hank Williams' Lost Music: Rare And Resurfaced

Below is a link to the NPR Weekend Edition Special interview with Jett Williams that broadcast on Saturday.  

Click here to read and listen. 

How Hank Williams Recorded for Mother's Best Flour (Full Entry)

By Brian Turpen

The Mother’s Best Flour shows are the most well-known and most sought-after Hank Williams artifact. Unheard for over fifty years, the shows were broadcast over WSM in Nashville every morning between 7:15 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. at the peak of Hank’s career in 1951.  He was paid $100 a week for the shows.

            Some of the shows were pre-recorded to be played on the air when Hank was out on the road.  It was these transcriptions that have luckily survived.  The format was pretty consistent. The 15-minute shows usually consisted of one country song, one instrumental or guest vocal and a gospel song to close the show.  The shows also included a theme song that Hank wrote and sang during the broadcast:

 

                        "I love to have that gal around

                        Her biscuits are so nice and brown

                        Her pies and cakes beat all the rest

                        Cause she makes them all with Mother's Best”

 

But that’s not all the shows had to offer because Hank had more to do than sing. We hear him and announcer Louie Buck selling Mother's Best Flour, as well as self-raising cornmeal and pig & sow feed. We also hear him talk unguardedly about the songs he loved, his grueling itinerary, and much more. The Mother's Best Shows are arguably Hank’s best work and hs most revealing. They capture his personality better than anything else known to exist. It is probably the in-between song chatter that makes these recordings so great becacuse you get a glimpse of what Hank Williams was like as a person.

            Although fans and collectors have heard of these Mother’s Best Flour shows for years, very few know much if anything about the company that sponsored these famous radio programs.  Here’s a little history of the company that gave us this priceless glimpse into the heart and soul of Hank Williams.

Mother’s Best Flour can trace its origins back to 1919.  That year, Frank Little and Alva Kinney incorporated Nebraska Consolidated Mills when they took over Nebraska Grain Mills in Grand Island, Hastings, St. Edward, and Ravenna. They were initially headquartered in Grand Island, until they moved to Omaha in 1922. The company ran at a profit until 1936, when Kinney retired.  In 1940, the company began producing flour, and in 1942 ventured into the livestock feed business.

            In 1941, company president R.S. Dickinson opened the company's first out-of-state facility in Decatur, Alabama with a flour mill and animal feed plant.  The site was chosen because of its proximity to transportation on the Tennessee River and its central location. About six Nebraskan families relocated, bringing some Midwestern ideas into the Deep South. Alabama Flour Mills opened for production in late 1941. The mill consumed large amounts of grain, most of which was shipped from the Midwest.  Flour milling had been the plant’s strength from the beginning, when it produced 80,000 pounds a day. The executive in charge of the Alabama mill was C.H. Thomas. The mill produced the company’s old favorite, White Elephant, and added a new brand, Mother’s Best, upon their opening in 1941.  Mother’s Best was also packaged at Nebraska Consolidated’s other mills, but the bulk of the production was from Decatur. Today most supermarket flour is in paper bags that are thrown away.  In the 1940s, flour was packaged in colorful cloth bags that people used to make curtains, dish towels, pillow-cases, and even clothes. Mother’s Best bags were no exception.

            Just months after the Alabama mill opened, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and the mill worked around the clock and became an important industry in the war effort. In the early days, the company tested flour produced at the mill.  Lab workers baked bread, biscuits and corn bread on site to make sure the flour was up to standards.  After the testing, the “girls in the office” would eat the baked goods.

Although the head office in Nebraska had final say-so over advertising and sponsorship, it was Alabama Flour Mills’ executive C.H. Thomas who pushed for Mother’s Best Flour to reach out to rural areas by sponsoring several radio shows throughout the South. In the mid 1940s to the early 1950s, the Mother’s Best Flour brand sponsored several different radio programs.  Some of their sponsored shows were: Joe Rumore and Rebe & Rabe on WVOK in Birmingham, Alabama; Bob Helton and later Curley Williams on WSFA in Montgomery, Alabama; Slim Rhodes on WMC in Memphis, Tennessee; bluesmen Houston Stackhouse, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Joe Willie Wilkins and Robert Lockwood Jr. on KFFA at Helena, Arkansas; and the Wyatt Brothers on KBOA in Piggott, Arkansas.  However, by far the most popular Mother’s Best spokesperson was Hank Williams on WSM out of Nashville, Tennessee. Hank sold Mother’s Best on WSM from late 1950 or early 1951 until the late weeks of 1951 when he reluctantly went into Vanderbilt Medical Center for an operation on his spine that he hoped would relieve some of his back pain. Soon after his death on January 1, 1953, the era of “live” radio came to an end.

           

            The mill is still producing flour and remains one of the Decatur’s oldest industries.  The basis of flour milling hasn’t changed radically, and the plant is using some of the same equipment used in the 1940s.  The mill supplies flour to most of the commercial bakeries in Alabama, and currently produces over 1 million pounds a day. It also still operates an animal feed mill in Decatur.

            As for the mill’s parent company, Nebraska Consolidated Mills established Duncan Hines in 1951 as a way to market more flour by selling cake mixes. This venture was successful, but they didn’t consider other food ventures, and eventually sold Duncan Hines to Procter & Gamble in 1956 to returned to their core business. As American households purchased more and more prepared and instant foods in the 1950s and 1960s, Consolidated chose not to expand into the businesses that used their flour, instead turning to poultry and livestock feed. A flurry of acquisitions and internal expansion led the company to change its name in 1971 to ConAgra.

            The 1970s brought the company to the brink of ruin when commodity speculation wiped out their margins on raw foods. In 1974, an experienced food industry executive, Mike Harper, took over the firm and brought it back from the brink of bankruptcy. The company set off on a two-decade-long buying spree, purchasing over one hundred prepared food brands, starting with Banquet Foods in 1980. It moved heavily into the frozen food business and the packaged meat industry, and then picked up a selection of other brands from firms like RJR Nabisco and Beatrice Foods.  Today, ConAgra operates 30 mills and is one of the three largest flour producers in the United States.

 

            Hank Williams saw none of that. He lived at a time when housewives stayed home and cooked from scratch. He loved good southern cooking, and at the close of every show he’d call out to his cook to get the biscuits in the oven because he was heading home. Ironically, some of Hank’s Mother’s Best shows have survived because he pre-recorded them, and he pre-recorded because he was hundreds or thousands of miles away from home. Much as he might have wished it otherwise, he wasn’t leaving the WSM studio and heading home to Audrey and Hank, Jr. Instead, he was headed to another town and another show.

Hank CMT.com Listening Party

You can listen to 12 Hank The Unreleased Recordings tracks right now on CMT.com.

Listen Here

Austin Chronicle Review

Snippet

For one, the sound quality is outstanding, perhaps better than Hank’s studio work. The other is the range of the material, from non-Williams composed tunes of the day (“Blue Eyes Crying In the Rain,” “Cherokee Boogie,” “Cool Water”) to deep gospel and religious tunes to surprising versions of songs he's well known for, including what seems to be the first known recording of “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still In Love With You).” With lots of historical photos and an illuminating essay by Williams’ biographer Colin Escot, The Unreleased Recordings continues the loving way the Williams estate has handled his legacy. If there’s a country music lover on your Christmas list, it’ll look mighty nice under this year’s tree.

Original Austin Chronicle Article

Rolling Stone Review

In 1951, if you were awake at 7:15 in the morning and your radio was within the long reach of Nashville's WSM-AM, you had Hank Williams with your farina, singing with his Drifting Cowboys and selling sacks of flour for his sponsor, Mother's Best. Williams wasn't in the WSM studio at that hour; he prerecorded the shows on days off from touring. But the 54 performances in this three-CD set pack a magical, concentrated immediacy that is, in its time and way, as electrifying as Johnny Cash's Sixties prison shows or Bob Dylan's early acoustic concerts. Williams' nasally drawl is crisp and strong, like the young Dylan without the sandpaper; he holds the long, desolate notes in "Cool Water" with stunning force. Williams' wide-ranging songbag is also a rare window into his daily life as an entertainer. He takes requests (the pre-Civil War spiritual "Lonely Tombs"), debuts new originals like "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love With You)" and puts his own potent spin on hits by Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff. But these broadcasts were a unique, intimate showbiz, too, for a working class to whom a good tune and some harmony could be the best part of a day. "That's a mighty fine song for you boys to send out, especially to all our shut-in friends this morning," an announcer says after a bunkhouse-choir reading of the hymn "Where He Leads Me." Play these songs over your breakfast, and wake up right.


Original Review by David Frick

How Hank Williams Recorded for Mother's Best Flour (Part 1)

Hank expert Brian Turpen joins the Hank Blog this week in a 3 part mini series.  Below is part 1. 

How Hank Williams Recorded for Mother’s Best Flour

By Hank Williams researcher Brian Turpen

The Mother’s Best Flour shows are the most well-known and most sought-after Hank Williams artifact. Unheard for over fifty years, the shows were broadcast over WSM in Nashville every morning between 7:15 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. at the peak of Hank’s career in 1951. He was paid $100 a week for the shows.

Some of the shows were pre-recorded to be played on the air when Hank was out on the road. It was these transcriptions that have luckily survived. The format was pretty consistent. The 15-minute shows usually consisted of one country song, one instrumental or guest vocal and a gospel song to close the show. The shows also included a theme song that Hank wrote and sang during the broadcast:

"I love to have that gal around
Her biscuits are so nice and brown
Her pies and cakes beat all the rest
Cause she makes them all with Mother's Best”

But that’s not all the shows had to offer because Hank had more to do than sing. We hear him and announcer Louie Buck selling Mother's Best Flour, as well as self-raising cornmeal and pig & sow feed. We also hear him talk unguardedly about the songs he loved, his grueling itinerary, and much more. The Mother's Best Shows are arguably Hank’s best work and hs most revealing. They capture his personality better than anything else known to exist. It is probably the in-between song chatter that makes these recordings so great becacuse you get a glimpse of what Hank Williams was like as a person.

Although fans and collectors have heard of these Mother’s Best Flour shows for years, very few know much if anything about the company that sponsored these famous radio programs. Here’s a little history of the company that gave us this priceless glimpse into the heart and soul of Hank Williams.

Mother’s Best Flour can trace its origins back to 1919. That year, Frank Little and Alva Kinney incorporated Nebraska Consolidated Mills when they took over Nebraska Grain Mills in Grand Island, Hastings, St. Edward, and Ravenna. They were initially headquartered in Grand Island, until they moved to Omaha in 1922. The company ran at a profit until 1936, when Kinney retired. In 1940, the company began producing flour, and in 1942 ventured into the livestock feed business.

-----------------

The series will continue later this week

I CAN'T HELP IT (IF I'M STILL IN LOVE WITH YOU)

It’s very rare that we get a chance to hear the first-ever performance of a country classic, but that’s exactly what we get when we hear Hank Williams perform “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You)” on the Mother’s Best show. It’s a song that has been performed by Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dean Martin, Linda Ronstadt (a #2 country hit), Margaret Whiting (a #74 pop hit), Adam Wade (#64 pop hit), Johnny Tillotson (#24 pop hit), B.J. Thomas (#94 pop hit), and Al Martino (#97 pop hit) and many, many others, but Mother’s Best gives us the opportunity to hear it as if we’re eavesdropping on the song just after the moment of creation. Hank chose I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You) as the all-important follow-up the “Cold, Cold Heart,” and recorded it in March 1951. It was released in May, so it’s likely that we’re hearing him sing it in March or April that year. Hank mentions in his introduction that it had never been sung on-air before. He seems to be unfamiliar with it, and sings “there was another by your side” instead of “somebody else walked by your side.” In the early summer of 1951, I Can’t Help It reached #2 on the country charts, and several months later Hank performed the song with Anita Carter on Kate Smith’s NBC-TV show.

Hank Williams 'Hey Good Lookin'

'Hey Good Lookin' appears on Disc 1 (Track # 6) on the box set.  

BBC Radio 2 Bob Harris Country

Bob Harris played 2 new Hank tracks last night on his BBC Radio 2 show in the UK.  

Title: 'I'LL FLY AWAY'
Artist: HANK WILLIAMS
Album: THE UNRELEASED RECORDINGS
Label: TIME LIFE

Title: 'I CAN'T HELP IT IF I'M STILL IN LOVE WITH YO'
Artist: HANK WILLIAMS
Album: THE UNRELEASED RECORDINGS
Label: TIME LIFE

The songs appeared in the latter part of the show.  Stream here

The Unreleased Recordings Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE



The Historic Hank Williams Box Set From Time Life The Unreleased Recordings Scheduled To Street October 28th

Phenomenal Early Response To These Recordings From 1951 Includes; Newsweek, Rolling Stone, People Magazine, National Public Radio, Associated Press, AARP Magazine, Hits Magazine, LA Times, Country Weekly, CMT, GAC, Etc.

Fairfax, VA (October 16, 2008) ---- The most highly anticipated project of 2008, Hank Williams The Unreleased Recordings, will hit retail stores on Tuesday, October 28th. The first installment showcases fifty-four of the 143 recordings of Williams’ performances on the 1951WSM radio show sponsored by Mother Best’s Flour. The additional eighty-nine songs will be released in separate installments during the next three years, with fans getting to hear Hank as never before.

The first installment features Hank Williams performing exciting, new versions of his classic hits including, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Cold, Cold Heart,” and “Hey, Good Lookin’,” as well as songs he never recorded commercially including, “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” “Cherokee Boogie,” and “Cool Water.” On the CDs, Williams gives some insight about the songs and with “On Top of Old Smoky,” he explains this was a song he learned from his grandmother singing it in the original, mournful Appalachian style instead of the more upbeat version of the 1951 radio hit and campfire singalong. The project gives the listener an intimate experience with Williams that has never been possible before. It’s almost like inviting Willliams into your living room and getting a rare snapshot of who he was in 1951.

Media has enthusiastically embraced the project with upcoming coverage in Newsweek, People magazine, AARP magazine, National Pubic Radio/Weekend Edition Saturday with Scott Simon, Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Times, Tennessean, New York Daily News, New York Times, Hits magazine, Alternative Press, Philadelphia Inquirer, CMT Insider, CMT.com, GAC/Master Series, Country Weekly, to name a few.

“This is a once in a lifetime event in music history,” says Mike Jason, Time Life, Senior Vice President, Audio & Video Retail. “We have the unique opportunity to present deeply personal, never before available, high quality recordings from the father of Country music, Hank Williams.
The fact that the music survived all these years, despite almost being lost a few times, makes our ability to share them all the more gratifying. When we have released all the songs, Hank’s available catalog of work will be increased by 50%.”

“These recordings are such a great snapshot of my dad, Hank Williams,” says his daughter, Jett Williams. “It shows his personality and the great sense of humor he had and spotlights him singing his classics during one take in a radio studio. For fans, it will be like a trip back to 1951 and a chance for them, and me, to really get to know the total man that was country music’s first superstar.”

In 1951, Williams was at the pinnacle of his career as several top pop vocalists, including Tony Bennett and Perry Como, covered his mega-hit, “Cold, Cold Heart.” He also appeared on major national television shows including The Perry Como Show and the last great medicine show, the Hadacol Caravan, where he topped the bill over Bob Hope and Milton Berle. Those appearances transformed Williams from a regional Country artist into a national super-star. Since his death in 1953, Williams has risen in popularity to become one of most iconic figures in all of American music.

Time Life and the Time Life logo are registered trademarks of Time Warner Inc. and affiliated companies, used under license by Direct Holdings Americas Inc., which is not affiliated with Time Warner Inc. or Time Inc. Headquartered in Fairfax VA, Direct Holdings Americas Inc.'s history began in 1961 as a direct marketing division of Time Incorporated specializing in music and books. The business has been operated as a separate company since the mid-1970s when it relocated to Virginia, and has since grown to become one of the world’s largest direct marketers of audio and video products throughout North America, Europe and Australia. The Company has set the standard in the direct response industry by pioneering direct marketing techniques and building one of the most trusted and recognized brands in commerce. The Company now also sells its products through major traditional and non-traditional retailers around the world as well as via the Internet. The Company was sold in 2003 to private investors.
####

Newsweek/Rolling Stone

Newsweek has set up an interview session and photo shoot for Jett Williams.  And Rolling Stone is featuring an interview in the Rock Section of its October issue.   

Special Guest Blogger Colin Escott to join Hank Blog

Over the next few months Hank expert Colin Escott will write a series of entries focusing on the release. In addition to writing the liner notes, "Colin is the author of Good Rockin' Tonight: The Story of Sun Records, Hank Williams: The Biography and an anthology of music journalism, Tattooed on Their Tongues. He co-wrote and co-produced the PBS/BBC documentary Hank Williams Honky Tonk Blues."

Please send in topics you want Colin to address by clicking the 'comments' option below to post or click here and it'll take you right to it. 

Also feel free to share your own Hank knowlege in the Hank Google Groups

Have your say!

People Magazine

People Magazine will feature The Unreleased Recordings box set in its Country issue in November.

New Track Available!

A new track from The Unreleased Recordings is available in the player above. A track called "I Can't Help It If I'm Still In Love With You."

What do you think?

Media Picking up Billboard Story

Yahoo, Reuters, and MSNBC picked up on the Billboard store.

MSNBC link

Billboard Feature

Billboard 9/26/08

Deal Paves Way For Hank Williams Treasure Trove


Hank Williams

September 26, 2008 , 11:00 AM ET

Ken Tucker, Nashville

It took a fortuitous find and years of legal wrangling, but some of Hank Williams' lesser-known recordings will soon be available for mass consumption. "The Unreleased Recordings" includes performances from the "Mother's Best Flour" radio program, which Williams hosted on the legendary WSM-AM Nashville in 1951.

Time Life will release the 143 recordings in various packages in the next three years through an exclusive agreement with the Williams estate. The first set is due Oct. 28.

Williams and his band prerecorded 72 shows to run while they were on tour. The shows were recorded on 16-inch acetate discs that were later thrown into the trash during a station move in the '60s but salvaged by WSM employee Les Leverett.

In the '80s, Jerry Rivers, who played fiddle for Williams as part of the Drifting Cowboy Band and later backed daughter Jett Williams, told her about the "Mother's Best" show. He then introduced her to Leverett, who turned over the original acetates.

But getting the rights to the music wasn't simple. "I had possession of the acetates but they had already been duplicated way before I had entered the picture," Williams says.

Indeed they had. PolyGram Records claimed exclusive rights relying on Williams' contract with its predecessor in interest, MGM Records. Meanwhile, Legacy Entertainment claimed rights to the recordings under a chain of title. At one point Leverett had assigned his rights to former Drifting Cowboy Hillous Butrum, who had in turn sold them to Legacy, which had actually replaced the Drifting Cowboys with another band on its version. A series of courts eventually ruled in favor of the Williams estate, ending an eight-year legal battle.

Williams says that even devotees of her father's music will find something new here. "Unless you were listening that morning in 1951, you've never heard that version of 'Cold, Cold Heart,' " she says. "You may have heard the master, but you've never heard the Feb. 3, 1951, version of Hank Williams singing it.

"The fidelity of these recordings are better than his MGM masters," she says. "These have not been enhanced or tinkered with. It's as if it was 1951 and my dad was recording it right then. It was a one-time take."

In addition to Williams' best-known material, the recordings include 40 songs he was never known to have performed and others he never recorded commercially, including "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," "Cherokee Boogie" and "On Top of Old Smoky."

Hank iPhone App

Rare radio recordings offer opportunity for Williams heirs

Friday, September 12, 2008
Rare radio recordings offer opportunity for Williams heirs
 Nashville Business Journal - by Cynthia Yeldell Nashville Business Journal

More than 50 years after legendary country crooner Hank Williams recorded "Jambalaya" and "Your Cheatin' Heart," lost versions of those hits -- along with previously unreleased songs -- have opened up a substantial stream of cash for his estate.
Williams' children, Jett Williams and Hank Williams Jr., inked an undisclosed deal with Time Life to release versions of 143 of their father's songs that haven't been heard since 1951 on Nashville's "Mother's Best Flour" radio show. It's the first of several potential business ventures for the family after winning the rights to the recordings in a landmark case against Polygram Records and Legacy Entertainment Group.

Ownership of the music allows Williams' estate to license the radio versions of the songs for use in movies and commercials or to other artists who want to re-record the songs -- without giving a cut to the record labels that have stakes in Williams' previously released recordings.

The family declined to say how much the Williams estate is worth, driven mostly by the licensing of his music and likeness, but says the newly found recordings will increase the value of his music catalog by 50 percent.

"Before, everything has been owned by the record company," Jett Williams says. "We have 140 versions of these songs, and we can do business now. The estate has never been in this position, and most estates have never had that privilege of owning their own records."

Chris Horsnell, a lawyer who represents the estate of Hank Williams Jr., says he's never seen an artist's heirs regain control of previously recorded material.

The Tennesee Court of Appeals ruled in 2006 that the elder Williams fulfilled his obligation for the radio show and the records were never intended to be reused.

Horsnell says the case opens the door for other artists from that era, depending on the wording of the original contracts. Contracts from the 1950s and earlier had no concept of how music could be used on television, the Internet and cell phone ringtones, all popular revenue streams today.

Shelved for decades, the Mother's Best recordings were almost thrown in the trash before a radio station employee salvaged them and handed them over to the Williams family. The estate then fought an eight-year court battle to establish ownership rights.

Time Life will release the 143 songs in installments over the next three years. The first box set comes out in October.

Mike Jason, Time Life's senior vice president of audio and video retail, called the release historic because it adds to Hank Williams' limited body of work.

A similar set of Johnny Cash songs released by Time Life in 2005 sold 100,000 copies.

But the Williams set is expected to exceed that because it includes new songs, Jason says. The Hank Williams music catalog sells a half million CDs each year, and Jason expects longtime fans as well as new ones to be interested in the Mother's Best collection.

"This is a special situation," Jason says. "I don't know if it could ever exist again."
Williams was found dead in the back seat of his Cadillac in 1953 at age 29. In the five decades since, he has become one of the most popular artists in country music history.

The Hank Williams Museum in Montgomery, Ala., gets 30,000 to 40,000 visitors each year.

And the Hank Williams exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville has been so successful that the museum extended its original two-year contract by an additional two years.

After his death, Williams' estate was estimated to be worth less than $25,000, Horsnell says. And in the mid-1960s, the court estimated the value of his music to be virtually unchanged.

Today, the catalog and estate are estimated to be worth millions of dollars.

Williams' 213 registered works are played an estimated 6 million times a year in the United States alone, says Jerry Bailey, spokesman for Broadcast Music Inc. His catalog has 13 songs with more than 1 million performances.

Williams' songs remain a popular source of inspiration for new artists and have topped the charts when they were re-recorded.

Norah Jones sold more than 8 million records when she recorded Williams' "Cold, Cold Heart," Jett Williams says.

"Your Cheatin' Heart," released a year after Williams' death, has been recorded by artists such as Ray Charles and Elvis Presley. It hit the spotlight again in 1996 when it was featured in Pepsi commercial during the Super Bowl featuring a Coca-Cola delivery man.

Jett Williams says the release of the Mother's Best collection opens a big business opportunity for the estate to continue to build the brand. The estate is looking to deals that would create new merchandise related to the recordings.

But family members are careful to chose projects they think Williams would approve himself.

"Hank Williams sells himself," Jett Williams says. "He and his catalog have stood the test of time. He is as popular as he can be 50 years after his death."

Attachment

Alternative Press Set for Review

Alternative Press is scheduled to review The Unreleased Recordings in the December issue of the magazine that streets Nov. 4. It will be in the Gift Guide section under CDs & Box Sets. 

Newsweek Interview

Newsweek is expected to interview Jett Williams early next month for a feature during release week October 28, 2008.

Be sure to look for this issue!

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is set to feature Jett Williams in an exclusive article in new month's issue.  Be on the lookout!

National Public Radio

NPR is scheduled to interview Jett Williams next month to talk about The Unreleased Recordings. 

Billboard Feature

A Billboard feature is planned for The Unreleased Recordings in the Country section come November.  Be sure to be on the lookout!