Brian Turpen on new Hank Williams Gospel Keepsakes

It's gives Saguaro great pleasure that there's so many fantastic Hank fans out there. That's why we're fortunate enough to have Hank researcher Brian Turpen write blog entries upon Hank. Below is an exclusive feature on the latest Gospel Keepsakes record which came out last week. You can pick it up at Amazon or Walmart. Gospel Keepsakes is a follow up to the box set featuring 54 previously unreleased recordings.

Hank Williams - Gospel Keepsakes
By Brian Turpen

When the name of “Hank” is spoken in country music circles, nearly everyone immediately thinks of the legend, Hank Williams Sr. There is absolutely no denying his immortal stature. And when thinking of Hank, the vast majority of the average country music fans will recall his many successful popular tunes. Most may not know or realize the actual importance that gospel music played in both Hank’s life and career. In fact, most scholars would agree that it was gospel music that first sparked Hank’s interest in music.

In the Deep South during Hank’s youth, many were deeply tied to religious lifestyles, with their first music experiences being gospel. That is exactly where Hank’s first taste of music came from. His first and fondest memories were that of a very young boy enthusiastically singing gospel hymns while his mother Lillie played organ at the Mount Olive West Baptist Church. Years later in a rare interview with Jazz journalist Ralph J. Gleason of the San Francisco Chronicle Hank stated, “My earliest memory is sittin’ on that organ stool by her and hollerin’. I must gave been five, six years old and louder’n anybody else.”

Lillie encouraged Hank’s interest in singing. In the midst of the depression, as a single parent, she scraped together a few dollars and for two years straight she sent him to a Gospel shape-note singing school at the Oak Grove Methodist Church in Avant, Alabama.

Black church music also entered his young life too, as he could hear their music from his Georgiana home. Hank is said to have once commented to a boyhood friend while listening to the black church singing, “One day, I’m gonna write songs like that.”

The hymns Hank learned and heard colored his approach to music as nothing else ever would and those experiences would help shape Hank’s musical career. There is little question that Hank developed an early understanding and enthusiasm for gospel music, which was huge part of the background of his earliest days. The old hymns helped to teach him what he would need to know about writing and performing music. The melodies should be simple and the words plain spoken. Hank also learned how to express sincere feelings and to sing them as if salvation rested upon it. He came to appreciate the warm feeling components of a spiritual song. Gospel music would remain with Hank throughout his life.

Continue here to read the whole review

Dallas Morning News

Hank Williams, The Unreleased Recordings (Time Life Entertainment, $39.98)

The story of these 54 songs spread over three CDs is worth the price of the box.

The late Hank Williams recorded a series of shows, some 72 of them, for WSM radio back in 1951, a mere two years before his death. The legendary station was about to dump those acetates. But a photographer for WSM's Grand Ole Opry saved them from the trash and handed them to Jett Williams, Hank's daughter.

Extensive legal wrangling later, we have this handsome book-style box featuring an essay by Jett and thoughtful song annotations by music historian Colin Escott.

All that pales in comparison to the restored quality. It's astounding how crisp, clear and high-lonesome ol' Hank sounds. It's as if he were singing right next to you. 

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.

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

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

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

Country Air Check

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