Williams, Hiram King, a.k.a. Hank Williams

One of the most influential musicians in American history, the story of Hank Williams’ rise and fall along with his tragic death at the age of twenty-nine has become one of the most famous in country music. One of the most interesting aspects of Williams’ career is the way the duality of his music reflected the two different Hanks within himself. Williams, whose death by heart failure has been attributed to a combination of alcohol and un-prescribed painkillers, started drinking (un-bonded whiskey or moonshine)in his early teens and battled the temptation of moonshine and whiskey for most of his short life. This alcohol addiction would eventually come to define the two sides of Williams’ personality: the temperate, hard-working, and pious Hiram Williams, or later Luke the Drifter, and the very hard-drinking, unreliable, often violent, Drifting Cowboy. These two sides of Hank are quite apparent in his works, in songs like “Settin’ the Woods on Fire” and “Lonesome Highway” he sings of partying late into the night and of the many long, dark, hours he has spent on the road. Compare this to his more remorseful religious recordings, many down under the pseudonym of Luke the Drifter, such as “I Saw the Light.” Combined with this is the fact that Williams wouldn’t even perform his religious songs in a setting where he believed whiskey was being consumed, whether or not he could even see people drinking. This duality created an intense conflict within Williams that often forced him to abuse and push away those who cared for him and were around him on a regular basis. As a result of this Hank Williams lived the life of a lone, drifting, cowboy, playing and writing music to cope with his personal isolation as best as he could between bouts of extreme inebriation. Finally, Hank would die alone, stretched out on the cool black leather of the back seat of his chauffeured Cadillac.

On the album Nebraska one can see the heavy influence of Hank Williams on Springsteen’s writing, both musically and lyrically. The first to be addressed is the way in which the sound of Nebraska reflects or emulates the sound of many Hank Williams songs and records. Particularly, Springsteen does an incredible job of capturing the vacant, lonesome, and humble sound which is so abundant in Williams’ work. Songs like “Nebraska” and “Highway Patrolman” both draw heavily on the lonesome Hank Williams sound. The sound of the harmonica on “Nebraska” has the tearful voice of Williams’ steel slide, while the saddened voice and subtle harmonica in “Highway Patrolman” is reminiscent of Williams’ singing and the fiddle playing on songs like “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”

Not only did Springsteen appropriate much of Hank Williams’ style and tone, but he also made direct connections with the themes and peoples who populate Williams’ lyrics. One such appropriation comes on the track “Mansion on the Hill,” which shares its title with a Hank Williams song of the same name.

As a general reference I used:

Williams, Roger M. Sing a Sad Song, The Life of Hank Williams, University of Illinois

Press, Urbana, 1981.