Heiko klug biography of williams

Hank Williams was the last echo of the barbaric yawp from Walt Whitman’s America. In just five short years, from 1948 to his death in the backseat of a car on the way to a concert on January 1, 1953, he recorded 66 songs, most of them his own compositions, many of which can still be heard on radio stations almost anywhere in the world.

A Nashville songwriter named Harlan Howard summed them up in a nutshell: “Three chords and the truth.”

Every American and just about everyone who knows something about America recognizes at least a refrain from “Cold, Cold Heart,” “I Can’t Help It if I’m Still in Love With You,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “Why Don’t You Love Me (Like You Used to Do)?,” “Jambalaya,” “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” and perhaps a score of other songs, whether in versions by Williams himself or Elvis Presley, Nat King Cole, the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Tony Bennett, James Brown, Linda Ronstadt,