132. Hank Williams, "40 Greatest Hits"

 


As regular readers are aware, there has been a serious lack of country and country-adjacent music on this list, so I am cheered to see any country representation, even if it is a compilation/greatest hits album.  So this album - really a double album, released in 1978, the 25th anniversary of Williams' death - was a joy to listen to, a pleasant trip through (mostly) familiar songs.  When I was a kid, we had a record player and I had access to my Mom and Dad's records, which means I listened to a lot of Broadway cast recordings and old country.  Were my musical tastes shaped by Jesus Christ Superstar and 1968's Hank Williams' Greatest Hits?  Maybe!

This collection progresses in roughly chronological order, and it is stunning to realize that these songs were almost entirely recorded in a five-year stretch between 1947 and 1952, and almost all written entirely by Williams himself.  The first track, "Move It On Over," recorded on April 21, 1947, may well have been one of the earliest proto-rock and roll songs ("Rock Around the Clock" would come seven years later), and is oft-covered; George Thorogood had a hit with it in 1978.  The sheer volume of classics on this album is almost too much to contemplate, but here are a few:

I Saw the Light
Jambalaya (On the Bayou)
I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry
Cold, Cold Heart
Hey Good Lookin'
You Win Again
Your Cheatin' Heart

Just to be clear, Hank Williams wrote all these songs, which could fairly be said to be the foundation of country music.  Just the creative output is stunning.

The songs in this collection were also almost all recorded in the same place, Castle Recording Laboratory in Nashville, on the second floor of the Hotel Tulane.  (A building later torn down to make way for, I kid you not, a parking lot.)

And he was a kid!  He was 24 when he wrote "Move It On Over."  Get this - in this picture he's 28 years old:


There was a great Twitter thread a while back about how people used to look older when they were young in the past, and this is definitive proof.  The man looks 47.  Of course, he was already prematurely aging due to a serious alcohol and prescription medication problem that would ultimately kill him in the back seat of a 1952 Cadillac on New Year's Day, 1953.  He was 29 years old.  I cannot for the life of me fathom why there hasn't been a great biopic; it's hard to imagine a better subject or a more compelling story.  (2015"s I Saw the Light has a measly 19% on RottenTomatoes; I've never risked it.)

This album isn't just country or early rockabilly or Americana.  It's America.

Is this album in my personal Top 500? Without a doubt.  If I still owned physical media, I would own it.

Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 15, 2022 at 4:35 PM

    I can abide by compilations if they are from the 78 (or early 45) era. Most artists just didn't focus on LPs in the 50s. Elvis' Sun Sessions and Buddy Holly Lives are absolutely critical compilations, as is this one.

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