The author is very good on the culture that surrounded Williams, enshrined by an Alabaman who told him, “you do what you gotta do on Saturday night, then go to church on Sunday morning and make it all right with God.” Though defiantly separatist, that culture, in Williams’ case, was laced with the blues and gospel as much as mountain music. As Ribowsky notes, several templates were thus established, from death by prescription-happy doctor (Elvis, Michael Jackson) to country star as soused or pilled-up rebel (Johnny Cash, George Jones).

Born with a spinal defect, Williams channeled his pain into music but then, once the music was on paper or acetate, tried to move that pain farther along with an appalling diet of morphine, pharmaceuticals, and booze, all of which hastened his death. But even early on, writes Florida-based music journalist Ribowsky ( Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines: The Life and Music of James Taylor, 2016, etc.), Williams was used to life on the go, his father often traveling on his railroad job, sometimes a step away from the poorhouse. When he became famous as a musician, being on the move was a requirement Williams had to get from one gig to another, no matter how drunk or drugged he might be when he took the stage. Hiram King Williams (1923-1953) bore many names and monikers, as befits someone constantly on the move. Ribowsky offers cunning readings of Williams's songs: 'Mansion on the Hill,' he says, reflects a familiar Williams template that is 'part croon, part hoedown, and a metaphoric lament of loneliness and the promise of a reward too far.' Williams emerges from Ribowsky's powerful biography not only as the author of many familiar country and pop favorites, such as 'Hey, Good Lookin' ' and 'Your Cheatin' Heart,' but also as a man whose back pain drove him to drink and pills and whose soul was filled more often with gloom than with light.“Everything he did was bad for his health”: a sturdy biography of the unsteady icon of outlaw country avant la lettre. He chronicles Williams's childhood in Alabama his marriage to Audrey Mae Sheppard Guy, and their miserable but symbiotic relationship his slow but sure rise to country music stardom on the Grand Ole Opry and WSM radio his marriage to Billie Jean Eshliman and his death in the back of his Cadillac on January 1, 1953, at the age of 29. Nevertheless, Ribowsky is an engaging storyteller, and he tells Williams' story with such verve and humor albeit with some over-the-top phrasing ('he was a dysfunction junction' 'Hank seemed like an afterthought lying carefree in a casket') that Williams and his music come alive. Country singer Hank Williams's story is already so well known that Ribowsky's (Dreams to Remember) entertaining, critical biography reveals no newly uncovered information about him.

Hank by mark ribowsky