Hiram “Hank” Williams was born on
September 27, 1923 in Mount Olive, Alabama. He is the son of Lon and Lillie
Williams. His family never had much money and when Hank was just six years old,
his father entered the Veterans Administration hospital. His mother moved the
family to Greenville and eventually Montgomery, so for those ten years, father
and son saw little of each other. Also, he had Spina Bifida, which is a birth
defect in which the bones do not fully form around the spine. This caused him
to be set apart from the other children his age and encouraged to turn to music
for entertainment instead. By the time the family had moved to Montgomery,
Williams’ music career had already begun; he had made his radio debut at the
ripe old age of 13. After less than a year he was entering talent shows and
formed a band, Hank Williams and his Drifting Cowboys.
Williams, being a fast learner, took
a short time to learn folk, country and from an African-American street
performer, the blues. By the early 1940’s he had caught the attention of music
executives in Nashville. Even with his natural talent for singing and
performing, he had an increasing dependence on alcohol, which he had turned towards
to relive his back pain. This made him an unreliable performer in the eyes of
his executives. In 1943, he met Audrey Mae Shepard, who he then taught to play
the bass and perform in his band. They married in 1944, and by 1949 they had a
son, Hank Williams Jr. Sheppard was overly eager about making her mark in the
music industry even though she had obvious talent limitations and pushed her
husband to let her sing.
As his fame grew, his troubles
deepened. His dependence on alcohol and morphine got him fired from the Opry
and in 1952 he and Sheppard were divorced. Eventually his hair started falling
out and he gained a large amount of weight.
In 1952, he was leaving his mother’s home, drunk and on morphine for Charlestown, West
Virginia. He made it to Tennessee before collapsing in a hotel room. The next
day he took his seat in the back of his blue Cadillac (pictured) and left for
West Virginia. After several hours of not hearing from Williams for several
hours, the driver pulled over and discovered that Williams’ health had taken a
turn for the worse and a little after 5:30, he was pronounced dead.
