My mother grew up poor.
She lived her early years in an area of southern Pennsylvania that strikes me as being more very rural western Maryland and West Virginia in ethos than Pennsylvania.
My grandmother and my aunts and uncles identified as "hillbillies." Proudly. Contentedly.
It was what I'd call Appalachia.
My grandparents were typical. Grandpa was 26 when they married. Grandma was 13. They had their first child, of nine, the next year. The baby was a girl. My aunt married at 13, also, and had a baby the next year.
My grandmother was a grandmother at age 28, and everything was perfectly legitimate and normal for that time and place.
Mom was born in the depression and the family was very, very poor. Mom's told me some stories, but I can't relate.
She brushed her teeth with charcoal because buying toothpaste was out of the question.
She quit school after eighth grade to work and support the family.
Dad was from very German Lancaster County, Pennsylvania from a rather poor, but wealthy by the standards of mom's family, family. He was raised to be a member of the Reformed Church. He valued wearing Sunday best clothes and shoes shined on Saturday to church every Sunday. I, like my dad, could recite The Apostles' Creed before we could read.
Dad's family was stern and respectable. And, quiet.
How did mom and dad end up together? Obviously, they did. They had an amazingly loving relationship. Mom still aches for him, now that he's gone. But, they came from two different worlds.
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When I was young, we listened to dad's music on the stereo that was the nicest piece of furniture in our living room.
Mitch Miller. Tennessee Ernie Ford. George Beverly Shea. And, on the wild side, Al Jolson. "I'd walk a million miles for one of those smiles, my mammy." It's the music I knew.
When we visited mom's family, it was a loooong drive...into a different world. They loved their music.
Loud and blaring. Fiddles. Harmonicas. Twangy steel guitars. Foreign and peculiar. Corny. I hated it...loathed it.
Being amidst the sounds of grandma's was culture shock.
As I look back on it now, it saddens me that the best part of those trips was the leaving. Getting into the car and hearing nothing.
Later on, I warmed up to the cousins on that side of the family and though I rarely see them, love the ones I know.
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Years later, I was 41 years old, watching the Super Bowl and I saw what is still, by far, my favorite TV commercial.
The perspective is from a black and white convenience store security camera. A Coke delivery guy finishes stocking the Coke cooler. The strains of a steel guitar begin. The Coke guy checks that no one is looking, reaches into the Pepsi cooler removes a can of Pepsi and hundreds of soda cans pour out on to the floor while the steel guitar leads into one of the most familiar songs of the twentieth century...and Hank Williams sings, Your Cheatin Heart. (Google "Your Cheatin Heart Pepsi commercial." But, you can't possibly enjoy it as much as I do.)
The first time I saw it, I was flooded with warmth and nostalgia and I loved it.
And, I realized, I love the steel guitar and harmonicas, and fiddles. And, out of nowhere, I knew that I love the music of Hank Williams.
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More recently, we had that visit with mom at the home when she suddenly, and inappropriately belted out, in song, off key, in public, the Hank musical phrase, "Hey, good lookin, what ya got cookin? How's about cookin something up with me?" It was a classic Alzheimer's moment.
I wrote about that visit here last October. That day with mom, we YouTubed several Hank Songs. As I said in that post, it was a wonderful moment. Mom's eyes absolutely sparkled as she sang along with Hank.
The moment has lingered for me.
Hank was much more to mom than the Beatles were to me. She was a teen when Hank was big. He died when she was 18. And, it's clear from how well she knows the words to those songs and how joyfully she sings them...and how dangerously she dances to them...that Hank connects her to happy memories from a troubled early life.
So, Hank connects me to my childhood and to my mom's childhood and, now, to happy moments in mom's decline.
And, it's really very good music that endures and continues to be recorded and performed.
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What follows is a list of Hank Williams songs that have meaning to me.
1. Hey Good Lookin, one of Hank's best known. It's in the Grammy Hall of Fame. It's not my fave but mom sings it gleefully. It's probably her fave and, therefore, has meaning to me.
2. Move It On Over. You may not know this song. Again, I'm not crazy about the song itself. It was Hank's first hit. 1947. But, listen to it and you'll probably hear Rock Around the Clock. Move it on Over is considered to be one of the earliest examples of rock and roll music...7 YEARS BEFORE BILL HALEY'S WELL KNOWN HIT.
3. Take These Chains from My Heart. Williams didn't actually write this song and it's not of the quality of the songs that follow on this list, in my opinion. It was recorded in Hank's last session and soared to the top of the Country charts after he died and has been covered by many, including Ray Charles and Martina McBride.
4. Your Cheatin Heart, is the song that connected me to Hank's music when I saw the Pepsi commercial. It's been said that the song, "for all intents and purposes, defines country music." It, also, came out of that last, amazing recording session in 1952. It's on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest songs of all time and CMT's number 5 on its list of greatest country songs. Amazingly, it was the B side on the record when it was released in 1953 after Williams died. The movie on Hank Williams' life, starring George Hamilton, took the title of this song as its title.
The next three songs vary, depending on the moment, as my favorite Hank Williams song.
5. I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You), is one of Williams' best known and, again was the B side of the record. What were they thinking!? The lyrics are pathetic and powerful. He sang the song with Anita Carter on the Kate Smith Evening Hour in 1952. That performance is sweet and tender and can be You Tubed. Linda Ronstadt covered the song, backed by Emilou Harris, in the 70s. Great stuff.
6. Cold Cold Heart. This song was also released as a B side on its record, behind "Dear John," which was a very minor hit. Tony Bennett recorded CCH in 1951. Bennett's version, which seems bland to me, stayed at number 1 on the pop charts for six weeks. The song is an in entry the Great American Songbook. There's a recording of Hank singing this song, also on Kate Smith's show where Williams acknowledges that, up to that time, CCH was his biggest financial success and had, "bought...quite a few beans and biscuits." Tony Bennett recorded it again on his first Duets album, with Tim McGraw, in 2006. Very, very nice.
7. I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry. The title says all you need to know. But, the four verses of the lyrics are anguished, pained and profound. Elvis Presley sang the song in his, 1973 Aloha From Hawaii TV special and introduced it as "probably the saddest song I've ever heard." I'm not the world's biggest Elvis fan, but he did the song proud. The song came relatively early in William's brief career.
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So, this is it. Seven Hank Williams songs that have meaning to me and, as I said, connect me to my childhood and to my mom. This is all more important to me as I watch my mom slip away, losing her battle with Alzheimer's.
One final note. I've been thinking about writing this post almost since I wrote the post, last October, about mom singing Hank in the home.
I've been listening to the music as I've written this...
...and, man! Am I depressed.
I have a good life with many reasons to brim with joy, but those, especially last three, songs could take the wind out of anyone's sails.
Still, I'll always love Hank's music.
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