Hank Williams’ Personality, Genius Come To Life On ‘Mother’s Best’ Collection

You think you know Hank Williams. You know, that mythical character in the white suit – famous for being so stoic and sad on stage while enduring one emotional or physical hardship after another. His daughter, Jett, tells Sounds Like Nashville that there was another side to the singer – one that the public seldom hears about. When asked about her favorite story concerning her father, she didn’t hold back for a minute.

“The guys in the band– being guys – out on the road, would use profanity from time to time, and my dad took out a cigar box, and told them that each time they used profanity, to put a quarter in the box. They said the box started filling up.” However, the ‘inventor’ of the box made perhaps the biggest contribution to it. “One evening, they got lost going to a show, and they were trying to figure out where they were supposed to go, My dad took out a five-dollar bill, folded it up, and stuck it in the ‘cuss box,’ as it was called. The guys asked him why he was putting so much money into the box, and he said ‘Because I’m going to need every damn one of those quarters before we get where we are going!”

That sense of humor – minus the cuss words, of course, can be heard all over the brand new 15 CD / 1 DVD release Hank Williams: The Complete Mother’s Best Collection from Time Life. The set consists of recordings of a radio show that Williams hosted for Mothers’ Best Flour over the airwaves of WSM Radio in the early 1950s.

Williams says her father’s happy side can be heard all over the discs in the package. “When you hear him talk on these fifteen-minute radio shows, and you hear him go into the commercial scripts for Mothers’ Best, but when you hear him go off-script, you absolutely hear his personality. You hear him laugh, and this is a happy guy on these recordings. So often, people want to paint him as forlorn, lonely, troubled, and drinking. And, here he is early in the morning, and he sounds pretty chipper. It also shows his craftsmanship as far as being an emcee.”

And, Williams says that those shows – originally broadcast on WSM Radio – also show just what a hard worker he was. “The way they did these – they ran at 6:15 in the morning. So, because of his touring schedule, he couldn’t do it, so on Monday, they would say ‘Ok, Hank, let’s go ahead and record Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday’s shows, so we can go ahead and have them in the can. Not only would he do one show a day, he might record two, three, or four more. He’s having to be up and paying attention because he’s having to act like it’s the next day, so you can tell how much work he put into what he was doing.”

One of the aspects of The Complete Mother’s Best Collection that fans will find appealing, according to Williams, is that they will be able to hear a different side of some of the legend’s biggest hits. “Let’s say he sings ‘Cold, Cold, Heart.’ When they did these, as a singer, when you know you can’t go back and re-sing a line, you sing with an intensity that I don’t think is really captured in the studio. I think when you listen to the live version, you hear a lot more emotion – because nobody sings their songs the same way. You might be going through something in your life, or there may be something in the air – and you might not be able to hold the note. Every time anyone sings their song live, it’s always a different version. The only one that is the same is the studio version.”

The set also offers a chance to hear Hank veer off in some different directions and perform cover songs of the day. “That was one of those times as an artist that not only do you get to sing your songs, but songs from other artists that you like. People will come up to me and say that ‘Man, I didn’t know your dad recorded a Willie Nelson song,’ and they’ll reference ‘Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain.’ Of course, Fred Rose wrote the song, but there’s that perception. There’s a lot of Gospel, which was a huge part of him, and he didn’t abandon ‘Luke The Drifter,’ she says of his spoken-word alter-ego, “not only the sad recitations, but he also does the tongue-in-cheek songs like ‘Everything’s Ok.’

One of Jett’s favorite moments of the collection is where her father references his youth. “On one of the shows, he introduces it by saying ‘I’m going to sing a Pop song, but I’m not going to do it the way you’re used to listening to it. I’m going to do it the way my grand-mama used to put me to bed.’ And, he does ‘On Top Of Old Smokey.’ For me, I can only imagine seeing my great-grandmother putting my dad to sleep as a child and singing to him.”

And, as with any live broadcast, the potential for error looms – and sometimes that came from the star of the show. “I love the fact that there are mistakes on it. On one of them, the band starts in the wrong key, and you can hear the irritation in his voice. Then, there’s the one that happens when he tells the band to start playing ‘I Saw The Light,’ and he starts singing ‘Precious Memories.’ Once he starts singing, he realizes that he messed up, and he stopped and apologized. He told the audience that he sings so many songs with the same melody, he forgot which one he was singing. He had such a quick wit. He would take something that Cousin Louie Buck said, and would play off of it.”

The release of the box set coincides with that of “I Saw The Light,” the recent biopic of her father’s life. What did Jett think about the film? “I thought Tom Hiddleston did a fantastic job playing my dad,” she said. “In fact, I had suggested that he listen to the box set, and he would get to meet Hank Williams. I thought it would be a great resource for him to develop the character, because you get to hear my Dad talk, and his personality. As far as the movie goes, I wanted to see more of why he wrote songs. I felt it was a little bit more personal. The personal life of anybody is only a piece of that pie. I would have liked his greatness to be shown, and why he is so iconic – and what inspired the songs that everyone knows and holds so dear.”