Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams - Hardcover

Paul Hemphill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 142236187X ISBN 13: 9781422361870

Publisher: Viking/Penguin, 2005

Synopsis

Hank Williams is not just one of America's greatest songwriters, but also one of the most enigmatic - a raw poet from the rolling pine woods of south Alabama whose anguished lyrics were celebrated from the clamorous roadhouses of the Deep South all the way to Carnegie Hall. His tragic early death at the age of only twenty-nine, drunk and drugged, alone in the back seat of a Cadillac convertible on his way to a gig, ended a career that lasted only six years but went on to influence many of the greatest musicians in recent history. Paul Hemphill has written a fascinating interpretative biography of Hank Williams, with the kind of soul and understanding that other books about him have lacked. Whence the pain and despair? Why the booze and pills? Where did his genius come from? How did he know everything he wrote about? These are the questions it seeks to answer.

About this title

About the Author:

Paul Hemphill was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. He is the author of four novels and eleven works of nonfiction dealing with the blue-collar South, including The Nashville Sound.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. This concise, startling biography starts not with its subject, Hank Williams, but with its author sitting in the cab of his father's truck one day in 1949, hearing Williams sing "like a hurt animal." The brief incident immediately binds Hemphill and Williams (1923–1952) together as children of the rural South, united by the places and circumstances from which they came (Hemphill has written four novels and 11 nonfiction works dealing with the blue-collar South). Hemphill shifts from his own childhood to Williams's vagabond youth with scintillating descriptions of Depression-era Alabama. Against this backdrop, Hemphill tells the story of Williams's boyhood, which involved constant movement from town to town, infrequent school attendance and jobs as a shoe-shine boy and street performer. Williams's subsequent rise, from "Singing Kid" novelty to headliner at the Grand Ole Opry, could seem like a cliché, but Hemphill's descriptions of the "places where a chicken-wire fence separated the band from the crowd" lend a gritty reality. This frankness extends to the depiction of Williams's chronic alcoholism, violent marital troubles and lonely, sudden death at age 29. With the end of Williams's life, the book turns back to its author, as an older, wiser Hemphill recounts some of the sorrows of his own life. The connection between author and subject is what makes this book so rewarding.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Viking/Penguin
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 142236187X
• ISBN 13: 9781422361870
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 207