![]() ![]() While most of the material on here is far from electrifying, it's still a very listenable collection, worth tracking down and hanging onto, as it stands on its own musically, and also offers a well-balanced glimpse into a career that is often porly understood and little appreciated. ![]() And Friends, which was the last album he made for MGM before the label folded in '76, and which many consider his best work for the label, the capstone of a frustrating early career. The third disc reissues almost in its entirety the 1975 album, Hank Williams, Jr. Along with numerous album tracks and singles (some of which dented the charts, others which fell like stones), this collection also includes nearly two dozen previously unreleased songs, including many covers of older, non-Hank songs from the 1940s and '50s, and also gathers some interesting Charlie Rich-ish R&B songs that Williams released on the Verve label, under the pseudonym "Bocephus," for fear that putting them out under his own name would cripple his career in Nashville. either through cover songs or tribute tunes - wear thin quick. There are moments of emotional power, but they seem almost incidental, and the continual references to Hank, Sr. But the by-the-numbers arrangements that plagued Nashville at the time, coupled with MGM's second-rate status, ensured that Williams's artistic growth would be stunted for years to come. Still, this box set has a surprising resonance to it - the opening tracks sound as remarkable now as they did in the mid-'60s: surely, any kid who sang that well at fourteen had an amazing career ahead of him. Generally speaking, country collectors don't prize these LPs very highly - the quality was mixed at best, and while Williams was an adequate performer, he was seen as more of a workhorse, rather than someone who could reach in and touch your soul, the way the best country singers do. This 3-CD set charts the course of Jr.'s somewhat iffy track record in the years he was on the ailing MGM label, where he recorded prolifically and released over two dozen albums in half as many years. song, "Long Gone Lonesome Blues," followed up in '66 with the self-penned "Standing In The Shadows," a biographical tune that both milked the Hank Williams legend, and sought to diffuse potential criticism that the boy was just a pale imitation of his tortured, brilliant father. He immediately scored a Top 5 hit with a much-hyped cover of an old Hank, Sr. Thanks to the aggressive machinations of his mother, Hank Sr.'s widow, Audrey Williams, the lad landed a contract with MGM Records. Junior's recording career started in 1963, when he was only fourteen years old. "Living Proof - The MGM Recordings: 1963-1975" (Polygram Records, 1994) His son, Hank Williams III began recording in the 1990s and has also kept the rebel torch burning. namechecks his own father and compares their lives, careers and carousing. cast a long shadow over his son's life, as evidenced in a near-endless string of self-referential songs in which Hank, Jr. Here's a quick look at some of his stuff.īorn in 1949, Randall Hank Williams was scarcely three years old when his fabled father died in New Year's Day, 1953. While he may have pandered to a good-ole-boy caricature, he has written or performed several of the best hard country songs of the late 20th Century his output is wildly inconsistent, but certainly worth checking out. Still, H2 has proved himself an artist capable of striking depth and surprising longevity. has never been able to summon anything near his father's raw talent and bare-bones soulfulness, and his self-mythologizing party animal antics have led to a public image as a loudmouthed redneck buffoon. In part this is due to the difficulty living up to his famous father's double-edged reputation, as both an immortal hillbilly poet and as one of the great, tragic live-fast/die-young figures in show business history. Hank Williams, Jr., son of the haloed honkytonk hero, Hank Williams, is often seen as an also-ran or a lesser light in the firmaments of the country pantheon. Discography - Joe Sixpack's Guide To Hick Music ![]()
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