Review: Buy 'Hank Williams: Lost Concerts' for the history, not the music

By Zoomer Roberts \ Special to the El Paso Times

Time-Life's new "Hank Williams: The Lost Concerts Limited Collectors Edition" includes material taped at two shows in 1952, plus an earlier radio interview.

As a casual listening experience, the album leaves a lot to be desired. The sound is often distorted, and there are places where the tape apparently broke and pieces went missing when it was spliced back together.

But for those of us who want to know about Hank Williams' life and times, this is an enlightening historical document.

First of all, these aren't concerts. They're shows. Hank goes on stage, does 30 minutes, thanks us kindly, and ambles off to sign autographs. He does two or three shows a day.

We learn that Hank's touring band has been pared down from four men to just two: fiddler Jerry Rivers and steel guitarist Don Helms. Gone are Sammy Pruett and his "boop-bop" guitar and bassist Howard Watts. Hank's rhythm guitar figures more prominently in the mix, and local bass players are pressed into service. (By Hank's own admission, some work out better than others.) Hank, Don and Jerry sing trio on the gospel numbers.

Hank tells tall tales of riding out a flood on the roof of a hotel in Bald Knob, Ark.; informs the audience how to pronounce "jambalaya" and what its ingredients are; hawks songbooks; and explains that he and Luke the Drifter are one and the same person. He tells us that writing songs brings him more joy than anything else in life. He invites us to the Grand Ole Opry (from which he will soon be fired), and suggests that while we're in Nashville we visit his store, Hank Williams' Corral. It used to be Hank & Audrey's Corral, but they're divorced now. He never mentions her. Not once.

The disc ends with a noisy 1951 radio interview in which Hank and an old friend from his Alabama honky-tonk days -- who is now a disc jockey in Wichita -- talk about old times and new records. Hank tells him to come out to the house the next time he's in Nashville, and "we'll open a can of beans."

Herein is a legend made flesh: not a pitiful derelict at death's door, but a functioning, funny, personable performer. A treasure, for those so inclined.

Zoomer Roberts is a longtime El Paso country and folk musician.