 Artists hate being labelled, by pointy-headed record company execs can’t live without a label for everything. So what do you do when you have an artist so transcendant they are truly impossible to label? Answer (as if you didn’t know): label him with even more bravado than usual!
All Hank wanted to do was be a cowboy. He also wanted to be wildly successful, and unfortunately, he got his wish. He felt he traded his identity for fame, and was lonely and isolated because nobody knew him.
He was the fulcrum between the old and the new of country music. Everything changed, even the labels. The industry had just consolidated the categories “country” and “western” into a new one, “country and western”, that really said little about the soul of the music, and encompassed everything from yodellers to singing cowboys to folk singers to early rockers. The second World War was over, people from formerly isolated rural communities had seen the world, folks had money in their pockets, and darned if the record industry wasn’t going to squeeze it out of them.
Hank was difficult to handle; his wild and self-destructive ways are well-documented in many books and articles. If you’re not familiar with his life, the recent American Masters epsisode (available on Netflix) is a good starting point; you’ll be mesmerized by the live footage of Hank.
 His music is the distillation of everything that came before him, and points to everything that follows. It is folk, blues, the most solem sacred, and the most rowdy honky-tonk. He wrote most of his songs, yet one of his his biggest hits (”Lovesick Blues”) was based on the styling of the obscure and highly original Emmett Miller (who similarly was an earlier bridge between blackface minstrel shows and early commercial country). Hank’s songs were covered by hundreds of artists, and were some of the first country songs to cross over to the pop charts in a big way.
So how did they label a talent like this? The “Hillbilly Shakespeare” - sounds like a novelty act, talking dogs or diving horses. Pretty degrading to country folks, although his poetry does have a bit in common with the Bard (who was considered a bit of a common person in his day). And they gave him the Hollywood treatment, with a total whitewash movie staring George Hamilton.
Forget everything you’ve been told; ‘look for the original videos of Hank, and the original recordings. There is a great 10-CD set that has stripped the recordings back to their original sound (they were re-issued many times over the years, overdubbed with strings and choirs). My favorites are the live radio broadcasts. Especially interesting are the records he recorded under the name “Luke the Drifter”, that explored the spiritual side of his vision.
I was enightened to the greatness of Hank by my frend Jesse Robinson on KZAP many years ago. He told me you can always tell somebody who’s real country, because they cry when they hear Hank sing. And he’d nearly come to blows if you were to lift the needle in the middle of one of Hank’s songs. I have come to learn the wisdom of Hank over the years.
It has been said the Lord works in mysterious ways, and I believe certain artists have been given a way to tell the world a message. Certainly Bob Marley was one; John Lennon and Bach also come to mind. Old Hank is a little more difficult to peg, but when that roll is called up yonder, he’ll be there.
Recommended Books
Recommended Music/Video
Trackback(0)
 |
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
Thanks!