At a Veterans Affairs clinic in Pensacola, Florida, doctors determined that the cause was a brain aneurysm, and Elonzo was sent to the VA Medical Center in Alexandria, Louisiana. was honored with a Grammy nomination for Best Historical Album. Advance ticket sales totaled US$3,500 (equivalent to US$35,714.9 in 2011). He had a message. [71] During his recovery, he lived with his mother in Montgomery, and later moved to Nashville with Ray Price. Carr immediately realized that he was dead and informed the filling station's owner, Glenn Burdette, who called the chief of the local police, O.H. Williams' personal life took a major turn in 1943 when he met Audrey Mae Sheppard, who was the mother of a young daughter and had only recently left a messy marriage. [131] In 1993, a double-disc set of recordings of Williams for the Health & Happiness Show was released. [66] In 1951, "Dear John" became a hit, but it was the flip side, "Cold, Cold Heart", that became one of his most recognized songs. Jones refused to pay, and further stated that Marshall later intended to convince her to pay him by assuring that he would "pave her the way to collect her husband's state". [85] In 2005, the BBC documentary series Arena featured an episode on Williams. At this stage Williams began abusing alcohol, a problem that haunted him the rest of his life but that came about partly as a result of his attempts to self-medicate agonizing back pain caused by a congenital spinal disorder. [19] In 1935, they settled in Garland, Alabama, where Lillie opened a new boarding house; they later moved with Williams' cousin Opal McNeil to Georgiana, Alabama,[20] where Lillie took several side jobs to support the family despite the bleak economic climate of the Great Depression. About 3,000 friends of the family shuffled through his mothers living room on Montgomerys North McDonough Street where Williams body was lain in state that Saturday night. In 1989, the Alabama State Supreme Court ultimately ruled in her favor and found her to be an equal heir, after an old document was recovered that showed Williams and Jett's mother had signed a shared custody agreement. [42] He continued to show up for his radio show intoxicated, so in August 1942 the WSFA radio station fired him for "habitual drunkenness". Heart failure and hard living did him in. Jett was then legally adopted. Many of their replacements refused to play in the band due to Williams' worsening alcoholism. Meanwhile, Lewis Fitzgerald's son Ricky billed himself as Hank Williams IV following his father's claim of being Williams' son. That day, Williams could not fly because of an ice storm in the Nashville area; he hired a college student, Charles Carr, to drive him to the concerts. Williams was born with a mild undiagnosed case of spina bifida occulta, a disorder of the spinal column, which gave him lifelong paina factor in his later abuse of alcohol and other drugs. Hank Williams, Sr. was an American singer-songwriter and musician who had a net worth equal to $100 thousand at the time of his death after adjusting for inflation (approximately $10 thousand in 1953) Ernest Tubbs began the funeral with Beyond the Sunset and Red Foley and The Statesman Quartet sang Peace In The Valley.. His official cause of death was listed as heart failure, but there are many who say otherwise. [21] Their first house burned down, and the family lost their possessions. While Jett was a college junior at the University of Alabama in Montgomery majoring in recreation therapy, her adoptive . Keillor, Garrison. Arthur Whiting was also a guitarist for the Drifting Cowboys. A picture from the past came slowly stealing As I brushed your arm and walked so close to you Then suddenly I got that old time feeling I can't help it if I'm still in love with you. An immensely talented songwriter and an impassioned vocalist, he also experienced great crossover success in the popular music market. Alternate titles: Hiram King Williams, the Hillbilly Shakespeare. Carr was exhausted and, according to the police reports, nervous enough to invite suspicion that foul play had been involved in Williams' death. Is Hank Williams Sr single? [26] His final single released during his lifetime was ironically titled "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive." Later on, Williams recorded "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It", one of the songs that Payne taught him. All Rights Reserved. Jett, whose legal name is Cathy Deupree Adkinson, was raised by Williams' mother for two years until she died. The Georgiana . "Fan It" and "Alexander's Ragtime Band", recorded by Williams at age 15; the homemade recordings of him singing "Freight Train Blues", "New San Antonio Rose", "St. Louis Blues" and "Greenback Dollar" at age 18; and a recording for the 1951 March of Dimes. Elonzo stayed to celebrate his son's birthday in September before he returned to the medical center in Louisiana. On December 11, 1946, in his first recording session, he recorded "Wealth Won't Save Your Soul", "Calling You", "Never Again (Will I Knock on Your Door)", and "When God Comes and Gathers His Jewels", which was misprinted as "When God Comes and Fathers His Jewels". Buy newspaper front pages, posters and more. The Montgomery Auditorium, located at the intersection of Perry and Monroe Street, "Long forgotten Montgomery auditorium to see new life", "Convict Says Williams Depressed Singer Said Possible Suicide", "Name is Forged to Prescriptions, Expert Says", I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Death_of_Hank_Williams&oldid=1137643276, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from December 2016, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Insufficiency of the right ventricle of the heart, January 4, 1953 at Oakwood Annex Cemetery in, January 1, 1953 in Oak Hill, West Virginia, This page was last edited on 5 February 2023, at 18:47. This addiction eventually led to his divorce from Audrey Williams and his dismissal from the Grand Ole Opry. He attributed the decision to Williams' declining career: "Most of his bookings were of the honky-tonk beer joint variety that he simply hated. The funeral took place on January 4 at the Montgomery Auditorium, where an estimated 15,000 to 25,000 attended while the auditorium was filled with 2,750 mourners. Father and son rarely saw each other over the next decade, with Williams' mother, who ran rooming houses, moving the family to Greenville and later Montgomery, Alabama. Entrance marker of the Oakwood Annex Cemetery in, Grave of Audrey (left) and Hank Williams (right) at Oakwood Annex Cemetery, Oklahoma investigation of Horace Marshall. The couple were married in 1944 at a Texaco Station in Andalusia, Alabama, by a justice of the peace. On New Year's Day 1953, at the age of 29, Williams suffered from heart failure while being driven to his next scheduled concert in Charleston, West Virginia, and died suddenly in the back seat of the car in Oak Hill, West Virginia. [58] He brought together Bob McNett (guitar), Hillous Butrum (bass), Jerry Rivers (fiddle) and Don Helms (steel guitar) to form the most famous version of the Drifting Cowboys, earning an estimated $1,000 per show (equivalent to $11,400 in 2021) That year Audrey Williams gave birth to Randall Hank Williams (Hank Williams Jr.). Williams, Sheppard, and the Drifting Cowboys band in 1951 The American entry into World War II in 1941 marked the beginning of hard times for Williams. Cardwell injected Williams with two shots of vitamin B12 that also contained a quarter-grain (16.2 mg) of morphine. Hank Williams Sr. was 29 Years, 3 Months, 15 Days old. Among other fake titles he claimed to be a Doctor of Science. It included 10 songs: "Mother Is Gone", "Won't You Please Come Back", "My Darling Baby Girl" (with Audrey Sheppard), "Grandad's Musket", "I Just Wish I Could Forget", "Let's Turn Back the Years", "Honkey-Tonkey", "I Loved No One But You", "A Tramp on the Street", and "You'll Love Me Again". He sang "Cold, Cold Heart", "Hey Good Lookin''", "Glory Bound Train" and "I Saw the Light" with other cast members, and a duet, "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You)" with Anita Carter. [78] His final concert was held in Austin, Texas, at the Skyline Club on December 19. Having interviewed Carr, the best that Peter Cooper of The Tennessean could offer was that "somewhere between Mount Hope and Oak Hill", Carr noticed Williams' blanket had fallen off. While her son was not on the stage, his song I Saw The Light opened the show. He was unresponsive and rigor mortis had already begun to set in. [67], Williams' career reached a peak in the late summer of 1951 with his Hadacol tour of the U.S. with Bob Hope and other actors. The first celebration, in 1954, featured the unveiling of a monument at the Cramton Bowl that was later placed at the gravesite of Williams. His name was misspelled as "Hiriam" on his birth certificate, which was prepared and signed when he was 10 years old. However, his plaintive, bluesy phrasing was unique and became a touchstone of country music. On New Year's Day in 1953 the heart of country music was broken; the Shakespeare of Country Music died in the backseat of a powder blue Cadillac in Oak Hill, West Virginia on his way to a booking in Canton, Ohio. His breakthrough moment came in 1949 with the release of Lovesick Blues, an old show tune that Williams parlayed into a chart-topping hit, an invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, and international fame. James E. (Jimmy) Porter was the youngest, being only 13 when he started playing steel guitar for Williams. [25][26] Payne's base musical style was blues. It could be argued, in fact, that his early death only enhanced his legend. After Hawkshaw Hawkins and other performers started singing "I Saw the Light" as a tribute to Williams, the crowd, now realizing that he was indeed dead, followed them. [73] That same year, Williams had a brief extramarital affair with dancer Bobbie Jett, with whom he fathered a daughter, Jett Williams. [38] The same day, the District Attorney's office declared that after a new review of the autopsy report of Faye Marshall, toxicological and microscopic tests confirmed that her death on March 3 was not related to the medication prescribed by her husband. Elonzo was a railroad engineer for the W. T. Smith lumber company and was drafted during World War I, serving from July 1918 to June 1919. [137], Williams was portrayed by English actor Tom Hiddleston in the 2016 biopic I Saw the Light, based on Colin Escott's 1994 book Hank Williams: The Biography. His son, Hank Jr., was ranked on the same list. But along with this early success came increased erratic behavior from Williams, who often showed up at live performances drunk. [40] Williams' alcohol use started to become a problem during the tours; on occasion he spent a large part of the show revenues on alcohol. On New Year's Day 1953, he took his seat in the back of his 1952 powder blue Cadillac. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement, Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement, and Your Privacy Choices and Rights (each updated 1/26/2023). [35] On March 12, 1953, Billie Jean Jones appeared before the Oklahoma committee. [29] Around two tons of flowers were sent. His son, Hank Williams, Jr., a successful country performer in his own right (like Williamss grandson, Hank Williams III), sang Williamss songs in the film biography Your Cheatin Heart (1964). By the early 1940s, he'd caught the attention of music executives in Nashville. He died in 1939, but his musical legacy would live on in Williams. Williams had to cancel the concert due to an ice storm; he hired college student Charles Carr to drive him to his next appearance, a concert on New Year's Day 1953, at the Canton Memorial Auditorium in Canton, Ohio. [72], During the spring of 1952, Williams flew to New York with steel guitarist Don Helms, where he made two appearances with other Grand Ole Opry members on The Kate Smith Evening Hour. Hank jr. was three years old when his father died in 1959. Later he would dull his physical pain with morphine, but alcohol remained his painkiller of choice when he sought to relieve the heartache of his tumultuous relationship with Audrey Sheppard, whom he married in 1942 (they divorced in 1952). Williams began his music career in Montgomery in 1937, when producers at local radio station WSFA hired him to perform and host a 15-minute program. Hank Williams Jr. was performing his father, Hank Sr.'s, songs on stage at age 8. And he looked so satisfied I can't help it if I'm still in love with you. [112] He was ranked second in CMT's 40 Greatest Men of Country Music in 2003, behind only Johnny Cash who recorded the song "The Night Hank Williams Came To Town". Hank Williams, the 29-year-old King of Country Music, was to have flown to Charleston, West Virginia for a New Years Eve concert but an ice storm near Nashville kept him away. [74], In June 1952, he recorded "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)", "Window Shopping", "Settin' the Woods on Fire", and "I'll Never Get out of this World Alive". If he came to this conclusion (of suicide), he still had enough prestige left as a star to make a first-class production of it whereas, six months from now, unless he pulled himself back up into some high-class bookings, he might have been playing for nickels and dimes on skid row. Stopping for gas in Oak Hill, West Virginia, Carr realized Williams was dead. A rookie Tennessee highway patrol officer, Swann Kitts, told reporters he had stopped the Cadillac and fined Carr $25 for speeding, The United Press reported on Jan. 2, 1952. His song "Your Cheatin' Heart" was written and recorded in September 1952, but released in late January 1953 after his death. "[44], He worked for the rest of the war for a shipbuilding company in Mobile, Alabama, as well as singing in bars for soldiers. The Georgiana native hired a college student, Charles Carr, to drive him to perform a concert planned in Canton, Ohio. [60] Williams released seven hit songs after "Lovesick Blues", including "Wedding Bells",[55] "Mind Your Own Business", "You're Gonna Change (Or I'm Gonna Leave)", and "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It". Marshall had been previously convicted for forgery, and had been paroled and released from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in 1951. Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site. In 1948, he moved to Shreveport, Louisiana, and he joined the Louisiana Hayride, a radio show broadcast that propelled him into living rooms all over the Southeast appearing on weekend shows. In June, he divorced Audrey Williams,[2] and on August 11, Williams was dismissed from the Grand Ole Opry for habitual drunkenness. [39] Oklahoma Governor Johnston Murray revoked the parole of Horace Raphol "Toby" Marshall, who returned to prison to complete his forgery sentence.[40]. "When I pulled it back up, I noticed that his hand was stiff and cold." 1 on the country charts. His physical appearance diminished, too. Williams was pronounced dead a short while later. On . [81] A relationship with a woman named Bobbie Jett during this period resulted in a daughter, Jett Williams, who was born five days after Williams died. [59] On May 21, he had been admitted to North Louisiana Sanitarium for the treatment of his alcoholism, leaving on May 24. Secondly,how did hank williams pass away? [100] "Take These Chains From My Heart" was released in April 1953 and reached No. [120] The same year, Hank Williams: The Complete Mother's Best RecordingsPlus! Wiki User. Williams' son, Hank Williams Jr., and widow, Billie Jean Williams Berlin, currently split the royalties. Best Known For: Hank Williams became one of America's first country music superstars, with hits like "Your Cheatin' Heart," before his early death at 29. [139] On October 22, 1975, a federal judge in Atlanta, Georgia, ruled Horton's marriage to Williams was valid and that half of Williams' future royalties belonged to her.[140]. They are in a bedroom in the home of Lillie (Hank Williams's mother) on North McDonough Street in Montgomery, Alabama. [132] Broadcast in 1949, the shows were recorded for the promotion of Hadacol. Stars of the Grand Ole Opry were expected along with thousands of fans to bid farewell to Williams. Later, he started to consume painkillers, including morphine, and alcohol to ease the pain. In 1930, when Williams was seven years old, Elonzo began experiencing facial paralysis. The song was number one on the country charts for six weeks. [59] During 1949, he joined the first European tour of the Grand Ole Opry, performing in military bases in England, Germany and the Azores. Marshall stated that Williams told him that he had decided to "destroy the Hank Williams that was making the money they were getting". His father was a Mason and his mother was a member of the. Probably taught his first chords by Payne, Williams began playing the guitar at age 8. After an autopsy, the cause of death was determined to be "insufficiency of the right ventricle of the heart.". The local record shops reportedly sold all their Williams records, and customers were asking for all records ever released by Williams. [46], In 1945, when he was back in Montgomery, Williams started to perform again for the WSFA radio station. Montgomery, Alabama Hank Williams was country music's first megastar. More than half of the 66 recordings he would make under his own name (he also released a string of religious-themed recordings under the name Luke the Drifter) were Top Ten country and western hits, many of them reaching number one, including Cold, Cold Heart, Your Cheatin Heart, Hey, Good Lookin, Jambalaya (On the Bayou), and Ill Never Get Out of This World Alive. His extraordinary Lost Highway peaked at number 12.