![]() ![]() "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 is just another of our rowdy friends trying to get through a long Saturday night.Hank Williams, Jr. The dance is the same - but who really wants to dance to politics? Luckily, about half the time here, Hank Williams Jr. There aren't really any new rules on this album, just old-school honky tonk dressed up in shiny new boots. Williams has every right to preach his point of view on America and spout off on his personal politics, but when he turns things simpler and deeper and sings about love, pain, and drinking toward some sort of desperate redemption, he unites rather than divides. Perhaps the best track is a cover of his father's "You Win Again," and it emerges as a swampy, modal piece of the blues. "I'm Gonna Get Drunk and Play Hank Williams," which features a guest spot from Brad Paisley, is sharp, clear country honky tonk, as is the duet with Merle Haggard on Haggard's "I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink" that closes out this set, and "Old School" is a fine personal narrative about learning the ropes that manages to name-check everyone from Dolly Parton to Johnny Cash. That said, for all the conservative, don't-tread-on-me polemics that come through in songs here like "Takin' Back the Country" and "We Don't Apologize for America," it is the songs on this album that don't go there that work the best. It's also the first release for his own independent Nashville-based record label, Bocephus Records, and it is indicative of how much Williams has taken over complete control of all aspects of his image, work, and career. The whole affair has fired up Williams, obviously, as his new album, Old School New Rules, is as snarling, blunt, and self-assuredly political as any he has ever done. That little lucrative ritual ended this past year when ESPN pulled the song after Williams spoke his mind on politics during a Fox and Friends appearance in October. Junior isn't his father, but with his outspoken conservative politics and his "everyman out on a Saturday night" approach to life, he emerges as a much stronger personality, almost a brand, if you will, helped in good part by having his modified version of "All My Rowdy Friends" as the lead-in to Monday Night Football for over 20-some years. Hank Williams Jr., although no one suggests he eclipsed his famous father's song catalog, has become an American icon in his own right, an irascible country outlaw with rowdy friends whose Southern rock style of honky tonk has put him, much like contemporaries Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and Johnny Cash, at the very epicenter of modern country music. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |