"Who knows?" teases the down-home voice in a radio spot dating from 1951".There may be a great song out there somewhere in somebody's dresser drawer just waitin' to be sung." At the height of his popularity, the Grand Ole Opry's biggest star is hawking a booklet that bears his name, Hank Williams Tells How to Write Folk and Western Music to Sell. Announcer Grant Turner continues the pitch: "I'm telling you, folks, I think that Hank Williams is one of the greatest songwriters that ever lived, and he really knows what a song has to have to make it click." Anyone who read the book, continued Turner, would learn "just what he has to do to write a song that'll be acceptable to singers and publishers."In its 35 pages-most likely written entirely by "co-author" Jimmy Rule-the little volume did indeed offer hard advice on the nuts and bolts of songcraft. What it didn't reveal was the real-life torment behind so many of Hank's songs. They were, in fact, firsthand accounts of a simple man struggling with his inner demons as his personal life swirled uncontrollably around him. And had Rule written ten times as much, he could not have hoped to explain Williams' uncanny ear for the perfect phrase. That, as Hank once told an interviewer, was a mystery even to him: "People don't write music. It's given to you-you sit mere and wait and it comes to you. If it takes longer than 30 minutes or an hour, I usually throw it away."

Whatever Hank understood about the origins of Ms gift, Turner was right about one thing: He knew how to make a song click. Though his recording career spanned a mere six years, he placed 32 singles in the Top 10,11 of which went to number one. His songs have been re-recorded by over a hundred singers, with no fewer than two dozen-from Tony Bennett to Ray Charles, Charley Pride to Linda Ronstadt- reaching the charts with covers of his tunes. They've proven adaptable to nearly any style- can any other writer claim covers by the Grateful Dead and the Lennon Sisters?
Hank's 24 Greatest Hits [Mercury] has been hovering near the top of the country catalog charts recently, with ten of his other collections enjoying brisk sales. The clearest testament to the universality of Hank's music, however, may be his 1987 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Hank Williams, self-described "Hillbilly Singer," died in the wee hours of New Year's Day, 1953, just as Alan Freed's moniker for the rowdy new music was entering the lexicon.
Had Hank lived longer, his own recollections of the fame-and-fortune years would no doubt be considered gospel. His early passing spawned a hopeless tangle of conflicting stories as even the most remotely connected bystanders clamored for inclusion in the legacy or a piece of the estate.
Fortunately, Hank's musical roots are among the least-contested details of his life. Born in Mount Olive West, Alabama, on September 17,1923, Hiriam (a birth-certificate misspelling of Hiram) King Williams had moved to nearby Georgiana with sister Irene and their mother, Lillie, by 1930. It was there young "Hank" met and befriended Rufe Payne, a local black bluesman known as "Tee-Tot." The fifty-ish Payne lived in nearby Greenville and often performed alone or with other musicians on the sidewalks of area towns. Most accounts put Hank's first guitar in his hands at around age eight and the aspiring musician almost constantly at Payne's heels shortly thereafter.
In Hank Williams (Little, Brown], a respected biographical source, author Colin Escott describes the youngster as fascinated by the street performer and his music. Hank himself would later credit Payne with giving him "all the music training I ever had." Undoubtedly, the strong blues thread in Hank's music owes much to the relationship. The word "blues" occurs frequently in Williams' song titles, but the connection runs much deeper. Hank's phrasing, subject matter and simple harmonic frameworks all bear an unmistakable blues influence.
Marry Stuart, a Hank worshiper and owner of an extensive collection of Williams artifacts, believes blues are at the very core of his idol's musical identity".A lot of people don't understand how much of a blues guy he was-a blues guitar player," says Stuart".Case in point-'My Bucket's Got a Hole in It.' That's got a straight Alabama/Mississippi Delta blues solo in there, and Hank's playing it. It's hard-core Southern blues playing. Every singer-songwriter and every picker comes from a certain point. You know where Bob Dylan comes from-he's a folky guy. You know where Johnny Cash comes from. Same with Willie, same with Steve Earle. And you can find all kinds of arguments about where Hank was coming from, but when I heard 'Bucket,' the whole world opened up for me. I said, 'Man, Hank Williams was a blues man.' He truly comes from that E-chord blues thing, and I'm sure he got it from Tee-Tot."
Also commonly overlooked are Hank's years in the trenches as a nightclub and local radio performer. While living in Montgomery in late 1936 or early '37, he made Ms debut on WSFA, the city's premier station. The gig would continue on and off for more than a decade. Within a few years Hank was a honky-tonk veteran with a sizable regional following. Unfortunately, he'd also established the pattern of hard drinking and unreliability that would haunt the rest of his days. His singing style at die time is said to have been an amalgam of Roy Acuff and Ernest Tubb, his two biggest heroes.
Hank's earliest songwriting amounted to setting bis own lyrics to existing melodies, but soon he was creating complete songs". "I'm Not Coming Home Any More," cut as an acetate demo in April '42, is the earliest surviving recording of a Williams original. Even then, the now-familiar style seems almost fully formed. The tune's lyrics were included in a self-published songbook that Hank sold from the stage at his shows.
In 1943 Hank met Audrey Mae Sheppard, who soon became involved in the business side of his career and was occasionally the upright bass player in his band, the Drifting Cowboys. With their marriage in December '44, Audrey, an aspiring singer, relentlessly pressured her husband to include her as a duet partner and co-star. Though fully aware that her ambitions far exceeded her talents, Hank agreed from time to time in the interest of keeping the peace. From the beginning, their relationship was notoriously volatile. Military service was never an option for Hank, who was born with spina bi-flda and was frail all his life. But as World War II raged in far-off lands, he and Audrey managed their own worthy imitation at home.
During this period Hank was mostly known to powerful music-business figures as a troublemaker and unsafe bet, but he had made a few positive inroads as a songwriter. Then, in 1946, Audrey accompanied Hank to Nashville to meet publisher Fred Rose. The most persistent legend surrounding Hank's signing as a songwriter has Rose, a Tin Pan Alley alum and RoyAcuff's publishing partner, unable to believe that the songs he was hearing came from the scrawny hillbilly sitting in his office. It's far more likely, though, that he already knew about anyone that talented. According to the oft-told story, Rose gave Hank a premise and sent him into a side room to write a song and prove he was what he claimed to be. In short order, Hank emerged with the classic "Mansion on the Hill" and was immediately signed.
While it makes a good story, the account is most likely fiction. Ironically, a less-known but credible anecdote regarding Hank's entree to the big-time involves a song he didn't write. Sometime before 1944, Molly O'Day, an artist Rose was producing, had heard Hank singing "Tramp on the Street" on his radio show and had gotten a copy of the lyrics from him. Later Hank had shown up at one of Molly's shows in Montgomery. Drunk and broke, he'd offered to sell Lynn Davis, O'Day's husband and manager, a folder of songs for $25. Davis gave Hank the money and the pair agreed to meet the following day to put the deal on paper. After looking the lyric sheets over that night, Davis told Hank he was "sitting on a gold mine" and refused to accept the songs, even though Hank had already spent the cash. Two years later, Davis recommended Hank to the publisher.
The nature and scope of Fred Rose's creative contribution to Hank's music has been the subject of much speculation. He is listed as the co-writer on a few of Hank's biggest hits, notably "Kaw-Liga," "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive" and, in fact, "Mansion on the Hill." He also contributed several more with other writers or on his own. Perhaps because the pair spent a great deal of time secreted away in Rose's office working on songs, or because Rose was behind nearly every other forward step in Hank's career, rumors have persisted for years that Hank mainly provided colorful bits of verse that Rose sculpted into finished songs. Rose himself was indignant at such suggestions".Don't get the idea that I made the guy or wrote his songs for him," he said after Hank's death".He made himself. Don't forget that".
The most reliable source on Hank's writing style-and on most other subjects related to Hank-may well be Don Helms, a quiet man with a quick smile who lives in a north Nashville suburb with Hazel, his wife of 51 years. Helms played steel guitar with Hank in two stints, one early in the singer's career and another that stretched from the night of his first Opry appearance until Hank was fired from the same show more than 3 years later. While legendary steeler Jerry Byrd was featured on Hank's early hits, Helms is heard on all the recordings from January 9, 1950, including "Cold, Cold Heart," "Hey Good Lookin'," "Honky Tonk Blues" and "I Can't Help It if I'm Still in Love with You."
"As far as we could tell," recalls Helms, "Hank's songs were mostly put together by the time he'd take 'em to Fred. Fred would have suggestions, and he was good at presenting them in a way that made Hank feel like they were his ideas. Hank trusted him completely as a writer. He thought Fred was one of the greatest writers of all time, and I do too. So when Hank would write something, he'd just have to get Fred's opinion on it before he'd feel sure about it. He'd say, 'Pap, tell me what you think, knowing that Fred would lower the damn boom if he didn't like a line. But Hank needed that, and he knew it. Fred would tell him, 'You don't want to say it like that. Say it like this.' Fred was very critical, but he never belittled anything. Hank would scratch his head and try it because he had a lot of respect for what Fred thought. Hank didn't let Fred change his songs, but he would accept a better way to say 'I love you' from him. Hank would be the first to tell you that he learned a lot from Fred."
According to Helms, Hank was constantly working on songs, especially on the road. Touring was merciless in those days. Four or five men were stuffed into a car with no air conditioning, a bass fiddle strapped to the roof and all remaining gear and luggage crammed into the trunk or a small trailer. With barely enough travel time between dates, the band often went several days without stopping at a motel. Hank would prop himself into whatever position offered the least back pain and scratch out lyrics on an envelope, bag or scrap of paper.
"Sometimes," says Helms, "he'd just hear a certain line or a piece of conversation he thought was catchy. He'd write most of the words, and then he'd get a guitar and see how he'd done so far. When he got it to a certain point, he'd say, 'What do you think of this so far?' and kind of bounce it off us. You could tease him about it too. He was just like another guy in the band. One time he said, 'Don, give me a line here: "Today I passed you on the street . . ."' And I said, 'And I smelled your stinkin' feet!' Hank says, 'Yeah, by God, get funny.' Or we'd find some little piece of paper like the ones he was always carryin' around, and we'd ask him, 'Hank, what's this a part of? What song is this?' We didn't cut him much slack." 
Helms maintains that first and foremost, Williams considered himself a songwriter. Riding along in the car, he would often complete a tune's lyrics before he'd even try to sing it, as if he were approaching it strictly as poetry. His track record at sessions offered further evidence of his devotion to the craft. Throughout his career, Hank missed or botched many a live date, but he never once dropped the ball when it came to recording one of his songs.
He was extremely pleased whenever another artist cut something he'd written. His delight with the financial rewards of Tony Bennett's chart-topping "Cold, Cold Heart," however, was tempered with defensiveness about what he saw as a harmful trend: "These pop bands," he told an interviewer, "will play our hillbilly songs when they can't eat any other way."
Among Hank's creative output, several oddities stand out. "Lovesick Blues" the song that almost overnight transformed him from a middling also-ran into country's biggest star, wasn't his own composition. In fact, he'd had to fight with producer Rose to record it when Rose agreed with the musicians on the session that the tune was a worthless piece of fluff. From time to time, bits of "borrowed" material crept into Hank's catalog, including "I Saw the Light," with its melody lifted from the much earlier "He Set Me Free" by Albert E. Brumley. There was also Hank's insistence on cutting recitations, many of which were readings of dusty old poems. Some were so seriously sad that Ms record label, MGM, refused to put them out under Ms own name. With standing orders for all new Hank Williams records from the jukebox companies, label execs shuddered at the idea of bar patrons punching up the latest Hank tune and hearing "The Funeral" or "I Dreamed of Mama Last Night." For this reason, Hank released the recitations as Luke the Drifter.
Then, of course, there were the tragically real stories behind many of his biggest hits. Home life for the Williamses could never be described as tranquil, but as Hank's star rose, Audrey's singing ambitions were left in a cloud of dust, and she was bitterly resentful. His drinking and carousing had been a source of tension since the beginning. Try as he might, he could never stick with his cyclic attempts to repent, and by mid '51 Hank had been yanked off several tours and sent home to dry out. For her part, Audrey kept him propped up as best she could for career reasons, but she spent money like crazy and was never too discreet about her own frequent tumbles from the fidelity wagon. As an interpretive singer of emotional songs, Hank was almost without peer. But if, as on "Cold, Cold Heart," "Half as Much," "Your Cheatin' Heart" and "Why Should We Try Anymore," he sounded like he meant it, it's at least partly because he did. It was starkly obvious to those in his inner circle that these tunes were snapshots of his personal life, but the public knew little or none of this. They were drawn to Hank's music for other reasons.
"Before Hank Williams," explains Helms, "a lot of country songs were about 'take me back to somewhere,' like home, cabins or things like that. And the Jimmy Rodgers era was about trains and hobos, and you had a lot of songs about things to eat, like hominy grits and black-eyed peas. Then along comes Hank, and he wrote about the guy who worked at the mill and stopped off on his way home to have a couple drinks, and she smelled it on his breath and made him sleep in the doghouse. Stuff like that was everybody's song, and I think those things are just as current today as they were 50 years ago. Men and women can have differences of opinion even though they're very much in love. That's the direction of Hank's writing. He got into people's souls, and he was singing to them about what they already knew.
"Hank died not knowing how big a star he really was. He'd reached a point where he had so many important things to do, and they were just pushing him here and there, all the meetings and things, and he wasn't really ready for all that. He just wanted to keep doing what he enjoyed doing, like writing songs and fishing and hunting. I know one time he and [fiddler] Jerry Rivers were down on Kentucky Lake fishing, and they saw this seaplane, some kind of amphibious rig, circling around. It finally touched down right near their boat, and it was Audrey. She'd come lookin' for him because he had some meeting he was supposed to go to. And Hank said, 'How in the hell did she find me?' He didn't care for that part at all."
Much of the truth about Hank and his simple genius was lost in the shuffle of conflicting stories, claims and suppositions that began just hours after his death. There is promise that new light will be shed through the Marty Stuart collection, which includes a small warehouse of memorabilia and anchors a new exhibit at Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame. ; "This stuff all came from Hank's sisterj Irene," Stuart explains".She came out to one of my shows at Texas Stadium in Dallas two or three years before she died, and we got to be friends. I've got everything from a Packard limousine to clothes, hats, pistols and letters he wrote home to his mom. But the things that mean the most to me are the handwritten lyrics. 'I Saw the Light' has a couple of verses scratched out where you can tell he was working them over. We've got 'Cold, Cold Heart,' 'Your Cheatin' Heart' and a bunch of other stuff. There are some things he never finished. Irene hated to part with all these things more than anything in the world, but she'd get financially strapped every now and then and have to sell some off. When I turned the collection over to the Hall of Fame, I told the curator, Chris Skinker, not to leave any stone unturned, because Irene was kind of a pack rat. She calls me back and says, 'You'll never guess what I found in an envelope in the back of a book-the lyrics to 'Cold, Cold Heart.' I love it when magic happens."