"I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive"

Hank Williams, the legendary honky-tonk singer and songwriter, died on this day in 1953 in the backseat of a Cadillac, en route to a performance in Canton, Ohio. Born in Mount Olive, Alabama on September 17, 1923, Williams shaped the American musical landscape with his haunting, high lonesome voice and vivid lyrical depictions of love, loss, sin, and salvation. The author of numerous hit songs, including classics such as “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “Move It On Over,” and “Cold, Cold Heart,” Hank influenced singers as different as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, and Mike Ness. No history of American popular culture should be considered complete unless it recognizes his importance as both a performer and a songwriter.

For a lengthier discussion of these tangled and forgotten roots of country music, particularly the fascinating connections between Hank Williams and the blackface minstrel singer Emmett Miller, you can read my review essay “Hidden Country” in the October 2002 issue of Reason.