The Good Ones Newsletter Playlist on Apple Music.
The Good Ones Newsletter Playlist on Spotify.
The best American songwriter could sometimes barely finish a song.
Country music relies on a machine to process and polish the rough gems that travel through the system. Teams of songwriters, producers with an arsenal in the studio, and labels with fix-it teams of choral singers and orchestral players all get a chance to spit shine each lyric and note that gets sold with Nashville stamped on the label somewhere.
Hank Williams lives in the legend above the fracas, but in reality, was a messy drunk hooked on pills who often worked with Fred Rose on most of his songs. Rose, as the producer, would often help sort out lyrics or melodies with Williams until a song was polished, and in Williams' later life, Rose would step in and more substantially re-arrange Williams thoughts into a cohesive concept. On those tracks, he’d take songwriting credit.
“I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive” is meant to be a humorous heavy wink that ended up taking on deeper weight when Williams died just as the song was getting close to #1 one the charts. It’s even said that he could barely sing a few lines at a time in the studio before he had to sit down, he was so weak.
But aside from pulling back the curtain on the man’s process, we’re still left with a legacy that haunts Nashville country to this day. With this song released in 1952, country music still hadn’t become what we know it to be. In the early days, you saw people like Ernest Tubb hit a hit single in 1941 with “Walking The Floor Over You” recorded only with an acoustic guitar accompanied by an electric one. Writing and recording was a process that was mostly undoctored, and technology at the time wouldn’t really accommodate anything else anyway.
Williams was massively popular but was such a fall-down drunk that he was always kept at arms length from joining the country music establishment. Simultaneously, his reckless behavior set the standard for the birth of outlaw country while at the same time his need for Fred Rose to work on songs with him birthed the modern Nashville system.
He wasn’t the first, or only, artist at the time who embodied a rebellious spirit or worked through a system of song production, but he was wildly and massively popular. If his fame and talent hadn’t struck such a chord, we wouldn’t see the polar opposites of the country music system developed simultaneously from his career. And whether or not he needed Rose to re-arrange his lyrics, it doesn’t stop his name from being on the label for a song that contains the best stanza ever penned:
These shabby shoes I'm wearin' all the time
Is full of holes and nails
And brother, if I stepped on worn-out dime
I bet a nickel I could tell you if it was heads or tails
“I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive” on Apple Music.
“I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive” on Spotify.
Advanced Reading
There’s a wonderfully succinct quality to Williams songs. They follow simple chord progressions, hit witty quips every bar, and clip-clop their way in 2/4 right along with your walking stride. Luke The Drifter, however, is another story.
Williams adopted a character named Luke The Drifter whose songs often featured spoken word descriptions of hard life with a religious bent tracked over a two-step ballad. Luke The Drifter’s songs were earnest, heartfelt, and gave way to people like my grandpa’s favorite artist, Red Sovine, who was really more of a spoken word orator than a country singer.
While there’s a sad sappy nature to Luke The Drifter’s recordings, one song sticks out.
“Ramblin’ Man” is written in a sinister minor key featuring Williams’ signature yodel, describing the life of a man who feels an unnatural pull to wander on through life no matter what tried to make him settle down.
It’s hard not to see this as almost a confessional from Williams. While most people look to “I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive” as the song that haunts his legacy, “Ramblin’ Man” feels more apt as a dark look inside himself.