Reviews
The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams
Malcolm Doney
Various
Epyptian Records
Johnny Ray, the US singer of the 1950s who prefigured rock
'n'roll, was known as the Nabob of Sob, for his extravagant,
tear-stained performances. Yet this title, or Ray's other
soubriquet, The Prince of Wails, could have equally applied to his
contemporary, the country singer-songwriter Hank Williams.
Williams' miserablist ballads, including 'Your Cheatin' Heart' and
'So Lonesome I Could Cry', earned him the reputation as one of the
saddest songwriters of all time.
Williams had a difficult life, much of the hardship
self-inflicted, and died at the age of 29 in the back of a
Cadillac, full of booze and morphine. Yet in that short span - with
his biscuits-and-gravy voice and his drawled recitations - he set
the standard for mournful country music.
Bob Dylan was a big Hank Williams fan from very early on and so,
when he was handed four exercise books containing unrecorded lyrics
by the great man, lost since his death, he was pleased to play a
part in helping his mentor live on. The original idea was that
Dylan would write tunes to some of the songs, but the task was too
daunting, and the job was divvied up among a series of other
singer-songwriters, some country and some not.
The result is The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams,
which is only the second release on Dylan's own label imprint
Egyptian records. It features post-mortem Hank Williams
collaborations with Bob Dylan, Dylan's son Jakob, Jack White, Norah
Jones, Sheryl Crow, Merle Haggard, and others.
The album remains true to the funereal tradition. The opening
lines of the first track, 'You've Been Lonesome, Too', sung by Alan
Jackson, set the tone: 'If your heart has known such pain, until
for death it's cried, only for the Lord to refuse, then you've been
by my side'.
Now I like a sad song. I've gone on record saying that sad music
is infinitely superior to happy music - it is my creedal belief
that Smokey Robinson's 'Tracks of my Tears' is the greatest pop
song ever. But this record takes you down a dark spiral. Part of
the reason could be that most of the featured artists don't so much
doff their caps to Williams but tug their forelocks in abject
servility.
There was a golden opportunity here for songwriters to
reinterpret Williams for another decade, but what we have here, by
and large, is an exercise in plagiarism.
There are one or two exceptions. Norah Jones's reworking of 'How
Many Times Have You Broken My Heart?' still contains Williams's
country DNA, but adds her own genes to create the album's stand out
track. Jakob Dylan outperforms his old man with a deceptively
simple treatment of 'Oh, Mama, Come Home'. And Holly Williams,
Hank's granddaughter, keeps the family tradition alive with the
heart-aching 'Blue is My Heart', to which her father, Hank Williams
Jr, adds a delightful growl on backing vocals.
The project has not been best served by a country standard,
plinkety-plonk, plunkety-plunk, backing (performed by Dylan's
touring band) with too much whiny pedal steel. These guys can
really play, but it's all too reverential. Frankly, Hank Williams
could write badly, as well as beautifully. There's a lot of
doggerel on display here, and we have to remember this was a time
when you could rhyme 'charms' with 'arms' (as happens on 'I Hope
You Shed a Million Tears'), without a note of apology - and simply
playing along with it doesn't improve matters.
The album throws up a couple of - presumably accidental -
moments of hilarity. The one song which celebrates falling in love,
'I'm So Happy I Found You,' is sung as such a dirge by Lucinda
Williams that it becomes positively painful. And Merle
Haggard's sentimental re-telling of the musical tract 'The Sermon
on the Mount', complete with oily recitation, is a laugh a minute.
I greatly enjoyed being told gravely: 'So take the straight and
narrow, and do good things that count. Make up your mind to live by
the Sermon on the Mount'. Yee ha!
Ultimately, this is a novelty record for Hank Williams fans.
It's unlikely to make Hank turn in his grave, which is a shame.
Nobody here has done much to burnish Williams's work or resurrect
it. Graveside revisitations like this ought to provide the
opportunity for a bolder, more playful 'Roll over Beethoven'
moment. But it doesn't. Sad, really.
Malcolm Doney