Oh, Lonesome Me-With The Music Of Hank
Williams In Mind
By Zack James
It had never occurred to Seth Garth
when he was asked to write some commentary, some thoughts about Hank Williams
back in 2003 on the 50th anniversary of that famous country singer’s
death that he could actually do the assignment. Although he was just then winding
down his career as a journalist and had long ago given up the thankless job of
writing music reviews (thankless since like with most musical tastes his
opinions would run up against, good or bad, some partisan who though he didn’t know
music from baked beans, or something like that) when Benny Gold his old editor from
the American Folk Music Review asked
him to, pretty please, write a short article noting the anniversary he could hardly
refuse since along the way Benny had given him many juicy assignments and
passes back stage to see and interview many great performing artists.
But the fact of the matter, the hard
fact of the matter was that Seth had, if he thought about country music at all,
hated the very thought of it. Not that for the previous forty or fifty years he
had thought about it much. Country music though had a great deal to do with his
father, his father who had abandoned his family for another woman, and a life
on the wild side when he was just twelve. And while Seth had gotten over the
worse parts of his father’s departure, as well as could be expected he always associated
the stuff with his father’s incessant playing of that kind of music when he was
on one of his “three day drunks.” When he would refuse to go to work and sat around
the house drinking his cheap whiskey and playing that god awful music, that Hank
William stuff worse of all, he would sing along on those lonesome songs.
Yeah, his father, Jeb (after Jeb Stuart
his father would say the Confederate general who raised hell with the Yankee
lines during the American Civil War), Jeb Garth, had been born down in the Podunk
town of Lydell, Arkansas, had joined the Navy when the Nips (his father’s term
for the Japanese enemy) blew Pearl Harbor to hell and had after serving in many
of the great Pacific War sea battles on a destroyer, the U.S.S. Forrest, had been
assigned to the Portsmouth Naval Depot up in New Hampshire as he awaited discharge
when the shooting was over and had met his mother, Dora, at a USO dance when
she was up there visiting a cousin and the rest was history, family history.
What had gotten to Seth was that old
Jeb had fancied himself a country singer, a guy who could cover Hank Williams
songs and had actually if you could believe him been in a country band, The Swinging
Cowboys, which played in the Ozarks before the war. That was where he also picked
up his drinking habit which got worse according to his mother after all his
disappointments with jobs and not getting ahead after the war. Also where he
picked up his reputation as the “Sheik” which is obviously the draw he had on
his mother. In any case no good came of whatever talents he might have had back
before the war and, secretly for a while, Seth had been glad when he had run off
for parts unknown with that tramp of his (his mother’s term).
So it was with a bit of trepidation that
Seth grabbed a greatest hits CD of Hank’s to see what the big deal was about
his effect on all kinds of singers in various genres which had nothing to do
with country music. Here’s the odd, odd thing though. Seth finally figured what
it was about Hank that grabbed his father’s attention. Hank had basically been
a loner, been a guy who dealt with love in a bad way, been burned too by a
wrong first marriage, had let the booze do him in as well. Now Seth understood
what had driven his father out of the house, had driven him far from the North that
was not hospitable to him, had maybe gone in one last search for fame and fortune.
Never heard from him, or about him after he left for good. But Hank had been his
muse. Was the “ max daddy” of the lonesome guys who came of age back in the
1940s.
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