AVID Country presents the latest release in our Four Classic Albums Plus series with a remastered 2CD second release from Hank Williams, complete with original artwork, liner notes and personnel details.
"Hank Williams As Luke The Drifter"; "Hank Williams On Stage"; "Sing Me A Blue Song", and "The Lonesome Sound of" plus three bonus tracks.
Hank Williams was a man of many parts, Country singer Marty Stuart says he's "a part of the fabric of America" … perhaps the first superstar of country music. As musical legends go they don't come much greater than Hiram King "Hank" Williams! Born in 1923 to a "charmless" mother and an absent father, Hank's childhood was shaped by the spina bifida that caused him constant pain and that would go on to be the root cause of his drug and alcohol consumption throughout his short life. Music was the young Hank's passion and by the late thirties he had his own radio show on WFSA in Montgomery, Alabama. It paid fifteen dollars a week, enough for Williams to start his own group which he called The Drifting Cowboys but it wasn't long before his problems with alcohol influenced the progress of his career. He was fired from the radio station and his group were all drafted into the army. By 1945 he was back on WFSA and had been introduced to Roy Acuff and Fred Rose who had begun to recognise Hank's musical talents. By 1946 Hank signed to Sterling Records and months later Fred Rose took Hank to MGM where chart success soon followed. Hank Williams left behind a stunning catalogue of classic songs, all achieved by a man who had not even reached the age of 30!
Due to fantastic demand from our country collectors, AVID are delighted to present our second release of Four Classic Albums by the legendary Hank Williams. Here we delve a little deeper into Hank's catalogue including his classic album as Luke The Drifter and a 1949 radio broadcast featuring Hank live on stage. And to round things out we feature the album The Lonesome Sound Of released with some technical problems and overdubbing after his tragic death in 1953. Not withstanding the technical difficulties MGM faced, as mentioned in the liner notes, we felt this was an important album for this second set. We hope you will enjoy the sound of a man who many during his lifetime referred to as "the sad poet" due to his songs of lost love, loneliness and heartache.