"Cold Cold Heart"
Hank Williams
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Of the hundreds of Hank Williams songs that went on to influence everyone from Bob Dylan to Kurt Cobain, "Cold Cold Heart" is probably the one that best encapsulates his genius.
Direct in its emotional impact - which is reinforced by plaintive pedal steel guitar and Hank’s heart-breaking vocal – it's the nearest a white man ever got to the blues.
Everything that makes country music timeless and great can be found in this 2’42” song: it’s sentimental, but never cloying, moving, but not maudlin, sincere, not ersatz. Above all, "Cold Cold Heart" proves Hank Williams' ability to write right from the heart - he wasn’t known as 'the hillbilly Shakespeare' for nothing. Though, as Merle Kilgore states, the literature he drew on wasn’t necessarily the classics:
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"I said 'Hank, why you reading those sissy books?'" |
"Hank began charting in 1947. A year earlier he had met Fred Rose, co-partner in the hillybilly publishing firm Acuff-Rose which was to become one of the giants in Country Music. Rose was impressed by Hank as a writer and soon began to put all his efforts into his career. It was a legendary partnership ...
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"Fred Rose is a writer of a whole lot of the songs Hank takes credit for" |
... registering three dozen or so Top Ten country hits during his brief lifetime - and these songs ("Your Cheatin’ Heart", "Lost Highway", "You Win Again") laid the foundations for country music as we know it.
But it was "Cold Cold Heart" that turned it all around for Hank Williams back in 1950. Written after an argument with his feisty wife Audrey, or perhaps when Hank discovered she’d had an abortion to rid herself of a child that wasn’t his … whatever inspired it, the words of this song came from somewhere deep within.
To accompany his lyrics, Hank recalled the melody of a little-known 1945 country song, "You’ll Still Be In My Heart". When the finished song reached the ears of pop A&R man Mitch Miller, he persuaded Tony Bennett to record it, much against the singer’s wishes (“Please don’t make me record cowboy songs!” Bennett pleaded). But Miller insisted, and the song became a No.1 hit, five years before rock’n’roll:
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" ... and now I don't regret it at all." |
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Formally structured, with each line posing a musical question that is answered by the following phrase. The melody seems to be essentially Austrian folk song, more lederhosen than leather riding chaps, if you strip away the prairie delivery - there's the octave leap to the first note of line two, and the chromatic figures on lines such as "thing I do" and "doubtful mind". Franz Lehar would have been proud.
Dominic King
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Despite having stormed the Grand Ol’ Opry in 1949 with "Lovesick Blues" and a still unbeaten seven encores, Hank - like Elvis Presley five years later - was still perceived as a country novelty. But like The King, Hank Williams had rock’n’roll in his blood - and, as if to prove it, he died of an overdose in the back of a limo on his way to yet another gig. It was New Year's Day 1953, and he was just 29 years old.
A 2001 tribute album testified to the influence Hank's music still exerts: Ryan Adams, Beck, Johnny Cash, Sheryl Crow, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and Lucinda Williams all lined up to pay tribute to a man who, half a century after his death, is still the undisputed Godfather of country music.
Patrick Humphries
© BBC
Recommended Reading: Hank Williams The Bibliography by Colin Escott (Little Brown, 1994)
Songwriting tips Williams got his inspiration from books.
Get more advice on getting started in our Songwriting Guides. | | |
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