Following Steve Earle’s new novel, ‘I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive’ which is a fictional story about a fictional doctor who treated Hank Williams in his final days, comes news of two new books on Hank.
Paul MacPhail who has written a number of books on country and rockabilly stars has a new book on Hank Williams coming out this fall. It’s called ‘Hank Williams from the Cradle to the Grave’. I’m really looking forward to this one. As I understand it, the biography will cover Hank’s life on a day to day basis. This book will do a lot to get the truth about Hank out there. As we all know, Hank’s biographers such as Colin Escott have overplayed Hank’s drinking, hopelessly underplayed the seriousness of his chronic back problem and extremely experimental and dangerous surgery. They’ve tried to show him from the Opry point of view as irresponsible and lazy. A Hank Williams day by day account should dispel some of these cruel misrepresentations.
MacPhail can be reached at: p.macphail@hotmail.com
Steve Mertz has written a novel with an interesting premise, a meeting between Hank Williams and Muddy Waters in Louisiana in 1952. It’s called, what else, ‘Hank and Muddy’ and covers some hair-raising adventures in Shreveport. Now all you Hank purists don’t get your shirts in a knot, it’s just fiction, everybody knows it’s fiction and with Hank in the grave now for nearly 60 years, it won’t do his reputation any more harm than those slanted biographies we’ve had to read. It keeps the name and image out there.
More on Mertz’ book HERE.
The news has been full of articles about Steve Earle’s book. I wrote a little piece earlier.
A Hank Williams Journal 