AA.VV. - The Lost Notebooks Of Hank Williams
2011 (Egyptian / cmf / columbia)
country
6
An old leather bag. A bag worn down by time, a bag with frayed stitching. Hank Williams always carried it with him, to keep the notebooks in which he jotted down the lyrics of his songs. Then, once he'd filled a notebook to its very last page, he'd put it away in a cardboard box, along with all the other pages densely covered in his neat, small handwriting.
When, on New Year's Eve 1953, his lifeless body was found in the back seat of a Cadillac, that box remained his most precious legacy. Dozens of songs that the father of American country music never had time to record, torn from his tormented existence even before he reached the age of thirty.
"The Lost Notebooks Of Hank Williams" is the story of the words contained in that box. And of how, more than fifty years later, they managed to find their way back to being heard.
Credit goes first of all to Lillian Stone, Hank Williams's mother, who immediately handed her son's notebooks over to the publishing house Acuff-Rose. Over the years, those notebooks were jealously preserved in the archives. Then, in 2001, record executive Mary Martin saw an image of Hank Williams's old notes in a memorabilia book put together by Colin Escott and Kira Florita, "Snapshots From The Lost Highway". "I started thinking we should do something with those songs," she recalls. After all, the tribute album "Timeless", dedicated precisely to the songs of Hank Williams, had just won a Grammy for "Best Country Album".
"The emotions Hank Williams left in those notebooks needed expert excavators to brush off the dust and bring out their power," observes Michael McCall of the Country Music Hall Of Fame in the liner notes of "The Lost Notebooks Of Hank Williams". And so Mary Martin decided to reach out to the archaeologist of American music par excellence: Bob Dylan.
Dylan has never hidden his reverence for Hank Williams. In the first volume of his autobiography, "Chronicles", he recalled the very first time he heard him sing on the "Grand Ole Opry", Nashville's legendary radio show: "The sound of his voice went through me like a jolt of electricity, like a comet streaking across the sky. It was like he'd found a way to defy gravity." In Hank Williams's songs, Dylan always found something capable of surviving time: "I knew his voice would never fade out, never go away. A voice as beautiful as a ship's horn."
Setting the lost verses of the "Hillbilly Shakespeare" to music was, in short, a challenge Dylan didn't hesitate for a moment to take on. Around him a group of about a dozen artists gradually gathered, ready to join him in the undertaking, starting with two of the key figures from the 2001 tribute, Lucinda Williams and Sheryl Crow.
Faced with the idea of "The Lost Notebooks Of Hank Williams", the inevitable comparison is with the work done by Billy Bragg and Wilco on Woody Guthrie's lyrics across the two volumes of "Mermaid Avenue". The differences between the two projects, though, are clear from the very first notes: where "Mermaid Avenue" was driven by the boldness of reappropriation, "The Lost Notebooks Of Hank Williams" feels far more static and traditionalist throughout. A faithful tribute to the Hank Williams canon, rather than a new take on it.
It's no coincidence that this seems to be exactly the philosophy behind the choice of artists coming from a strictly country background, like Alan Jackson, Patty Loveless or Hank Williams's own blonde granddaughter, Holly. What's missing, however, is personality in the performances. Dylan, tackling "The Love That Faded", delivers a waltz embroidered with Donnie Herron's steel guitar and violin, in the spirit of the most classicist moments of his recent work. The dusty, half-spoken delivery of Vince Gill and Rodney Crowell lends a western flavor to "I Hope You Shed a Million Tears", while Norah Jones's velvety voice, on "How Many Times Have You Broken My Heart?", confirms the love for Hank Williams she'd already shown back at the time of her breakout debut "Come Away With Me" (which included a cover of "Cold, Cold Heart").
To find some fresher openings, one has to turn to the twang of Jack White on "You Know That I Know" or the acoustic sketch for voice and guitar by Jakob Dylan on "Oh, Mama, Come Home". But Hank Williams's mythical stature seems to inspire a reverent gaze in everyone, and perhaps it could not have been otherwise.
The last word belongs to the deep timbre of one of country music's sacred monsters, Merle Haggard. With the solidity of an old prophet, it's his voice that gives body to the biblical pages of "The Sermon On The Mount" and their promise of eternity. A promise that, from the yellowed sheets of Hank's notebook, makes its way intact to our hearts.
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01/11/2011
This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Gabriele Benzing, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.
Tracklist
- 1. You've Been Lonesome, Too - Alan Jackson
- 2. The Love That Faded - Bob Dylan
- 3. How Many Times Have You Broken My Heart? - Norah Jones
- 4. You Know That I Know - Jack White
- 5. I'm So Happy I Found You - Lucinda Williams
- 6. I Hope You Shed A Million Tears - Vince Gill And Rodney Crowell
- 7. You're Through Fooling Me - Patty Loveless
- 8. You'll Never Again Be Mine - Levon Helm
- 9. Blue Is My Heart - Holly Williams
- 10. Oh, Mama, Come Home - Jakob Dylan
- 11. Angel Mine - Sheryl Crow
- 12. The Sermon On The Mount - Merle Haggard
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