Hank Williams, Jr.

41
Hank Williams, Jr. bigraphy, stories - American country singer-songwriter

Hank Williams, Jr. : biography

May 26, 1949 –

Randall Hank Williams (born May 26, 1949), better known as Hank Williams, Jr. and Bocephus, is an American country singer-songwriter and musician. His musical style is often considered a blend of Southern rock, blues, and traditional country. He is the son of country music singer Hank Williams and the father of Hank Williams III, Holly Williams, Hilary Williams, Samuel Williams, and Katie Williams.

Williams began his career by following in his famed father’s footsteps, singing his father’s songs and imitating his father’s style. Williams’s own style slowly evolved as he struggled to find his own voice and place within the country music industry. This trend was interrupted by a near-fatal fall off the side of Ajax Mountain in Montana on August 8, 1975. After an extended recovery, he challenged the country music establishment with a blend of country, rock, and blues. Williams enjoyed much success in the 1980s, from which he earned considerable recognition and popularity both inside and outside the country music industry.

As a multi-instrumentalist, Williams’s repertoire of skills include guitar, bass guitar, upright bass, steel guitar, banjo, dobro, piano, keyboards, harmonica, fiddle, and drums.

From 1989 until October 2011, a version of his song "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight" was used as the opening for broadcasts of Monday Night Football.

Biography

Early life and career

Williams was born on May 26, 1949, in Shreveport, Louisiana. His father nicknamed him Bocephus (after Grand Ole Opry comedian Rod Brasfield’s ventriloquist dummy). After his father’s untimely death in 1953, he was raised by his mother, Audrey Williams. While he was a child, a number of contemporary musicians visited his family, who influenced and taught him various music instruments and styles. Among these figures of influence were Johnny Cash, Fats Domino, Earl Scruggs, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Williams first stepped on the stage and sang his father’s songs when he was eight years old. In 1964, he made his recording debut with "Long Gone Lonesome Blues", one of his father’s many classic songs.

Williams provided the singing voice of his father in the film Your Cheatin’ Heart.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058765/ He also recorded an album of duets with recordings of his father.

Williams’ early career was guided, and to an extent some observers say outright dominated, by his mother, who is widely claimed as having been the driving force that led his late father to musical superstar status during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Audrey, in many ways, promoted young Hank Jr. as a Hank Williams impersonator, even to the extent of having stage clothes designed for him that were identical to his father’s, and encouraging vocal styles very similar to those of his father.

A change in appearance and musical direction

Although Williams’s recordings earned him numerous country hits throughout the 1960s and early 1970s with his role as a "Hank Williams impersonator", he became disillusioned and severed ties with his mother.

By the mid-1970s, Williams began to pursue a musical direction that would eventually make him a superstar. While recording a series of moderately successful songs, Williams began a heavy pattern of both drug and alcohol abuse. Upon moving to Alabama, in an attempt to refocus both his creative energy and his troubled personal life, Williams began playing music with Southern rock musicians, among them Jake Lovendahl, Waylon Jennings, Toy Caldwell, Charlie Daniels, and others. Hank Williams, Jr. and Friends, often considered his watershed album, was the product of these then-groundbreaking collaborations. In 1977, Williams recorded and released One Night Stands and The New South, and worked closely with his old friend Waylon Jennings on the album Once and For All.

On August 8, 1975, Williams was nearly killed in a mountain-climbing accident. While he was climbing Ajax Peak in Montana, the snow beneath him collapsed and he fell almost 500 feet onto rock. He suffered multiple skull and facial fractures.To hide the scars and the disfigurement from the accident, Williams grew a beard and began wearing sunglasses and a cowboy hat. The beard, hat, and sunglasses have since become his signature look, and he is rarely seen without them.