Like many country music stars in his day, Hank Williams augmented the miles spent on the road with his own radio show. And in 1951, when Williams debuted his 15-minute weekday program on WSM Nashville, he was busier than ever. Williams was also on the “Grand Ole Opry” and—because he was so often on the road—many of his broadcasts were prerecorded. The discs, missing for decades and almost junked, have been assembled into a six-CD box set.
If Williams’ folksy self-deprecation as he joshed around between numbers was an act, he wore it with the ease and comfort of a tailored shirt. Although doubtlessly in pain and medicated with alcohol and pills, he is on the mark in the performances captured here. With the accompaniment of highly capable players, each note and high nasal harmony sounds just right as the thump of the big string bass keeps time. Williams is never less than fully engaged in his material, be it the heart-rending agony of “Cold, Cold Heart” or the quiet despair of “Why Should We Try Anymore,” the frisky and upbeat “Why Don’t You Love Me” or the death dirge of “Dear Brother.”
Williams mastered the topical and emotional range he inherited from the early days of country music and rendered them in sometimes strikingly poetic images. His themes were love and loss, life and death and faith in things unseen. The music was kept simple but expressive, even when Williams stepped aside to let the fiddler or steel player solo.
Pictures from Life’s Other Side is packaged as a hardcover, slip-cased, book photo album of Williams during his peak of stardom.
