Oh, Lonesome Me-With The Music Of Hank Williams In Mind

By Zack James

 

It had never occurred to Seth Garth when he was asked to write some commentary, some thoughts about Hank Williams back in 2003 on the 50^th anniversary of that famous country singer’s death that he could actually do the assignment. Although he was just then winding down his career as a journalist and had long ago given up the thankless job of writing music reviews (thankless since like with most musical tastes his opinions would run up against, good or bad, some partisan who though he didn’t know music from baked beans, or something like that) when Benny Gold his old editor from the American Folk Music Review asked him to, pretty please, write a short article noting the anniversary he could hardly refuse since along the way Benny had given him many juicy assignments and passes back stage to see and interview many great performing artists.

But the fact of the matter, the hard fact of the matter was that Seth had, if he thought about country music at all, hated the very thought of it. Not that for the previous forty or fifty years he had thought about it much. Country music though had a great deal to do with his father, his father who had abandoned his family for another woman, and a life on the wild side when he was just twelve. And while Seth had gotten over the worse parts of his father’s departure, as well as could be expected he always associated the stuff with his father’s incessant playing of that kind of music when he was on one of his “three day drunks.” When he would refuse to go to work and sat around the house drinking his cheap whiskey and playing that god awful music, that Hank William stuff worse of all, he would sing along on those lonesome songs.

Yeah, his father, Jeb (after Jeb Stuart his father would say the Confederate general who raised hell with the Yankee lines during the American Civil War), Jeb Garth, had been born down in the Podunk town of Lydell, Arkansas, had joined the Navy when the Nips (his father’s term for the Japanese enemy) blew Pearl Harbor to hell and had after serving in many of the great Pacific War sea battles on a destroyer, the U.S.S. Forrest, had been assigned to the Portsmouth Naval Depot up in New Hampshire as he awaited discharge when the shooting was over and had met his mother, Dora, at a USO dance when she was up there visiting a cousin and the rest was history, family history.                    

What had gotten to Seth was that old Jeb had fancied himself a country singer, a guy who could cover Hank Williams songs and had actually if you could believe him been in a country band, The Swinging Cowboys, which played in the Ozarks before the war. That was where he also picked up his drinking habit which got worse according to his mother after all his disappointments with jobs and not getting ahead after the war. Also where he picked up his reputation as the “Sheik” which is obviously the draw he had on his mother. In any case no good came of whatever talents he might have had back before the war and, secretly for a while, Seth had been glad when he had run off for parts unknown with that tramp of his (his mother’s term).    

So it was with a bit of trepidation that Seth grabbed a greatest hits CD of Hank’s to see what the big deal was about his effect on all kinds of singers in various genres which had nothing to do with country music. Here’s the odd, odd thing though. Seth finally figured what it was about Hank that grabbed his father’s attention. Hank had basically been a loner, been a guy who dealt with love in a bad way, been burned too by a wrong first marriage, had let the booze do him in as well. Now Seth understood what had driven his father out of the house, had driven him far from the North that was not hospitable to him, had maybe gone in one last search for fame and fortune. Never heard from him, or about him after he left for good. But Hank had been his muse. Was the “ max daddy” of the lonesome guys who came of age back in the 1940s.