A Feeling Called The Blues

Darlin', let's turn back the years/And go back to yesterday/Let's pretend that time has stopped/And I didn't go away

The true common touch is rare. As rare as your dreams and your reality being the same. As rare as an uncontaminated moment of happiness. And Hank Williams-who has now been dead for nearly fifty years-had the ability to open his heart, dip a pencil into it, and communicate deep, simple feelings with a poetic primality that has seldom been approached, let alone matched. I'm not here to stump for Williams; most people who can hear understand the importance of his music, even if they say they don't like country. Williams' songs extend far beyond the boundaries of any genre. He's one of the few artists who if someone can't connect with at least some of his work, well, something has gone seriously wrong.

I could have written about the comprehensive boxed set that came out several years ago, but this collection has all the cuts upon which Williams' reputation is based: "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", "Cold Cold Heart", "Your Cheatin' Heart", "Honky Tonkin'", "You Win Again", and all the rest. In terms of instrumentation and arrangements, there isn't much to discuss; it's basic three-chord country blues. But the lyrics, the performances-and the emotions they evoke-contain endless fodder for review.

"Weary Blues From Waiting" is my favorite Williams song, and, consequently, one of my top five in history. It has such an air of psychic exhaustion, a discontented impatience that it seems even death could not cure. 'Through tears I watch young lovers/As they go strollin' by/For all the things that might have been/God forgive me if I cry.' It's a song beyond tears, and Williams sings with a dry, dispirited resignation similar to blues masters like Robert Johnson and Elmore James.

The tune "Mind Your Own Business" is musically upbeat but contains some of his most bitter lyrics: 'If the wife and I
are fightin'/Brother that's all right/'Cause me and that sweet woman/Got a license to fight/Why don't you mind your own business?'. Here Williams references his stormy relationship with his first wife Audrey and the constant meddling of other people. The snarl in his voice is unconcealed, and the situation is one with which anyone can readily identify.

"Why Should We Try Anymore" and "Let's Turn Back The Years" are similar in that they could be two different visions of the same circumstances. In the former, the singer has reached the conclusion that he and his lover are finished-'False love like ours/Fades with the flowers/So why should we try anymore'-and in the latter, he longs to revive a time when life was idyllic, although we suspect things were never quite that wonderful. Both songs are equally pessimistic, but one is colored by pragmatism and the other by nostalgia.

The dirty, gut-bucket blues of "You're Gonna Change" and "I Just Don't Like This Kind Of Living" have an almost rock'n'roll sensibility, and I'd be willing to bet that Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry, among others, listened to them a few hundred times. The lacerating bitterness is evident here as well: 'Every time you get mad/You pack your rags/And go back to Dad/Tell him lies he don't believe/You're gonna change/Or I'm gonna leave' and 'Why don't you act a little older/And get that chip off of your shoulder/When things go wrong/You go your way/You leave me here to pay and pay'.

All of Williams' songs have uncomfortable moments of truth, humor and beauty. The above half-dozen are ones I particularly like and seem to stand up over repeated listening. It's almost impossible to overpraise Hank Williams because he was one of the geniuses of the twentieth-century. His music will last, and that's the highest compliment I can give.