One place to see the relevant passage: writer Maud Newton’s blog, in a post from 2009. But that essay - especially its appreciation of Hank Williams’s songwriting - is quoted widely. I haven’t read the essay, and the book’s contents aren’t visible via Google Books or Amazon preview. Lyrics (this very generous transcription courtesy of children’s author and music aficionado Brenda Hollyer read her own post about the song here):īut you know that I know Williams’s music is covered in what appears to be an idiosyncratic tome from Harvard University Press (!) called A New Literary History of America, specifically in an essay, “The Song in Country Music,” by Dave Hickey. He set it all to a whimsical swinging rhythm, filled in the gaps in the lyrics, and - well, listen for yourself. White’s take springs, obviously, from the original (a fragment of which appears at top left of this post). Williams is often regarded as a troubadour of heartbreak music, based on songs like “Cold, Cold Heart” and “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” But he also injected into some of his tunes a healthy shot of wry-and-bitters - witness, for instance, “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” Witness, for another instance, Jack White’s interpretation of “You Know That I Know” on the Lost Notebooks album. The result: a recently released album, The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams. In any case, Dylan himself finished and recorded only one, turning the rest over to an interesting handful of collaborators: Jakob Dylan, Merle Haggard, Norah Jones, Sheryl Crowe, Levon Helm, Hank Williams’s granddaughter Holly Williams, Lucinda Williams (unrelated), Alan Jackson, Vince Gill and Rodney Crowell, Patty Loveless, and irrepressible indie chameleon Jack White. Maybe he anticipated these arguments maybe he also felt that even his large, multitude-containing self couldn’t contain Hank Williams. Some comments have questioned whether Dylan should have been that someone. I’ve seen debates whether anyone at all should have attempted to finish these songs. I tried so hard my dear to show that youre my every dream Yet youre afraid each. After a little legal rough-and-tumble (you can probably imagine), they ended up in the hands of Bob Dylan. Paroles de Cold, Cold Heart par Hank Williams feat.
Somehow those sheets of paper found their way into a dumpster outside the offices of Sony/ATV Music Publishing, where they were discovered by a janitor. Aside from their gazillion cover versions to follow, he was also survived by a clutch of handwritten but unfinished lyrics, left behind in that Cadillac and recovered by police at the scene. (You can read the story of that ride here.) Not even 30 years old, he left in his wake a trail of hits which almost single-handedly remade the standard by which country-music songwriting would be judged.īut his songs’ story didn’t end there. Hank Williams fell off this mortal coil, unconscious in the back seat of a Cadillac, on New Year’s Day, 1953.