Ramblin' Rose Book

Taking the backstage tour of the Ryman Auditorium (the Mother Church of Country Music) in Nashville last summer, 2015, I, along with a gaggle of fellow tourists were crowded into the small green room where Johnny Cash, Hank Williams Sr., and countless other legends prepped and relaxed before those storied performances. The little room had a real atmosphere, the kind that even an agnostic might find palpable enough to include the presence of ghosts. The tour guide was a marvelous, chatty, old bird who lived and breathed this stuff, and at one point he posed a question to the crowd asking, "Anybody know any of the nicknames that Hank used to record by?" After a short uncomfortable pause, it was clear nobody knew the answer but me. "Luke the Drifter," I said. "Luke, the Drifter! That's right!"

It was one of those moments where my small pride was tempered by the feeling that everyone else was thinking I was just a big know-it-all.

As it happened, I have a copy of some of Hank's Luke the Drifter material in my vast music archive and had listened to some of it before the tour. I like to prep a little to appreciate tours, whenever possible.

Several years prior to this, I had read this short biography of Williams. The following is the largely untouched review of it I had written in 2008:

I had no idea before reading this book that there were so many biographies of Williams out there, but a quick glance at Amazon confirms this. This one by Paul Hemphill is the latest one [as of 2008], and I'm glad I picked it up for $2 on the clearance shelf at Half Price Books. I can't imagine that any of the other ones are better written or more thoughtful. Maybe some detail is missing that one might encounter in the longer bios, but this one gets at the essence, the faults and the art of the man while giving us the basic facts.

It's barely over 200 pages, so there's no padding. It's refreshing to encounter a biography that's this concise, precise and breezily and intelligently written. I love the device of starting the book with the author's personal first encounter with Williams' music. It gives us a feel for the Southern milieu and sets the scene for the real subject's life, and conveys the pull of Williams' magic art.

The book does a good job of interweaving topics such as how the music industry operated in those days, and touches on such phenomena as border radio, roadhouses, juke joints, the "farm" system of making it to the Grand Ole Opry, and more. And, of course, there's plenty about the hellish marriage of Hank and "Ordrey," as he called her, and his infamous boozing and brawling. For those who want to fill a knowledge gap about a fundamental chapter in the history of American music, this book is a good source.

(kevinR@Ky, 2008, with new prefacing material added in 2016)