Hank William's life was one long rabbit hole

Hank left us with music that still crackles with the torment that drove it.

Born in Butler County, Alabama in 1923 Hank arrived with Spina Bifida Occulta, a birth defect which affects the spine and can result in lifelong back pain. Such was Hank's lot.

Back then radio was king, Hank listened, got himself a guitar and looked for inspiration. Street performer Rufus 'Tee Tot' Payne was his muse, ('Tee Tot' beacuse his bottle usually held a mixture of tea and total booze, hence 'Tee-Tot') Tee Tot taught Hank the basics of guitar playing, chord progressions fret-work and such and Hank took it all in.

He added stories as lyrics and began playing on the street in Montgomery Alabama, often in front of the office of radio station WSFA (the initials stood for With the South's Finest Airport...I love that!)

WSFA producers heard him and invited him to play the occasional song live on-air. The audience loved it and demanded more of 'that singing kid'. Hank was given two 15 minutes slots a week on a salary. Was that the first view of the rabbit hole?

This local fame and the cash meant Hank could form his own band 'The Driftin' Cowboys' and drift they did across the adjoining states, playing bars, honky-tonks and anywhere else they were invited. Touring then had no tour bus, just a couple of jalopies with Hank often on the back seat, nursing his back pain with whatever bottle of booze came handy.

The rabbit hole grew bigger as war took hold. The rest of the band were enlisted but Hank fell off a bull at a rodeo in Texas and was medically deferred. His continual boozing lost him his radio show and he spent the rest of the war working in a shipyard and playing in bars.

Hank once again fell down the rabbit hole due to booze when it meant his being dropped from the 'Grand Old Opry', a TV show which, for others, was a step into stardom.

The rest of Hank's life was to him, a blur of booze and pills. To others it seemed a mystery how Hank could, time after time, turn gold into dust.

Hank died in 1952 on the back seat of  a Cadillac aged just twenty-nine

Thankfully the music survived, Youtube has Hank singing 'I Saw The Light ' and thankfully Mark Ribowsky has supplied the best memorial to Hank in this new and beautifully crafted biography.

Scribble down the ISBN 9781631491573 and take it your local bookshop, it's in stock at mine.

Another rabbit hole soon...