“... and I  cried!”

If this sounds like a title to a country song, it’s possible, but I am speaking about the death of Hank Williams on January 1, 1953.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, eating the noonday meal with my family, when the announcer came on with the announcement about the death of Hank Williams, that singing troubadour of song from Alabama, who had taken the nation by storm with his heart-wrenching songs, which sometimes tore out a heart.

He was in essence a GREAT poet, setting his words to music in a fashion that enveloped you in his thoughts on life. He wrote about life, its trials and tribulations -- and he NEVER forgot to write about a higher power in his life. Although he battled many difficulties, his brilliant mind put a spell on you with his plaintive songs so powerfully true.

And so I wanted to write JUST LIKE HANK WILLIAMS!!!!

In fact, I have a copy of the booklet he co-authored with Jimmy Rule, which sought to tell the aspiring songwriter (this thing about writing country music songs is nothing new, however) how he might, also, write a song and get it published and recorded.

That desire to create something musically enlightening had me in its grips from an early age, and I was DETERMINED, just like Hank Williams, to have the masses hear what I had created ... if ONLY Nashville would listen.

But Nashville resented people like me, who told it like it was, and when I later became editor of MUSIC CITY NEWS   and wrote my first editorial espousing my belief in how we, the country music industry, should promote traditional country, I was pounced on like dogs engulfing a bone totally whole! That was 1966 -- and the modernization of country music was in full swing, AND NO ONE must derail the new apple cart that the Country Music Association and others had envisioned for the NEW Nashville ... WITHOUT the twang.

Even some of the country music artists DEMANDED that I be fired. How dare I suggest that country music was to stay the course! But thankfully, the new publisher of MUSIC CITY NEWS in the mid 60s found me to have a sound mind. Faron Young had lost controlling interest in the publication which he had founded, and I was given more leeway to produce  “one of the best” country music publications to ever come out of Nashville.

But, in the end, it was a losing battle, and so when I was fired from my job at a Nashville suburban weekly newspaper (I worked at both publications at basically the same time), by 1980 I had written a book on country music, entitled:  STORM OVER NASHVILLE: A Case Against Modern Country Music, which predicted the fall and decline of country music as we knew it in the heyday of Hank Williams, Roy Acuff and the EARLY Eddy Arnold. The last chapter in the book, interestingly, spoke about bluegrass music as “the salvation” of country music!

Since 1980, many books have been written on country music (at that time there were LESS than a dozen books listed with a country music theme), and several of them have noted my stand on keeping country music country. But if The Country Music Association had had their way, that book would have never seen the light of day ... when I was so bold as to try and define what country music actually was. In the opening to the book, I had written:

“Country music--songs of the soil, the heartbeat of America -- is an expression of life as it is lived by country people. Country music is a music of simplicity; a music of the banjo, guitar and fiddle, a music which speaks of simple things in a simple, understandable, sing able way. Country music is the music of country people accompanied by simple, unaffected musical backing.”

And for making that SIMPLE statement, the CMA threatened me with a lawsuit to stop publication.

But early on, Roger Williams (no relation to Hank), a writer for NEWSWEEK (if I recall correctly), wrote one of the earliest books on Hank Williams and called it: SING A SAD SONG, THE LIFE OF HANK WILLIAMS ... which was published by Doubleday of New York on May 1, 1970 — and Roger was kind enough to interview me, since I remained with MUSIC CITY NEWS, although no longer editor, as I continued to write features, a country column and, YES, a column on Bluegrass music.

Everett Corbin
Murfreesboro, TN