Hank Williams: The Biography by Escott Colin

Author:Escott, Colin [Escott, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography
ISBN: 9780316734974
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 10371057
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Published: 1994-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

The more you earn, the less you learn To relax-ez vous

Dean Martin, “Relaxez Vous”

THE HADDY-COLE BOUNCE

HANK had been surrounded all his professional life by snake-oil salesmen who used more or less unregulated airtime to sell everything from absolution to job lots of live chicks shipped by mail. He acquired a little arsenal of come-ons and self-deprecating jokes that he would trot out when he was in the business of selling something. “Friends,” he would often say, concluding his pitch, “I don’t need the money, but the folks I owe it to need it awful bad.”

Good as Hank was, Senator Dudley J. LeBlanc could make him and most other salesmen look like rank amateurs. Dudley Joseph LeBlanc was born in Youngsville, Louisiana, on August 16, 1894, and claimed to trace his ancestry back to René LeBlanc in Longfellow’s Evangeline. He grew up speaking nothing but French, and never lost his Cajun accent. LeBlanc was fiercely proud of his heritage and eventually published a book on Acadian culture. After graduating from Southwestern Louisiana Institute, he became a salesman for a shoe company, working the same patch in north Louisiana as Huey P. Long. LeBlanc and Long were both formidable salesmen, and came to mistrust, then detest each other as only rival salesmen can.

After World War I, LeBlanc got his introduction to selling patent medicines when he represented Wine of Cardui, fetchingly called a “woman’s tonic.” His first brush with politics came in 1924 when he stood as a candidate for the state legislature in Vermilion Parish, and won. This was at a time when the hot issues of the day included care of Confederate veterans. In 1932, he stood for governor, but lost. LeBlanc then concentrated on his own patent medicines, starting with Happy Day Headache Powder, a concoction that, in common with most of his remedies, contained a stiff dose of laxative.

In 1942, after another unsuccessful stab at the governorship and the Public Service Commission, LeBlanc fell ill with beriberi, and was cured with vitamin B1 compounds. With the unquenchable enthusiasm of the autodidact, he set out to learn everything he could about vitamins, and then began distilling his own compound in the family barn. It was a mixture of vitamins, minerals, honey and — not least — 12 percent alcohol. It was dubbed HADACOL, a rough acronym from HAppy DAy CO., topped off with an L for LeBlanc. Its alcohol content was roughly the same as wine, but at $3.50 it was four times as expensive and immeasurably more foul-tasting so that people would believe it was doing them some good. With many dry counties still in the South, Hadacol was the closest to a nip that many folk out on the rural routes could get — from a bottle with a label on it, at least.

Hadacol went on the market in 1945 after LeBlanc had tested it on his cattle, himself, and his neighbors. Sales were static for a while as he rekindled his political ambitions, becoming a state senator in 1948.

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