Lovesick Blues by Paul Hemphill

Author:Paul Hemphill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-10-06T04:00:00+00:00

Three Chords and the Truth

For the first time the word genius was being used to describe Hank, often with tortured attached, but that seemed overly simplistic. Tortured he was, mainly due to his lack of self-esteem and his bad luck with women and his dependence on alcohol to make things better, but “genius” connotes the inexplicable, and if you look deep enough you can find an explanation for just about anything. The Hank Williams who had evolved by 1950, scant months following his dramatic debut on the world scene, was the sum of his parts. He was a simple but sensitive man, poor and uneducated, just looking for love, and that’s where he was coming from when he began expressing himself through his songs. He had no musical tricks up his sleeve, wouldn’t know a simile or a metaphor unless somebody spelled it out for him, hardly knew a flat note from a sharp—indeed, some in the business would sneer, the boy couldn’t even read music—but by now he was too rich to quit. Onstage and in the studio, he was doing what came naturally: desperately telling the story of his life, which kept getting worse. If he had a genius, it was for simplicity.

His partnership with Fred Rose was just that, arguably the most fortuitous collaboration in the history of American music. Rose took pains to downplay his role in the relationship (“Don’t get the idea that I made the guy or wrote his songs for him,” he said, insisting that Hank had “made himself”), but the more he denied his part in Hank’s success the more his disclaimers were regarded as just further evidence of Fred’s natural inclination toward modesty. True, he had been slow in the beginning to fully comprehend the sheer power of Hank’s work and its appeal to the common man—Exhibit A would always be his utter misreading of “Lovesick Blues”—but as time went on he began to see that this could be a match made in heaven: the uneducated Hank would supply the raw material, and the technically proficient Fred would clean it up. Any writer in any discipline, from poetry to fiction to journalism, knows that Mitch Miller had it right when he said every good writer needs a good editor. Fred Rose had lived a hard life, himself, but he was either incapable or unwilling to write about it in such a direct manner; choosing, instead, to write catchy little ditties like “ ’Deed I Do.” Surely, it took his breath away when he saw a writer who could and would confront his hopes and fears and disappointments with such straightforward pain and clarity. Some of the songs were rough, needed work, and Fred figured that’s where he came in if Hank would let him.

As it is in any relationship between a writer and an editor, they had their disagreements in the early days of working together. Fred learned early on not to force-feed Hank any more unsuitable material like “Rootie Tootie”

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