CHAPTER 17 | POSTWAR COUNTRY MUSIC 419
whether coal mining (“Dark as a Dungeon”), truck driving (“Six Days on the
Road”), or factory work (“Detroit City”). Other songs touch on themes of alcohol-
ism, adultery, and divorce. Though a few songs celebrate the party atmosphere
of the honky-tonk as an escape from reality, most treat their subjects with a
moral seriousness that attests to Protestant fundamentalism’s strong grip on
musicians and listeners alike. Paradoxically, bright tempos, simple major-mode
harmonies, and danceable rhythms seem to encourage listeners to dance (and
drink) their cares away even as the lyrics offer a pessimistic, guilt-ridden view
of the sins of drinking and dancing: “Driving Nails in My Coffi n” (“every time
I drink a bottle of booze”), “Walking the Floor over You,” “Born to Lose.” Even
humorous songs address topics like domestic violence, infi delity, and divorce:
“Pistol Packin’ Mama,” “Divorce Me C.O.D.”
Although dominated by men, honky-tonk music made room for a “Queen
of Country Music,” Kitty Wells. Her 1952 hit “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky
Tonk Angels” was an answer song, a response to an earlier hit—in this case,
Hank Thompson’s “The Wild Side of Life,” which accuses women of faithless-
ness in a chorus beginning: “I didn’t know God made honky-tonk angels.”
Wells’s song merely added to the stereotype of the loose-living honky-tonk
angel a countervailing stereotype: the long-suffering wife as victim. Still, her
answer song unlocked the door for a conversation about women’s roles that
later country singers like Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton would swing wide
open.
Of the honky-tonk singers and song writers who emerged in the postwar
years, none equaled Hank Williams in popularity and lasting infl uence. With
his western-style outfi ts and a band called the Drifting Cowboys, Williams, a
native of Alabama, molded his Deep South background to the Texan stage per-
sona that was de rigueur for honky-tonk. Williams came to prominence in the
late 1940s on radio barn dances, fi rst the Louisiana Hayride and then the Grand
Ole Opry. He briefl y had his own radio “song and patter” program, the Health
and Happiness Show, and appeared on WSM’s television broadcasts. Within a
few years he had created a body of songs that remain country standards: “Your
Cheating Heart,” Hey, Good-Lookin’,” “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Cold,
Cold Heart,” “Jambalaya,” and many others. His light, nasal baritone invested
his lyrics with emotion, so that listeners felt he had lived the stories his songs
related. That sense of authenticity, along with his alcohol-related death at age
twenty-nine on New Year’s Day 1953, made Hank Williams the country equiva-
lent of the meteoric rock stars who would later, directly or indirectly, follow his
example.
Although best known for singing his own songs, Williams sings “Lost
Highway” (LG 17.2), a song by Leon Payne, with such conviction that it feels auto-
biographical. Williams accompanies himself on guitar, playing a characteris-
tic sock rhythm: gentle chords on beats 1 and 3 of each bar, alternating with
short, accented chords on beats 2 and 4, thus emphasizing the backbeat and
encouraging dancing. The stand-up bass lays down a steady foundation on beats
1 and 3, and the texture is fi lled out by electric guitar (a hollow-bodied instru-
ment enhanced by the mellow sound of a vacuum-tube amplifi er), pedal steel
guitar (also electrically amplifi ed), and two acoustic instruments, fi ddle and
mandolin—the latter an unusual member of a honky-tonk band.K Hank Williams (1923–1953),
singer, guitarist, and songwriter
whose music continued to be a
presence in country music long
after his early death.LG 17.2172028_17_412-439_r3_sd.indd 419 23/01/13 10:58 AM