Hank Williams as Luke the Drifter
| Hank Williams as Luke the Drifter | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by Hank Williams | ||||
| Released | 1953 | |||
| Genre | Country, talking blues, spoken word, gospel | |||
| Label | MGM | |||
| Producer | Fred Rose | |||
| Hank Williams chronology | ||||
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Hank Williams as Luke the Drifter is an LP by Hank Williams released by MGM Records in 1954. It features narrations that Williams released under the pseudonym Luke the Drifter.
Spoken word, moralistic narrations and talking blues had always been a tradition in country music and were still commercially viable in the late 1940s; T. Texas Tyler's narration of "Deck of Cards" became one of the best selling records of 1948. Still, Williams' producer Fred Rose remained dubious:
Rose and Williams settled on the pseudonym "Luke the Drifter." No attempt was made to hide the fact that Hank was Luke the Drifter, and the singer would play along; on his radio shows he would say, "And here's a number by one of my closest relatives, Luke the Drifter,' or he'd say, "Here's one by my half brother." Williams' insistence on doing the material, which he must have known would not result in hits, speaks to his artistry; in the episode of American Masters dedicated to the singer, his grandson Hank Williams III states, "While Hank was at the peak of his career, he had another side to him that he wanted to get out, and that side was called Luke the Drifter. And a lot of people didn't understand the Luke the Drifter side. That's a dark side, man." In the same documentary, songwriter Danny Dill confirms, "He was fascinated by the dark side of life." Luke the Drifter became a kind of alter ego for Williams, with country music historian Colin Escott observing in his essay for the 2001 Polygram album Hank Williams as Luke the Drifter: Beyond the Sunset, "If Hank could be headstrong and willful, a backslider and a reprobate, then Luke the Drifter was compassionate and moralistic, capable of dispensing all the wisdom that Hank Williams ignored."
The Luke the Drifter songs were recorded at various sessions between January 1950 and July 1952 at Castle Studio in Nashville with Fred Rose producing. Williams' immense popularity and unflagging commercial success left Rose and MGM no choice but to indulge his wish to record the recitations, and the first session, held on January 10, 1950, produced four songs: "Too Many Parties and Too Many Pals," "Beyond the Sunset," "The Funeral," and "Everything's Okay." Although credited to Williams, "The Funeral" had existed for years as a poem written by Will Carleton and recounts a black child's funeral. Although "uncomfortably patronizing by today's standards," there is no hint of anything other than sincerity in Hank's delivery. While the Luke the Drifter recordings are primarily associated with sad songs, they also included wry compositions about love and even politics; on August 31, 1950, Williams recorded the anti-Stalin novelty "No, No, Joe," which had been written by producer Fred Rose as a warning to the Russian leader as the Cold War began gaining momentum. In addition, "Just Waitin'" and "I've Been Down That Road Before" are witty commentaries on the peculiarities of human behavior. One number composed by Williams, "Please Make Up Your Mind," was likely directed at his wife Audrey Williams; their tempestuous marriage would end in divorce in 1952, and the songs sound like pleas of reconciliation. Williams also covered the Bonnie Dodd narration "Be Careful of Stones that You Throw," which takes aim at small-town gossip based on the social mores of the time; the song recounts the heroic act of a young lady who is killed while saving a child from a passing car, the same child whose mother had previously ostracized her.
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