William York

William Herbert "Lum" York, (November 16, 1918 – August 15, 2004) was a musician best known as the bass player in Hank Williams Drifting Cowboys from 1944–1949. After leaving the Drifting Cowboys, York played bass in Lefty Frizzell's band until 1953. York continued to perform until weeks before his death and was a fan favorite at the Hank Williams festival in Georgiana, Alabama.

In rural Alabama, the depression days of the 1930s and early 1940s were rough. Lum York remembers "I only had two pairs of overalls. My mother washed on Wednesdays so I had to wear them all week long."

Lum was born on November 16, 1918 as William Herbert York in the tiny hamlet of Elmore, just about 15 miles north of Montgomery, Alabama. Farming is a hard life at best. This was one of the worst times. Poverty gripped the rural south with an iron fist. To eke out a meager living, crops demanded grueling service. Lum was a schoolboy before they moved to a house with electricity. But life was more than just the backbreaking work of picking cotton and tilling the vegetable patch. On Saturday nights when the family gathered around the radio the Grand Ole Opry, Lum’s lifelong love of music was born. When he was 12, his older brother bought a guitar. Within a year, Lum had taught himself to play by listening to the radio. When his brother joined the army, Lum bought his guitar for fifty cents.

Not far away in Georgiana, Alabama, another child was born in 1923 whose life was destined to link with Lum’s in the creation of the most enduring legend country music has ever known. Hank Williams had won a talent contest at the Montgomery Empire Theater singing an original song entitled "WPA Blues" in December 1937. There was no stopping his music career from that moment. He worked local clubs and did a show on WSFA, a Montgomery radio station.

Lum had to drop out of school to help his mother after his father died. He worked with the CCC, Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Program to help stimulate the economy by allowing boys and young men to work on public buildings and parks for a small salary plus room and board. When Lum returned from the CCC camp, he would hitchhike into town to hear the local bands play. Since he had no money to buy a ticket, he filched eggs from his mother’s chicken house and sold them to local groceries for the admission price. He had heard Hank on the radio and began to hang around the station. They first met in 1939. The friendship remained throughout Hank’s life. The two men worked together as musicians and at various shipyards when the money from the beloved music wasn’t enough to make ends meet.

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