Hank Williams, Jr. Interview

Randall Hank Williams (born May 26, 1949), known professionally as Hank Williams Jr. or Bocephus, is an American singer-songwriter and musician. He is the son of country musician Hank Williams.
Williams was born Randall Hank Williams on May 26, 1949, in Shreveport, Louisiana. His father nicknamed him Bocephus (after Grand Ole Opry comedian Rod Brasfield's ventriloquist dummy).[2] After his father's death in 1953, he was raised by his mother, Audrey Williams.

While he was a child, a number of contemporary musicians visited his family, who influenced and taught him various music instruments and styles.[citation needed] Among these figures of influence were Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Fats Domino, Earl Scruggs, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Williams first stepped on the stage and sang his father's songs when he was eight years old.

He attended John Overton High School in Nashville, Tennessee, where he would bring his guitar to music class and play for pep rallies and performances of the choir.

Career[edit source]
Williams began his career following in his famed father's footsteps, covering his father's songs and imitating his father's style. Williams' first television appearance was in a 1964 episode of ABC's The Jimmy Dean Show, in which at age fourteen he sang several songs associated with his father. Later that year, he was a guest star on Shindig!.[3]

In 1964, Williams made his recording debut with "Long Gone Lonesome Blues", one of his father's many classic songs.[4]

He provided the singing voice of his father[5] in the 1964 film Your Cheatin' Heart.[6] He also recorded an album of duets with recordings of his father.[5]

A change in appearance and musical direction[edit source]
Williams' mother Audrey gave him his stage name of 'Hank Williams Jr' and insisted that he continue singing his father's music, becoming a "Hank Williams impersonator". Though his recordings, many of which were covers of his father's songs, did earn him several country hits (see discography), Williams became disillusioned as he aged, which was exacerbated by inattentive and hostile crowds who demanded to hear only Hank Sr.'s songs.

In Ken Burns' 2019 miniseries Country Music, Williams tells of how he began to realize that, "Daddy don't need me to promote him". After turning 18 in 1967, he severed ties with his mother and began to write and record more of his own material, though he continued to struggle with belligerent reactionary audiences; during this time he began a heavy pattern of drug and alcohol abuse. In an attempt to turn himself around he moved to Muscle Shoals, Alabama and began playing music with Southern rock musicians including Waylon Jennings, Toy Caldwell, and Charlie Daniels. By the mid-70s, with the release of Hank Williams Jr. and Friends, he pursued a musical direction that would eventually make him a superstar.

On August 8, 1975, Williams was nearly killed in a mountain-climbing accident in southwestern Montana. While climbing Ajax Peak on the continental divide (Idaho border) west of Jackson, the snow beneath him collapsed and he fell almost 500 feet (150 m) onto rock; he suffered multiple skull and facial fractures.[7][8][9][10] The incident was chronicled in the semi-autobiographical, made-for-television film Living Proof: The Hank Williams Jr. Story. He spent two years in recovery, having several reconstructive surgeries in addition to having to learn to talk and sing again. To hide the scars and the disfigurement from the accident, Williams grew a beard and began wearing sunglasses and a cowboy hat. The beard, hat, and sunglasses have since become his signature look, and he is rarely seen without them.[citation needed]

In 1977, Williams recorded and released One Night Stands and The New South, and worked closely with his old friend Waylon Jennings on the song "Once and For All".[citation needed]

In 1980, he appeared on the PBS show Austin City Limits during Season 5, along with the Shake Russell-Dana Cooper Band.