Hank Garland Movie (Biography?) Crazy

[Bill Cunningham]

The movie is now on YouTube and I watched it last night. Maybe this has been discussed before but I grew tired of searching the forum and thought I would make a post.

Overall, it’s obviously low budget. Bad lighting and the sets for the country music scenes look like they were filmed on a community theatre stage.

I heard Dean Parks played Hank’s guitar parts on the soundtrack. Whomever did, it surely was enjoyable as was the rest of the music. However, some of the visual representation, particularly the pantomimed country bands, was cheesy at best. Not to mention the Sho~Bud steels that were out of place. (A minor detail in context of the story)

There are several major story lines that are “interesting” I’ll say. I’m curious how much is credible versus fabricated in the interest of “making an interesting movie”.

Here are a few and they get more bizarre as the movie goes on:

Hank was a temperamental session player and a perfectionist. (Not uncommon)
The record companies and publishers ripped off his composition credit for Jingle Bell Rock and other tunes. (Not uncommon))
The establishment took compromising photos of his wife as blackmail/punishment. (Seriously?)
The Union and other players were mad with Hank’s use of black players for his jazz projects. (Really?)
And the ultimate one, that they were trying to kill him when he had his tragic car accident. (Surely not?)

Interestingly, Hank’s brother and caretaker was a consultant for the production, which doesn’t mean he had control, just paid input. But, one would hope he would have dropped out of the project if he thought it was not credible.

Your thoughts or preferably, factual knowledge?

[Fred Treece]

I saw it when it came out, a few years ago I guess? I don’t remember any of the items you listed in your post, other than that they were all predictable. I wasn’t watching with a critical eye; I just wanted to be entertained on the topic of Hank’s life, since I already knew and loved some of his music. It fell pretty short for me. But, you wanted facts and I can’t help you there.