The Steel Guitar Forum

Ray Price, Faron Young, Carl Smith and a half dozen others. Blatantly purposeful ripoff of Hank Williams Sr. singing style. Talk about jumping on someone else's bandwagon. It wasn't until years into their careers that they tried sounding like themselves. Hank Williams you wrote their lives.

I saw an enterview with Ray Price,He was the front man for Hank Sr.,when Sr. died he kept the Drifting Cowboys as his band,untill one night some guy came up and told him [Man you sound just like old Hank]That's when he knew he had to fire the Cowboys and form a new band. DYKBC.

But before Hank....there was Jimmie Rogers! I hear a lot of Jimmie's stylings in the stuff Hank Sr. recorded a decade later, and in the stuff dozens of other artists did, as well. I'm sure there was probably someone else before Jimmie that he took some of his stylings from.

Most artists ride to fame on someone else's coat-tails, and Hank was no exception.

Yes, Hank Williams was influenced by others that came before him. Jimmie Rodgers, the Blue Yodeller, has already been mentioned. Add the these Roy Acuff, Bob Wills, the Carter Family, and many others.

Anyone who decides to sing Country and Western is going to follow in the footsteps of those before him. After all, the genre has already been developed, and instruments such as guitar, mandoline, steel guitar, fiddle, have become a defining and integral part of the music; if you reinvent it it's not going to be Country & Western.

The man was a giant, and then became a legend because he died way, way too young.

I think it's for people like Hank Don't-Call-Me-'Sr.' Williams that the expression "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" was invented.

All of the stars had to be in perfect alignment to create the genius of Hank Williams, and if there were some "coattail riders," that came along after a person like him, that's certainly not rare or unusual.

Not rare or unusual? Can someone please name another country music artist that was so blatantly copied to the extent of Hank Williams by so many people?

Lefty Frizzelle sure got copied alot. And if you go out of country music and into instrumental music you can find top people being copied like crazy. On Steel guitar for instance there is Don Helms, Jerry Byrd, Buddy Emmons and Lloyd Green. Then there's Louis Armstrong on Trumpet, Bing Crosby's singing.......as was said above, it's the way of the world. What works gets copied.

Kevin, I'm not just referring to country stars like Hank Williams, I'm referring to any genre of music - The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Douglas, and so on.

Greatness is going to spawn imitators, some eventually find their own their voice, others are destined for a life of being good imitators.

Kevin Hatton wrote:Not rare or unusual? Can someone please name another country music artist that was so blatantly copied to the extent of Hank Williams by so many people?

Jimmie Rodgers

More folks copied him than any recorded singer ever, except maybe Elvis, but for country definitely Jimmie Rodgers.

Everyone from Ernest Tubb, Gene Autry, Bill Monroe, Jimmy Skinner, Jimmie Davis, Chester Arthur Burnett, and on and on.

Ernest Tubb, Gene Autry, and Jimmie Davis all started as Jimmie Rodgers "impersonators".
At one point Ernest Tubb was so good at it that Jimmie's widow gave ET Jimmie's Martin 45 with his name inlaid down the fretboard.

Now as for Jimmie Rodgers, he got his style from copying Emmitt Miller.

Our band and male lead vocalist have HW sr, down to a fine art of duplicating.

It took me almost a year but I think I have finally got my non-pedal steel about as close to the Don Helms sound as I feel I can get. A couple of Don's intros could do with some fine tuning but it's coming. (my version that is)

We normally do a 30 minute Hank Williams set when we play out and it goes over very well. That's about the only time when we see the audience actually join in and sing along with us.

Does that mean that everybody was influenced by Tee-Tot???

Kevin Hatton wrote:Not rare or unusual? Can someone please name another country music artist that was so blatantly copied to the extent of Hank Williams by so many people?

...Merle Haggard...

Kevin Hatton wrote:Not rare or unusual? Can someone please name another country music artist that was so blatantly copied to the extent of Hank Williams by so many people?

If there is another artist that was copied as extensively as Hank Sr. it was probably Lefty Frizzel (sorry about the spelling). Listen to very early Haggard and you will see what I mean - there were others. There are also many contemporary artists that lean that direction as well.

In my opinion, it is not necessarily a bad thing to hang your hat on someone else's style, as long as you do not leave it there. We all learn from the greats that came before us. Those who develop their own style may be the greats that come after us.

I have a DVD on Hank Williams.
Hank is said to have commented that he copied Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff and the combination resulted in his sound.

Then someone needs to start a new thread lambasting all of the Roy Acuff/Ernest Tubb hybrids that came later...

I read something about Hank awhile back where he said something to the effect that a pair of early influences were his mother's gospel singing and playing, as well as a couple of local black blues musicians. Sounds like a fairly standard recipe for influencing one's sound back in his era, as far as country music is concerned.

I have this idea that great "popular" music (I include country, jazz, and folk and rock or just about any music that is listened to by humans in that genre), anyways: Great popular music is created when you have a familiar sound/feel/melody and add something fresh and new too it. If you're really avant garde, you may even add something surprising or even jarring.

That is how a culture "progresses" and adapts- by adding new ideas to an existing template. Totally "new" musical ideas are never welcome in the mainstream.

On the pop side, I think a ton of artists thought they were Elvis. Look at one of Billy "Crash" Craddock's LP's and he has a Elvis type jump suit... Even early Conway Twitty had Elvis leanings.

Rock-N-Roll had yet to be coined when Hank was making records - so in some circles, Hank was a pop artist.

very early George Jones.

I listen to Willie's Place all day. You usually will hear eight or ten of these Hank Williams copycats a day. One particular guy made a whole song out of nasily singing the word "why" like Hank Williams twenty times in the same song. "Whyyyyyyy do you (insert favorite line), Whyyyyyyy don't you (insert favorite line), Whyyyyyyyy! Whyyyyyy! Why are you so sad and blue? I'll tell ya buddy. Its because you have no original style and you are blatantly ripping off Hank Williams and no one wants to buy your rippoff records. Whyyyyyyyyyyy! I finally got so mad I threw my shoe at the radio and knocked it off the shelf.

Ok, I'm going to get lambasted for this.
In the days of the big Western Swing Bands of the 40's and early 50's, Hank's songs were greatly appreciated and were played, but most of the vocalists did not try to imitate his singing style. Many codnsidered it Hillbilly. Being I'm from that era, I am not a HW's fan of his singing.

Billy Tonnesen wrote: Being I'm from that era, I am not a HW's fan of his singing.

I usually say this rather quietly; however, Billy, I agree with you: I am not a big fan of Hank Williams' voice quality. (The same goes for Willy Nelson)

The two big hooks with Hank's songs is that everyone of his songs has a seemingly personal story behind it. During his shows he spent as much time talking as he did singing.

The second hook is the simple but beautiful melodies he could fit to the words of his lyrics. Most song writers of today have the same melody pattern for most of their songs. Hank's melodies were completely different for each song and they seemed to fit the mood of the lyrics. Most people just don't have that gift.

Les, I agree. Sometimes I get so mad.

Man, so much venom.
Everybody comes from somewhere, man.
Does it make you want to throw shoes at the radio when Hank appropriates Emmett Miller's yodel in "Lovesick Blues" ?
-John

John Steele wrote:Man, so much venom.
Everybody comes from somewhere, man.
Does it make you want to throw shoes at the radio when Hank appropriates Emmett Miller's yodel in "Lovesick Blues" ?
-John

I think that just about all popular recorded country music for the past 80 years goes back to Emmett Miller.
Jimmie Rodgers got his singing style from Emmett, about a half a dozen of Bob Wills & Tommy Duncan recordings were Emmett Miller covers, one of Eddie Arnold first hits was a Emmett Miller song, and the first song Hank ever sang on the Opry was Emmett Miller's "Love Sick Blues" just about note for note the way Emmett sang it 20 years earlier.

No venom. In this case I think shoe throwing was an appropriate protest. I put my shoe back on when they played "Rootie Tootie" by the real Hank Williams. She's my Sunday gal. Its a slow day at the ranch here. I'm working on a Hank Williams tribute song called "Hanky Panky".