Chords for Hank Williams "Country King"

[F] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [B]
He just was a rock star.
Good [E] die young.
And he was definitely one of the good ones. _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [B] I [F#] never heard a bad Hank [A] Williams song in my life.
_ [E] Heartbreak was right there in the [D] words and in the [B] way he delivered them.
_ _ [E] _ _
Pop artists covered Hank Williams songs because they transcended.
They were just great [D#] songs.
_ [D] _ _ _ [C#] _ _
_ _ _ _ [E] _ _ [A] _ _
_ _ [D] _ _ _ [A] _ _ [G] _
_ _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _
[E] _ In 1947, [Bm] age 24, Hank began a career that would produce [E] the greatest of all country songs.
By the age of 29, he was dead.
_ In the days before Elvis, Hank was the wildest thing in music.
Tough [A] on the outside, breaking up on the inside.
[E] Far from the pipe and slippers of Bing Crosby.
[B] _ _ _ _ [C#m] Life was tough in the early days on the road in Alabama, but fortunately, mum looked after him.
He was glad to have his [E] mother along in some of the fights that they got into.
Some of the clubs [A] they played were the places where you swept up the eyeballs in the morning.
Some of them [F#] places [Am] were rough.
One place in particular I remember, 26 fights going at the same time.
_ [A] _ _ _ I've seen clubs where people would be outside shooting in and some in there shooting out. _
I'd get behind the bass fiddle [E] if somebody was throwing bottles.
_ I always tried to [Am] get behind the piano when they [D] started.
_ _ [A] With the booze flowing so freely, Hank began [E] to get a taste for the bottle himself, going
on benders that would sometimes [A] last for days.
_ _ _ _ When Hank would drink, he wouldn't eat [G#m] anything.
Pretty soon he was just out of it, you know.
We knew not to say anything.
Just let him go ahead and pass out.
And then when he [D] sobered up, he would be okay for a long time.
The mystique about Hank Williams was when he did show up, drunk or not, he would play
a song they had never heard.
And it would always be [G] _
one of those [C] songs that are now, have [G] become standards.
[C] Hey, _ good for giving, _ why I got to give [D] it?
I'm about to get [G] something [C] of good _ [G] taste.
Believe me, [C] when he stepped up on that stage, he just tore them up.
Hank was the [D] direct precursor [G] of Elvis Presley.
He was [C] a white artist influenced by black music.
It was [F] kids that came out to see [C] Hank.
We'd get up there and play, [F] _ and they'd gather [C] around the [F] bandstand and watch him.
[C] I never had seen that.
[D] So if you want to have [G] fun, come along.
[C] Hey, _ good for giving, why I got to give it?
He just had the charisma, you might [F] call it, when he walked out on [C] the stage.
Everybody knew that [G] there's Hank.
_ [C] In 1944, Hank married farm girl Audrey May Shepard.
He might have been happy playing honky-tonks, [D] but Audrey had other plans [G] and set about making him a star.
_ [C] Audrey did a lot for [G] Hank.
She was that coach in [C] that corner, kicking him, come on, we got to go.
She was a hot firecracker too.
Through careful networking, [D] Audrey pushed Hank towards [G] Nashville.
[C] The hits came at once, [Gm] with Lovesick Blues staying on the country [F] charts for most of [C] 1949.
_ I [F] got a feeling of the blues.
_ _ _ [C] He studied or watched films from that time.
He was a pop superstar. _
_ Despite Hank's success, [C#] it wasn't all wine [F] and roses for him and Audrey.
_ _ Not all roses, anyway.
_ I [D] try to harder _ _ show that you're my _ [A] everything.
_ [E] Audrey, I think, was unhappy because he [A] drank.
Somebody said, did they fight like cats and dogs?
And I said, no, cats and dogs don't curse [D] and throw rocks.
[B] Even though they fought [A] and fussed and couldn't get along and shot guns at each other, they truly loved each other.
He really loved that woman.
[Dm] _ [D] _ Hank's unhappy marriage was fuel for his songs, and he set about rewriting the country music rulebook.
He might have dressed like a cowboy, [A] but he spoke [G] like a new kind of man, laying his heart bare. _ _
_ [A] Why can't I free you now _ _ _ and melt your cold, [D] cold heart?
_ _ He wasn't speaking to [A] English professors.
He was speaking to me in [B] Glasgow, [A] and he was speaking to Van Morrison in Belfast, and it changed us for life.
There's no one that can quite sing [D] songs like that with the pain and the loss and the loneliness that he can.
There's absolute economy.
It's not everybody's gift to write with that simplicity of language, but he's not [A] writing cliches.
He sang about [Bm] things about everyday people and what [G] was happening between people.
_ [A] Why can't I free you now?
Hank dominated the country charts, and then Tony Bennett made him [D] the first country star to go pop.
_ Why [Am] _ _ [D] _ _
[Am] _ _ _ [E] _ [Am] _ melt your [G]
cold, cold heart?
He'd sneak around and put money in a jukebox when [Em] we'd be eating.
He'd play the [C] Tony Bennett record.
[D] Why melt _ _ _ _ [G#m] [F#] your mind?
You could tell he was proud.
I was proud for him.
[D] Your _ cold, _ cold heart. _
[G] _ _ By the early [C#] 50s, Hank was huge, [G] but his drinking was out of hand.
Audrey just couldn't handle any [C] more.
She wanted him to straighten up.
_ _ Your cheating _ heart.
_ After eight years [F] of marriage, Audrey couldn't take any more and left.
Hank [G] fell apart.
Yeah, he was really, really in terrible [F#] agony [C] over the marriage, and it grew [N] out of control.
Oh, my gracious, yeah.
Wherever we went, it was a train wreck.
The drinking got even worse, and Hank managed to get banned from the Grand Ole Opry,
the weekly radio show that was the top of the pops of country music.
The Opry wouldn't let him play anymore because he'd show up drunk.
Finally, they said, I don't care how big a star you are, it's just not worth it for us to keep you here.
So they fired him.
Young, free, and unhappily single, Hank went wild, enjoying the boos and broads more than ever.
One 19-year-old caught his attention.
The only trouble was, Billie Jean Eshlemar was country star Farran Young's girl.
Oh, she was a gorgeous woman.
Everybody was trying to go with her.
_ Farran was trying to protect his interests.
_ Farran went to the restroom, Hank came in there and pulled a gun on him and said, I'm taking this girl home. _
_ _ Farran said, have at it. _
_ _ _ _ Hank got his girl and married her on stage in front of 14,000 people, but it couldn't save him.
A fall two years earlier had re-aggravated a bad back, resulting in Hank's addiction to painkillers.
But he still kept touring.
I'll never get out of this world alive.
I was supposed to meet him, I was playing a show in Akron, and he was playing in Canton, which was about 40 miles apart, _ on New Year's Day, and he didn't make it.
The doctor, supposedly without a real license, shot him up with too much morphine, and he was coughing and foaming and all that stuff when they put him in the car,
and that's not the way a drunk _ acts, it's the way somebody that's ODing acts.
Hank Williams died alone in the back of a Cadillac New Year's Eve _ 1952, aged only 29.
His hit song at the time was, I'll never get out of this world alive, and his funeral drew more people than a presidential inauguration.
Of course, everybody went down to Alabama and was singing, I saw the light real loud and clear.
All the girls are crying and everybody's just devastated.
Lord, I saw the light.
_ Hank took country out of the hills, making it modern and real.
He lived and died in his songs.
_ _ _ _ In the last five years of his life, if you listened to him, you'd thought you was listening to a 60-year-old man.
Hank had that thing that we look for in stars, that danger, he had danger about him.
Either so dangerous that you're almost afraid to be around them, but you've got to be around them just in case something might happen. _ _
_ _ _ So how do you follow Hank Williams?
The original, live fast, die young, have a good looking