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He also often set aside a concert segment to play a solo medley of blues songs and his own hits on acoustic guitar. In concert, he would display his talents on multiple instruments, from acoustic and electric guitar to piano, fiddle, banjo, and steel guitar. The title songs from both albums became his first Top Five hits in six years, and both songs grew into anthems that brought audiences to their feet to sing along. His 1979 album Family Tradition sold well, as did its quickly issued follow-up, Whiskey Bent and Hellbound. His stage persona matched his sound, bolstered by longer hair, a cowboy hat, a beard, and sunglasses that hid the scars from his accident. Williams stayed the course, creating a sound that was bold, boisterous, defiant, outspoken, and often intensely biographical. Merging country music with Delta blues and country rock, the album drew critical acclaim and attracted new, younger fans, but received backlash from the Nashville music community and some of his older fans. While recuperating, his Southern rock album breakthrough, Hank Williams Jr. He underwent several operations and spent eight months recovering from the fall. On August 8, 1975, he slipped on an icy ledge atop Ajax Peak and fell five hundred feet down a jagged slope, suffering massive head injuries. To celebrate the album’s completion, Williams embarked on a hunting trip to Montana. In February 1975, he began work on his twenty-sixth studio album, enlisting contributions from Southern rockers Toy Caldwell of the Marshall Tucker Band, Charlie Daniels, and Chuck Leavell of the Allman Brothers. “I’d be making my music, not Daddy’s, or Mother’s, or anybody else’s.” “If I could make an album that showed the connection between country and the new rock, then I could look at myself in the mirror in the morning,” Williams wrote in his autobiography, Living Proof. In 1974, he moved from Nashville to Cullman, Alabama, with the intention of changing his life and his creative path. While in high school he formed a band, Rockin’ Randall & the Rockets, to play rock & roll, and he yearned to bring that side of himself into his country music career. At age fourteen, he released his first album, featuring covers of his father’s songs, and he performed on television’s Jimmy Dean Show, Ed Sullivan Show, and Shindig! At age twenty, he already had scored eleven Top Forty country hits, and he had released twenty-one albums, including a greatest hits compilation.Īs he matured, and as his musical interests expanded, Williams desperately wanted to emerge from his famous father’s shadow and create a musical style and persona of his own. At age eleven, he appeared as a guest on the Grand Ole Opry. Under the guidance of his mother, Williams performed his first concert at age eight, joining the Audrey Williams Musical Caravan of Stars, a tour that included the Big Bopper and Carl Perkins. After his father’s death, in 1953, he was raised by his mother, Audrey Williams. His father gave him the nickname “Bocephus,” which stuck. Born Randall Hank Williams on May 26, 1949, in Shreveport, Louisiana, he moved to Nashville a month later, when his father, Country Music Hall of Fame member Hank Williams, accepted an invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry.
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knew how to entertain a crowd before he finished third grade.