“Can you truly say with your dying breath
You’re ready to meet the angel of Death.”
“Angel of Death”
–Hank Williams
Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway pays tribute to the King of Country music. With a preface penned by Marty Stuart, an introduction written by Rick Bragg, many unseen photographs, Hank’s handwritten lyrics, letters and stories to bind the photos, this collection ranks as essential for any collector. Snapshots traces Hank’s earliest years, his ascent in country music and his inimitable funeral.
Hank’s funeral drew the biggest crowd in Montgomery since the fall of the Confederacy. Hank earned a large following among the African American community, and many attended his funeral, which this book documents. Since Hank’s love of gospel music was well known among his friends, the black gospel group–the Southwind Singers–performed at his funeral, something unheard of among whites in Montgomery during that time.
Even a photo of the boots Hank wore when he died evoke one sad image. At the end of Snapshots, a song appendix illustrates Hank’s unrecorded songs.
One photograph preserves the sheet of paper containing Hank’s hand-written lyrics of his last song found on the floor in the backseat of the sky-blue Cadillac where Hank died on January 1, 1953, in West Virginia. In Hank’s death-scrawl, he wrote: “We met we lived near and dear we loved/Then came that fatal day the love that felt so dear fades far away/Tonight we both are all alone and here’s all that I can say/I love you still and always will/But that’s the price we have to pay.”