PHOTOS COURTESY ALABAMA DEPT. OF ARCHIVES
place among his faithful. “Hank wasn’t so much a celebrity in our minds as a distant cousin or close friend who had died far too soon. He spoke our language and knew our secrets and made us feel better about our troubles and foibles. He was not so much in the ground as all around, having made that successful transfer to immortal status.” Johnson’s book was published March 15, and she sold her first copy the day before her talk to an overflow crowd at an Architreats program at the Alabama Department of Archives and History, in Montgomery. It was her tribute to a stillpowerful Hank, and to his often mournful music in a hard-knocks world. As Alabama author Winston Groom advanced a fictionalized Forrest Gump rambling through baby boomer lives, Johnson’s musical memoir bonds with readers who may feel it is their own story being told. “It’s been interesting to tour with this book and hear f o l k s s ay, often while misting over, that they remember the first time they heard a Hank song,” Johnson says. “All of us who string words to gether in feeble attempts to tell a story half as well as Hank, all of us think we have something to add to the legend, another way to interpret genius. Mostly we want an excuse to get closer to the music and the man,” she writes. Growing up in his footsteps, in Montgomery, it was like all the planets aligned, Johnson says. “To ignore it would have been a sin.” Hank’s music told family secrets, and so does Johnson’s book, which includes references to his songs, his Drifting Cowboys band, his popularity and shenanigans. She mentions Hank Jr. and especially Hank Sr.’s “lost daughter” Jett Williams, who was born 24 days before Johnson’s own birthday in 1953, and is the subject of Chapter Three. Unknowingly they “both grew 14 AUGUST 2012
up good little Alabama girls who wanted to please,” she wrote. “In a region that bronzed its baby shoes and Confederate heroes, we came of age.” Johnson learned to buck her trendy teen love of The Beatles, among other names that rocked the music world. She opted for Hank. The book cover illustrates that transition with scribblings of “I love Hank,” “Rheta plus Hank equals love,” and “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” The book was written for boomers who share her memory of simpler times ... “when Hank roamed the Earth,” the book jacket says. A WISE OLD SOUL Johnson identifies with Hank, and readers will, too. Her fondness for Hank defines a culture that can’t shake its addiction to a man whose words still resound in lonesome refrains in songs like “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “I Saw the Light” or “Kaw-Liga.” Sometimes, she cuts to the core, as when she refers to his drug and alcohol addictions: “Hank, an alcoholic since his teens, had been at least once to a Prattville dry-out sanitarium.” But love conquers all, and it’s no different for Johnson, who quips, “Adults called him by his first name, and always added ‘Ol’ in front of Hank, as if he’d been 89 instead of 29 when he died. ‘Ol’ Hank’ was, of course, also what Hank called himself, and we all bought it. A wise old soul - that was Hank.” “Hank lost his footing too soon, too young,” writes Johnson. “I think that without Hank we might have lost ours, too. He lost his life that we might be saved, or something like that. A happy Hank would have been his gain and our loss. A happy man could not have written ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.’” She pulls from her own grab bag of memories one telling anecdote that, for Johnson, reveals a Hank whose voice still sings for the unlucky in love.
“I remember one late night when my divorce was imminent, headed toward home from some distant (newspaper) assignment, riding alone in a Mustang meant for two. ... I could hear a country station through the static. I could hear Hank,” she writes. “For the first time, I fully appreciated how ol’ Hank articulated loss, better than anyone perhaps save Shakespeare, and in far fewer words. Hank had walked in my shoes. “Misery not only loves company, she needs for the company to sit up late drinking with her, commiserating, and reciting poetry. She needs for the company to sing her back home. “A n d Han k did.” A Hank Hung the Moon … a n d Wa r m e d Our Cold, Cold Hearts is available through your favorite local or online retailer, or from NewSouth Books, 334834-3556, or at www.newsouthbooks. com. ISBN: 978-1-58838-284-9. Trade cloth, 192 pgs., $24.95. eBook ISBN: 9781-60306-118-6. $9.99 Rheta Grimsley Johnson has covered the South for more t h a n t h re e decades as a newspaper repor ter and columnist. Her re porting has won numerous awards, and in 1991 she was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. In 1986 Johnson was inducted into the Scripps Howard Newspapers Editorial Hall of Fame. Syndicated today by King Features, Johnson’s column appears in about 50 papers nationwide. She is the author of Poor Man’s Provence and Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming, both published by NewSouth Books.
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