Hank Williams Jr.

Hank Williams Jr. was a very well-known country artist in the south. He was famous for being the first to combine rock with country. Also, trying to combine blues with country. But, most of his fame came from his father. He was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1949. The son of Hank Williams. Hank Jr. was just three when his father died. Five years later, he was performing Hank Sr.'s songs on stage and by age 14 he had recorded his first record. Throughout his teens, Hank Jr. performed to sold-out crowds and on national television, carrying on his father's legacy through music. By the early 1970s, though, Hank Jr. learned to create his own musical identity that combined country with Southern rock and blues. The resulting sound debuted in the 1975 album Hank Williams Jr. and Friends.
That year, Williams was severely injured in a mountain-climbing accident in Montana. He had fallen five hundred feet off the side of the cliff. While in the hospital he had celebrities from the rock and country industry comes to reach out to him during his recovery. It had taken two years and nine major surgeries to reconstruct his face. The accident resulted in Williams' new trademark look, which included a full beard, cowboy hat and dark glasses. During the 1980s, Hank Jr. catapulted to stardom with several multi-platinum albums and dozens of chart-topping singles, including "Family Tradition," "Texas Women" and "Born to Boogie." He won the Country Music Association's (ACM) Entertainer of the Year award in 1987 and 1988 and a Grammy Award in 1989 for a duet with his father's recorded vocals called "There's a Tear in My Beer." Younger audiences may know Williams' voice best from the theme song for ABC's Monday Night Football, which earned him four Emmy Awards. With the Monday Night Football deal in place, Hank Williams, Jr. was now known to millions who had never even listened to country music, and he’d become an ambassador for that musical genre. He had sixty-eight albums reach the top of the music charts. Twenty have been certified gold, seven went platinum, one triple-platinum. His new music was a turnoff to some long-time fans, but it was embraced by a new crowd that liked this newly bearded man, who, as he sang in “The New South,” “started turning up loud and looking at the crowd and bending them guitar strings.” Hank, Jr.’s music was now known everywhere. For Hank, Jr., everything changed with that 1975 dive off Ajax Mountain. The music world caught on to those changes around 1979, the year he released his first million-selling album, Whiskey Bend, along with his autobiography, Living Proof. In the early 1980s, he catapulted to full-on superstar status, with major hits including “Texas Women,” “Dixie On My Mind,” “All My Rowdy Friends (Have Settled Down),” and in 1984, “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight,” a party anthem featuring a combination with stars from inside and outside country music. The father lived 29 years, and the son spent nearly that long standing in his shadow. But it is what the son did after turning 29 that has landed him a place in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame that has made him a BMI Icon award winner and one of the best-selling artists in country music history. By finding his own powerful voice, by turns rebellious and vulnerable, he has become a music icon. He remains an inspiration to Alan Jackson, Kid Rock, Jamey Johnson and other followers and a sure-bet for eventual entry into the Country Music Hall of Fame, where he will be known forever. Just like his daddy’s, only different.