Search - Hank Williams :: The Greatest Hits Live: Volume 2

In 1952, the last year of Hank Williams short life, two of his shows were recorded. They were, as far as we know, his only recorded concerts. We hear how loose and informal he was in front of an audience. He d been performing since he was a teenager playing for dimes on the streets of Montgomery, Alabama. Those years had taught Williams how to engage a crowd whether on the sidewalk, listening to the radio, or in a concert hall.
Three songs in this collection are from a Sunday afternoon show at Sunset Park in West Grove, Pennsylvania, where families would gather with picnic baskets after church. It was July 1952, less than six months before Hank s untimely death. From that show we ve included Long Gone Lonesome Blues and Hank s most popular hymn, I Saw the Light. We also hear his brand-new record, Jambalaya. Back then, few outside southern Louisiana had any idea what jambalaya was, and Hank explains it. From a show a few weeks earlier in Niagara Falls, New York, he performs Lovesick Blues, the song that jumpstarted his career.


The Greatest Hits Live: Volume 2 features ten songs that Hank Williams performed on four days of his life between 1949 and 1952. More than sixty years later, they are as close as we ll come to being among his audience on those days.