{"id":711,"date":"2017-02-19T01:17:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-19T01:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drmirkin.com\/2017\/02\/19\/hank-williams-and-spina-bifida\/"},"modified":"2019-10-09T21:40:54","modified_gmt":"2019-10-09T21:40:54","slug":"hank-williams-and-spina-bifida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/?p=711","title":{"rendered":"Hank Williams and Spina Bifida"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\"HankHank Williams was one of the America’s most influential singers and songwriters, with 11 number-one and 35 Top-10 songs on the Western Best Sellers list. \u00a0In a recording career that lasted only six years, he wrote and performed classics we still hear today such as “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “Hey Good Lookin’,” “I Saw the Light”, \u00a0“Cold, Cold Heart”, “Jambalaya” and many more. \u00a0He was inducted posthumously into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1961 and in 2010, the Pulitzer Board awarded a special citation saying that he had played “a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life.”<\/div>\n
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He grew up in abject poverty during the Great Depression of the 1930s and suffered a severe birth defect called spina bifida that damages nerves that control lower body movements, which prevented him from playing games and being active with other children his age. \u00a0His chronic back pain and a failed operation led to addiction to painkillers, \u00a0alcoholism, anorexia and heart damage. \u00a0In 1953, at age 29, he died from a heart attack in the back seat of his Cadillac while being driven to his next concert.<\/div>\n
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Early Years and Start in Music<\/strong><\/div>\n
Hiram King Williams was born in 1923 in Mount Olive, Alabama, a small rural suburb of Birmingham. \u00a0His father worked as a logger for a lumber company that forced the family to move frequently throughout southern Georgia. In 1930, when Hank Williams was six, his father suffered a ruptured blood vessel in his brain and was hospitalized at a VA hospital for eight years, and his mother, Lillie, took over the care of the family. \u00a0She worked days in a cannery and nights in the local hospital. Their house burned down and the family lost everything, so they moved into another house where she made ends meet by taking in boarders. \u00a0 \u00a0Hiram (later nicknamed Hank) and his sister sold vegetables from their garden, shined shoes and sold peanuts on the street.<\/div>\n
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When he was eight years old, Hank was fascinated by the African-American blues musician, Rufus “Tee-Tot” Payne, who worked as a street performer. \u00a0His mother bought Hank a guitar and persuaded Tee-Tot to give her son guitar lessons in exchange for meals. Tee-Tot taught Hank chords, chord progressions, bass turns, and the blues style of accompaniment that he would use the rest of his life. \u00a0Hank got into a fight with his school gym coach so the family had to move to \u00a0Montgomery and leave Tee-Tot behind. One of Hank’s first recordings was Tee-Tot’s “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It” and Williams told everyone that Tee-Tot was his only music teacher. \u00a0In his entire life, Hank never learned to read music. \u00a0Tee-Tot died in poverty in 1939.<\/div>\n
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