Little Nemo, you may be right, as I seem to have maybe mixed the stories up in my head.
So Wagner was actually anti-Semitic?
Oh, yeah. Without question.
Thank you—I was def. way off on this one…
Ike Turner was a misunderstood individual - see here 2:31 in.
Yeah, its probably not realistic for us expect our heroes to be perfect.
On the other hand, to find out that in a righeous universe they would be stuck dead by the gods is a bit much to take.
As Hank Jr. said, It’s a family tradition… Grow up, FUShakespeare, like you’re a freakin’ saint? Time to start seeing people for people, rather than myths, and diagnoses.
Thanks for the interesting OP!
I’m adding “Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone”, to my reading list.
Forgetting the facts about someone like Hank Williams does two things I detest:
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It does a disservice to great people who weren’t total shits. Off the top of my head, musical geniuses Earl Scruggs and Chet Atkins by all accounts lived good lives;
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It blinds us to the fact that charming, sweet-talking people are not necessarily trustworthy, good or even competent. Such blindness paves the way to trusting politicians like John Edwards and Sarah Palin.
devilsknew, you are correct that I’m no saint. I certainly have a fondness for alcohol. But I’ve never shot at anyone or hit a woman, drunk or sober. If I ever do, you will be correct to call me a shit.
Batsinma, you will love that book. It really opened my eyes to what made the Carters tick as people. They were so far in the past that I never previously knew much about them. The chapters on the Carter Sisters are amazingly star-studded: they toured with Chet Atkins and Elvis Presley. I especially enjoyed the three daughters’ (and their mother’s) memories of Elvis - they were unanimous that he was the most handsome man they’d ever seen. It was a delight to learn that the saintly Mother Maybelle noticed such things!
Stephen King wrote the short story Dedication after meeting a very famous writer who was a real life shit.
Congratulations on reading the book on the Carter family. However, you realize that some people might be shocked that such a “saintly” family also experienced adultery & divorce.
Please try to find a good Hank Williams biography–you really need to learn more about the man himself.
The divorce of AP and Sarah Carter was a sad, complicated affair, involving AP’s abandonment of her while he went out looking for songs and pursuing his hare-brained schemes. Sarah ended up in the arms of AP’s cousin Coy Bayes, whom she later married.
Maybelle was so pious that she had trouble telling jokes with swear words.
I do want to read a good Williams bio. Any suggestions?
Personally, I think being “great” at anything isnt even remotely a partial free pass for being an ass. Much of society seems to think otherwise though. Heck, even the judicial system seems to have that view upon occasion.
Now, if that person is an ass because they were raised by asses, surrounded by asses, or had some really bad shit go down in their life, I am willing to cut them a little slack.
I think Anita was getting wet.
BTW, I always thought the portrayal of Mother Maybelle in I Walk the Line was exactly how I imagine her in real life.
Great thread.
What amazes me is that he was only 29. I could barely tie my own shoes at 29 (30 is the new 10, right).
Even the pictures of him show someone who looked old for his years.
I want to second a recommendation on a bio I could read.
Carter Family was something else too (music wise). I have no idea what they were like off stage.
This here-
It just seems highly ironic and hypocritical… even oblivious, that you sit drinking, and perhaps brooding, or partying, and perhaps even loving to the greatest honkytonking, hard drinking, hard partying, and hard loving songs ever written by a Country singer. Did you ever think these songs might be speaking to that part of you that you share in common with Hank… even the bad parts?
I’ve always thought of old Hank as a trainwreck too, but that doesn’t correlate in my mind with crappy human being. Substance abuse doesn’t excuse anything and (politically un-correct as it is) I think a significant component of what manifests as depression and/or substance abuse is volitional as in failure to exercise willpower (hard but not impossible). So . . . my take on it was that, to continue the analogy, when a train goes off the track, sometimes passengers and bystanders get hurt, but the train itself wasn’t aiming to do that, it was collateral damage. If you’ve spent much time around substance users, you know there comes a point at which the using is all-consuming and everything else is an afterthought (which very often does create havoc for friends and family). That’s always how I thought of Hank. Selfish, self-absorbed, thoughtless? Sure. I just think of people who intentionally lie, cheat, hurt others, while fully in possession of their faculties, come across worse, to me.
Oh, and not to be an enabler or to buy into an excuse that all too many would be artistes (I’ve known a lot, emphasis on would be) have been indulging for way too long – but with a true artistic genius like HW, I don’t know, I just keep open to the possibility he really did experience reality significantly differently than us, with consequences on his social skills and irresponsibility. I remember an interview with Clapton in which they asked him how he improvised new solos every night and he said “You know how it is, I just see the notes in my head and then I play them.” No, Eric. Acutally, I’ve never experienced that, and you’re a different breed of cat.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say “yeah.”
As John Irving had Garp say: Remember the art. Forget the artist.