Quotes About Hank Williams

The Hank Williams Syndrome: Come to Nashville, write some good songs, cut some hit records, make money, take all the drugs you can and drink all you can, become a wild man and all of a sudden die.

I always wanted a guitar. I always wanted to be a cowboy singer because I also listened to Hank Williams, and he would always sing these neat romantic songs.

My country stuff, it might sound like Hank Williams - that's just the way it is. But I'd rather sound like Hank Williams than Trace Atkins.

The day I heard Hank Williams for the first time, my life changed.

'Neil Young Heart of Gold', that was a valentine to Nashville and country music in the Grand Ole Opry tradition and Hank Williams.

Everything about Hank Williams interests me. His music, his life. His death. His impact.

If I'm listening to country, it's Hank Williams, George Jones, Merle Haggard and stuff like that. If people out there don't take that stuff seriously, well, they just haven't listened to it and don't know what they're talking about.

I didn't get to meet Hank Williams. I was in the Air Force on Okinawa when he passed away.

I don't think you'd call me a traditionalist. But you can say I have an old soul, because I grew up listening to Conway Twitty and Hank Williams.

Oh, I think country has changed tremendously. I think country has totally changed. Country music when I was a kid was Hank Williams. If you put Hank and Elvis together, there wasn't that musical difference. But as the Beatles showed up and the English invasion, I think country music got pretty far away from rock n' roll.

To me, Hank Williams is the first rock-and-roll star.

Hank Williams seemed, like, so total to me, so committed to the lyric. He would actually rip the ends of the words off at the, you know - the end of the sentence. It sounded like he'd bite into the word and rip it off.

There's only one Hank Williams, man. Singing that high-voiced style, them bluegrassers, I don't see how they do it - Jimmy Martin, Bill Monroe - it's just a natural thing, man.

I love Hank Williams, he's the original emo kid. Some of his lyrics remind me of, like, Promise Ring lyrics.

The Grand Ole Opry was my favorite. That's when I got to discover the stuff inside the Grand Ole Opry, like Hank Williams' clothes, the dressing room Taylor Swift stayed in and some other things. Then I got to perform.

Even when I was 3 or 4 years old, I'd go out riding in the car with mom and dad, and I already knew all the songs off mom's Hank Williams and George Jones records by heart. I remember just sitting in the back seat and singing them at the top of my lungs.

I liked Western country, like cowboy songs, when I was a little kid. Then I developed a taste for Hank Williams and those sort of songs as I got a little bit older.

Favorite country singer of all time... Hank Williams... Well, then there's Willie Nelson. Can I have three? I can't do one. Then if I have three, I'll need five. Hank Williams for sure. Willie Nelson. Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings.

Country music tends to be so sentimental and homespun, it's easy to stumble into self-parody, but Haggard has brought a freshness to the themes that places him alongside Hank Williams and Willie Nelson as one of the greatest country music writers.

I put on the Hank Williams and the Patsy Cline and the Rosemary Clooney on vinyl - I'm not trying to be some cool indie-rock person, I just love the way it sounds - and throw on a T-shirt and jeans. In Texas, we practically come out of the womb in jeans.

Hank Williams was one of the greatest writers of all time, and it's very sad that his career lasted for only six years.

I put on the Hank Williams and the Patsy Cline and the Rosemary Clooney on vinyl - I'm not trying to be some cool indie-rock person, I just love the way it sounds - and throw on a T-shirt and jeans. In Texas, we practically come out of the womb in jeans.

A significant event for me was learning Hank Williams, reconnecting with his music's simplicity, which inspired me to inhabit the same territory. It's different, because I grew up on Led Zeppelin, The Stooges and punk, so in that sense I'm mutating country and folk more than a few degrees.

The paradox of Hank Williams was that he was easygoing on the outside, yet tense and querulous inside. He pretended that he'd just ridden into town on a mule, yet had a lively intelligence combined with what Minnie Pearl described as a "woods-animal distrust" of anyone who appeared to have any more learning than he did.