He provided the singing voice of his father in the 1964 film Your Cheatin' Heart. In 1964, Williams made his recording debut with " Long Gone Lonesome Blues", one of his father's many classic songs. He attended John Overton High School in Nashville, Tennessee, where he would bring his guitar to music class and play for pep rallies and performances of the choir. Williams first stepped on the stage and sang his father's songs when he was eight years old. Among these figures of influence were Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Fats Domino, Earl Scruggs, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. While he was a child, a number of contemporary musicians visited his family, who influenced and taught him various music instruments and styles. After his father's death in 1953, he was raised by his mother, Audrey Williams. His father nicknamed him Bocephus (after Grand Ole Opry comedian Rod Brasfield's ventriloquist dummy). Williams was born Randall Hank Williams on May 26, 1949, in Shreveport, Louisiana. was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. As a multi-instrumentalist, Williams' repertoire of skills includes guitar, bass guitar, upright bass, steel guitar, banjo, dobro, piano, keyboards, saxophone, harmonica, fiddle, and drums. After an extended recovery, he challenged the country music establishment with a blend of country, rock and blues. This was interrupted by a near-fatal fall while climbing Ajax Peak in Montana on August 8, 1975. Williams' style evolved slowly as he struggled to find his own voice and place within country music. Later that year, he was a guest star on Shindig! Williams' first television appearance was in a 1964 episode of ABC's The Jimmy Dean Show, in which at age fourteen he sang several songs associated with his father. Williams began his career following in his famed father's footsteps, covering his father's songs and imitating his father's style. He is the son of country musician Hank Williams and the father of musicians Holly Williams and Hank Williams III, and the grandfather of Coleman Williams. His musical style has been described as a blend of southern rock, blues, and country. or Bocephus, is an American singer-songwriter and musician. On the other hand, those who already own a few Haggard albums might want to be careful in case of duplicating too many tracks.Randall Hank Williams (born May 26, 1949), known professionally as Hank Williams Jr. If the listener's country collection if small, this could definitely be an album to add. Haggard has a heck of a flair for Williams and Frizzell, draining every possible drop of drama and emotion out of the songs while letting his sidemen (credited? are you kidding?) pick away to their hearts' content. Everything that is on this record was good material to begin with, and even though the concept is a bit bogus from the record buyer's standpoint, philosophically it joins a long list of similar projects as country artists always seem happy to pay tribute to each other. What a great example of his vocal prowess, however, when Haggard enters with the song's very first line: "66 was just a narrow two lane highway." The listener will feel like they have gone back in time a few decades and are tooling down just such a back road. These were then slapped on side A and B of this album, united under the theme of that's "The Way it Was in '51," an opening track that Haggard presumably composed and recorded in order to justify this album's reason for existence. Not content to actually let the artist create a new tribute, the label glued together their own two-sided concept album by selecting previously recorded covers of Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell songs that Haggard had done. Then, a few years later, Capitol must have decided these records were good ideas after all and wanted a few more of them. Merle Haggard no doubt had to fight tooth and nail to get his tributes to Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills recorded and released in an era when traditional country music was falling by the wayside. There just doesn't seem to be any winning with record companies sometimes.
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