Customer Reviews

Alone With His Guitar

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Hank's brief career fortunately coincided with the dawn of affordable tape recording. Thus the preservation of these ten 1949 Shreveport, Louisiana,radio broadcasts plus eight demos. As the title indicates, he's singing with no accompaniment except for his guitar. "The vocal-guitar demo leaves no place to hide, and it was in this context that Hank was at his most riveting," say the notes. From a practical standpoint, the intimate context also spared him the cost of sidemen.

Thanks to the Grammy winning The Complete Hank Williams, there's nothing new here, yet conceptually this package rises far above mere recycling, starting with the primitive cover art by original Mekon Jon Langford and William Gay's essay (narrated by lookalike grandson Hank III on the enhanced CD, which offers lyric sheet, bio, screen saver and more). The sound is surprisingly clean considering the low-tech recording equipment that was used.

Some demos have lines that subsequent studio versions revised. Even the comic "Kaw-Liga" - clearly a work in progress - conveys heartbreak in the voice. While Hank Sr.'s way with a word is well known, the 11 covers found here - including Roy Acuff, Sons Of The Pioneers and Red Foley songs - are among the peaks. Whereas Ernest Tubb portrayed the disillusioned husband of "First Year Blues" with humor, Williams' version aches with the first-hand experience of his own awful marriage. The white blues never got much bluer than Hank's.

Many of the other reviews say that this is targeted towards hardcore Hank Williams fans and it shouldn't even be on the market and Mercury records dosn't care about the fans and blah blah blah. Well this is the first Hank Williams record I have ever bought and I think it's excellent. I am a fan of good folk music and this is a great album featuring a single man with a soulful voice alone with his guitar, and that is all that really matters. So give it a listen if you like Woody Guthrie, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, or anybody else by the likes of them. Forget Mercury records, forget the attempt to cash in on Hank Williams; just listen to his incredible songs.

I can't believe I'm the first to review this; I expected reams of praise for this album. Now, if you've never listened to Hank, I respect you if this is your choice, but first-timers should really go for the 40-singles CD. For all the rest, it's Hank Williams: Unplugged. It's a little raw, just him and guitar of course, but it sounds great, not scratchy at all. Excellent songcraft, voice, and guitar. This is the first album I've reviewed, and don't plan on making it a habit, so trust me, this is one fine album. Hearing Hank do 'Cool Water' is great, so are a bunch of the others. In conclusion, this is a good album.

It's interesting to see the mixed reviews from knowledgable fans. I've gotten into Hank Williams only this past year. I bought this set because I wanted exactly what its title promised: solo acoustic peformances. On that count, it certainly delivers, and only a couple tracks suffer too-poor sound quality, though I don't mind much since I'm used to listening to rough prewar blues recordings. Whether this collection could be stronger, I don't know, but I can appreciate the skeptical scholar's general point of view; for example, as a Bob Dylan fan/freak, I'm often dismayed by what he and his record company choose to package/re-package/re-re-package as his "best" or "essential" or whatnot. So in sum, as a "newbie" or "casual fan," I'm happy with this set in all respects: performances (apart from a couple sketchy recordings), packaging, liner notes, extras--I guess Mercury's marketing ploy worked for me! But maybe as I explore more of his body of work, I'll discover in retrospect the failings of this collection.

I'm a big fan of Hank's music,but don't plan on shelling out big bucks for the 10 CD box. I've heard a friend's copy, and while I love historic recordings,some of those things on the box were in real bad shape, and maybe should have been edited a little.Alone With His Guitar is a nice alternative for getting a taste of Hank's radio performances and demos. While not as massive or inclusive as the box,it's a good anthology for slightly more than casual fans.

There is a Box set of Hank Sr. doing his thing on old time Radio
Shows, but it's expensive, and has a lot of Religious stuff on it.
If you Like Just Hank and his Guitar, on Radio, and some Demos,
this disk is for you.
I'm really happy I bought it, cause I like that type of thing

I got this cd and listened to the whole thing. I really loved it. The cd is very clear and the songs are all good. I believe in taking this cd for what it is, which is a collection of some rarely heard Hank songs. If you're a fan of his "40 greatest hits" then I would recomend this. Hank doesn't disappoint.

As a music lover, I'm always happy to hear an artist sing in such an unadorned setting. But as a reviewer, I have to agree with others who are puzzled as to the purpose of this disc. The rare tracks included here, primitively recorded with just Williams and his guitar, are the province of completist fans rather than casual listeners. And as others have noted, the completists will likely have most everything here (especially considering half the tracks were on the 1998 box set "The Complete Hank Williams", and the other half were released elsewhere), and casual fans would be better directed at one of Williams' hits compilations.

So what's the point? The only real differentiator here seems to be the "ECD" or "enhanced CD" elements, and these are none too impressive. The song lyrics and biography could just as easily have been included in the booklet - having to boot your computer to see the lyrics isn't very convenient. The liner notes (printed in the booklet), read aloud by Hank III shows him to be a better singer than speaker; the accompanying animations add little. The "rare" audio clips of Audrey Williams, Bill Monroe, Lefty Frizzell, Little Jimmy Dickens and Faron Young are all taken from the previously released "Reflections By Those Who Loved Him," and the couple of Hank clips (one of a political spot, the other taken from his radio program) are entertaining once, maybe twice. The screensaver features some nice pictures, but again, nothing to motivate the production of this disc.

To add insult to injury, when played in the CD-ROM drive of my Macintosh, the ECD occasionally stopped mid-song and spun-up to high-speed, as though I'd double clicked its desktop icon, attempting to access the extended content. Perhaps this is due to a setting on my computer, I don't know. What I do know, is that I shouldn't have to know, just to listen to some music through my computer's CD-ROM drive.

The tracks themselves are certainly worth spinning. The stripped down presentations lay Williams voice bare, and the song selection includes a good blend of classics - both Williams' and others ("Cool Water" "My Bucket's Got a Hole In It" "Honky Tonk Blues" "Kaw-Liga") as well as lesser-known titles. The sources range from clean studio demos (recorded at various times between 1947 and 1952) and radio transcriptions (from 1949) to rather scratchy acetates. It's nothing unusual for material of this vintage and rarity.

William Gay's liner notes - more a personal remembrance of his childhood idolization of Williams - will seem over the top to all but the faithful. He writes of the connection Williams made with his audience through the miracle of radio, yet the CD he's annotating doesn't recreate this magic. Musical radio programs such a Gay alludes to were a balance of music, comedy, characters, continuity, structure, pacing and commercials. The music that's presented here is but one element, and neither the packaging or the extended CD elements provide the necessary context. This lack of setting doesn't rob the music of its own essential qualities, but it fails to illustrate the picture Gay describes. Collin Escott's additional notes tell the tales of the songs, and fill in a bit of history on the recordings themselves.

As noted at the outset, this release seems unnecessary - it adds little or nothing to the extant Williams catalog. The ECD elements are gimmicky and do little to enhance the value of this disc. Collectors will be unhappy with the skimpy selection (and repetition from other packages), and those wanting a helping of Williams best-known hits will be put off both by the title rundown and recording quality. I'm sure the producers had a point, I just can't figure out what it is.

...I have made claims that this set and others show their general disregard for Hank fans...This set offers what's been around the block 100 times before so to get "the faithful" to buy it, multimedia features such as screensavers, audio clips, etc. are included to be enticing to the consumer. Now, that's not a crime-record labels do that sort of thing all of the time. Not a crime, but not the most honest standard in the world either...This was a set that could've been good, but it isn't. Just keep hoping Bear Family will license Hank's stuff!

Another quick cash in by Mercury Nashville. It's bad enough we were fleeced with "The [In]complete Hank Williams", now this comes along with just a tad bit of video stuff on it and people will buy it for that very reason. Instead of releasing the alternates not presented on "[In]complete", they just simply pick a few songs at random to put on here.

Consider this. The big majority of this stuff was supposedly unavailable at one time and was considered "lost" according to the big box set they released in the '80's. Now, all of a sudden this stuff is available like magic. Someone inform Kira Florita & Mercury Nashville they're not fooling people. They have "The Mother's Best" shows, the demos that appeared overdubbed on "[In]complete" and a probably the session recordings of "Honky Tonk Blues" & "I'm Sorry For You My Friend" that are supposedly lost or unavailable all waiting in the vaults for a big set to appear in a year or two. They're afraid to license the masters for this stuff to Bear Family because no one would then want their little piddly box sets they come out with.