HANK WILLIAMS SR - The Unreleased Recordings, october 2008

Deal paves way for Hank Williams treasure trove

By Ken Tucker
Fri Sep 26, 4:56

NASHVILLE (Billboard) - It took a fortuitous find and years of legal wrangling, but some of the lesser-known recordings by country great Hank Williams will soon be available for mass consumption.

"The Unreleased Recordings" includes performances from the "Mother's Best Flour" radio program, which Williams hosted on the legendary WSM-AM Nashville in 1951, two years before his death.

Time Life will release the 143 recordings in various packages in the next three years through an exclusive agreement with the Williams estate. The first set is due October 28.

Williams and his band prerecorded 72 shows to run while they were on tour. The shows were recorded on 16-inch acetate discs that were later thrown into the trash during a station move in the '60s but salvaged by WSM employee Les Leverett.

In the '80s, Jerry Rivers, who played fiddle for Williams as part of the Drifting Cowboy Band and later backed the singer-songwriter's daughter, Jett Williams, told her about the "Mother's Best" show. He then introduced her to Leverett, who turned over the original acetates.

But getting the rights to the music wasn't simple. "I had possession of the acetates, but they had already been duplicated way before I had entered the picture," Williams said.

Indeed they had. PolyGram Records claimed exclusive rights, relying on Williams' contract with its predecessor, MGM Records. Meanwhile, Legacy Entertainment claimed rights to the recordings under a chain of title. At one point Leverett had assigned his rights to former Drifting Cowboy Hillous Butrum, who had in turn sold them to Legacy. A series of courts eventually ruled in favor of the Williams estate, ending an eight-year legal battle.

Williams said that even devotees of her father's music will find something new here. "Unless you were listening that morning in 1951, you've never heard that version of 'Cold, Cold Heart,'" she said. "You may have heard the master, but you've never heard the February 3, 1951, version of Hank Williams singing it.

"The fidelity of these recordings (is) better than his MGM masters," she said. "These have not been enhanced or tinkered with. It's as if it was 1951 and my dad was recording it right then. It was a one-time take."

In addition to Williams' best-known material, the recordings include 40 songs he was never known to have performed and others he never recorded commercially, including "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," "Cherokee Boogie" and "On Top of Old Smoky."

Reuters/Billboard

=> http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080926/music_nm/us_williams

September, 2008

The basic 3-CD edition includes 54 songs. There is SOME chatter, but the feeling was that, for a general audience, the chatter was interesting once or twice while the music bears repeated listening. The chatter was included if it was felt to be very interesting (eg when Hank explains that "I Can't Help It" had never been heard before by anyone) or if the chatter came over the musical intro or outro. There are no complete shows. The official release date is October 28th, 2008.

The 3-CD set is augmented with a DVD for a Sam's Club exclusive. The DVD features a series of conversations totaling 45 minutes between Jett, Don Helms (his last ever interview), Big Bill Lister, and WSM engineer Glenn Snoddy. The segs in which Jett talks with Don and Big Bill one-on-one are very moving.

The basic 3-CD set is augmented with a 4th disc for Reader's Digest mail order. The 4th disc includes three complete shows.

The Walmart single CD features 15 songs from the 3-CD set, plus a bonus track of Hank and Louie Buck talking.

Barjan is a truck stop jobber. The set for them features 12 gospel songs, one of which, "I'll Fly Away," isn't available elsewhere.

Now I realize that cassettes of the Mother's Best shows have been making the rounds among fans for some years, but I think everyone will be astonished at the sound on these releases. Back in 1981 when the shows were 30 years old, Bob Pinson arranged for them to be transferred to tape at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Those transfers have never been heard from that day to this. Time-Life acquired those transfers and then gave them to Joe Palmaccio, who engineered the 10-CD Mercury/Polygram set. Joe carefully applied noise-reduction technology in such a way that the presence is unimpaired. These truly sound infinitely better than the MGM studio recordings because the studio recordings were made to acetate and transferred to tape. After transfer, MGM applied compressors, limiters, and filters that robbed the sound of a great deal of presence. The Mother's Best recordings were made direct-to-disc. There is still a plan to release all of the Mother's Best recordings in a comprehensive edition at some point to be determined between Time-Life and Jett & Keith, but the date has not been fixed. It certainly will not be in the foreseeable future.

Hope this clarifies things a little.

Colin Escott






==> http://home.online.no/~smpeders/ind-han5.htm

==> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Unreleased-Recordings-Hank-Williams/dp/B001E4437W

Cool, dommage que je suis à sec !