Fairfax, VA (June 1, 2010) ---- Time Life is scheduled to release the highly anticipated The Hank Williams Complete Mother Best Recordings….Plus!, on September 28, 2010.
The 16-disc collector’s box set contains 72 complete 15-minute shows, featuring 143 performances by Hank Williams together with conversation, and much more. In the music and talk, Williams is revealed like never before. It is the first three-dimensional portrait of an American music legend!
The recordings are from Williams’ Mother’s Best Flour shows, recorded at the pinnacle of his career in 1951. When Williams was planning to be out on tour, he prerecorded his Mother’s Best shows, and 72 of them miraculously survived. Thinking the shows would only reach a small, mostly rural audience in mid-Tennessee, Hank was unguarded in both his conversation and choice of songs. Accordingly, we hear him perform many songs he never performed elsewhere, including some from his childhood. . The original acetate recordings were painstakingly restored after they were salvaged from a trash can by a WSM employee and turned over to the Hank Williams estate. The sound quality of these exceptional radio shows is at least comparable to his studio recordings, and many critics have remarked that the “direct-to-disc” Mother’s Best recordings actually have more presence and clarity.
Hank Williams Complete Mother Best Recordings….Plus! is comprised of fifteen audio discs and a bonus DVD. The shows contain so many priceless moments, including Williams’ first-ever performances of “Cold, Cold Heart” and “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You)” just days after they were written, as well as many songs he never recorded elsewhere such as “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” and “On Top of Old Smoky.” On the DVD, two of Hank’s original band members reminisce about his brief, incendiary career. Sadly, both of them died shortly afterward. . The project also contains a booklet with an introduction by Hank Williams, Jr. and over one-hundred pages on the history of Williams, written by respected music writer and Hank Williams historian, Colin Escott. This deluxe, limited box set is packaged in an antique working radio where the listener presses the radio dial and selections of Williams will play.
“When I heard about the Mother’s Best shows, I couldn’t believe there was more,” exclaims Hank Williams, Jr. “And when I heard that these recordings increased the amount of daddy’s music by fifty percent, man, talk about a grand slam. Hearing him sing songs like The Blind Child’s Prayer and On Top Of Old Smoky, and you realize he was listening to country music, soaking it up, back in the 1930’s. But the most special songs to me are where daddy sings with mother on those old Gospel songs like, Where The Soul Of Man Never Dies. There’s something special about those recordings.”
“This has truly been my labor of love for me. It’s a mission to share the man I now know as my father with a world who is seeing him, perhaps for the first time, as the multi-talented, multi-faceted genius he was,” says Jett Williams. “With this project, you feel like a privileged outsider eavesdropping from a corner of the studio on a slice of Americana. This is a rare and incredible snapshot in time – getting to witness Hank's genius at work and play."
Senior Vice President of Retail at Time Life, Mike Jason, agrees that this is a once-in-a-lifetime recording. “It’s almost unthinkable that this music and Hank’s revealing conversations on air survived these many decades to be with us here and now. If you weren’t listening to the radio in early 1951, you never had the chance to hear and get to know Hank this way. It is truly a gift that we at Time Life are honored to share.”
Hank Williams artistry is still garnering awards and recognition, as he posthumously received a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation this year from Columbia `University. The citation honors "his craftsmanship as a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life." Previous honorees for the Special Citation have included Bob Dylan (2008) and John Coltrane (2007). Jett Williams accepted on behalf of her father at the award luncheon on the campus of Columbia University this week.
For additional information about the box set please visit, www.hankwilliamsmothersbest.com.
