Hidden Country

The secret family tree of country music

Damon W. Root from the October 2002 issue

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Nobody found Williams a harder act to follow, however, than his son Randall, better known to the world as Hank Williams Jr. This unfortunate son, Ching notes, got his professional start as a prepubescent Hank impersonator, dressed in miniature cowboy hat, boots, and "Nudie suit" (the famous rhinestone-studded variety, named after the Los Angeles tailor Nudie Cohen). At age 11 Hank Jr. made his debut at the Grand Ole Opry with (what else?) "Lovesick Blues." As he matured, however, he became increasingly anxious to find his own voice, to create his own brand of country. "His career as an imitator was morbidly centered on sustaining sorrow and loss," Ching writes, "a nostalgia act that by definition had no future except as a well-publicized death wish."

By the mid-1970s Hank Jr. had defined himself as the rowdy country-rocker Bocephus (a nickname originally given by his father). Like the Outlaws, he abandoned Nashville, in this case for the woods of Alabama, where "his music is homegrown -- as are his other pleasures, wine and marijuana."

His artistic horizons expanded as well. The 1975 album Hank Williams Jr. and Friends featured members of the Allman Brothers and Marshall Tucker bands, two of the biggest names in Southern rock. "I'm gonna quit singin' all these sad songs, cause I can't stand the pain," Bocephus declared on the album's last track, "Living Proof." His specialties became wild anthems ("Whisky Bent and Hell Bound") and Southern pride ("A Country Boy Can Survive").

In 1989 he became a cultural icon as the rowdy voice of Monday Night Football. These days, Hank Jr. sings his father's sad songs, declares himself the master of "X-Treme Country," and records and performs with his (spiritual, not biological) "rebel son" Kid Rock, the hillbilly hip-hopper whom Spin recently dubbed "the first man ever to cross over from rap to country."

By both banking on his famous name and drastically altering his father's formula, Hank Williams Jr. has expanded both the definition and fan base of country music. Party-loving Southern rockers and old-fashioned fiddlers now have an equal stake in the enterprise. "As a Williams," Ching argues, "Bocephus can make definitive statements about the meaning of country music itself, [and] he can make it mean nearly anything he wants."

Judging by the recent success of both traditional bluegrass (the soundtrack to O Brother Where Art Thou?) and country-pop (Garth Brooks, Faith Hill), Bocephus isn't the only one who can make country mean whatever he wants it to. From Emmett Miller and the dying embers of minstrelsy to the commercial explosion of Hank Williams and his vast influence on both country and the birth of rock 'n' roll, these books help explain how cultural forms migrate, mix, and recombine, often in invisible and unpredictable ways.

Ironically, today's country music is largely seen as a refuge for whites from so-called black music, in spite of country's roots in minstrelsy and deep ties with the blues. Nashville's reputation as a bastion of family values is equally strange, given Johnny Cash's murder songs ("I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die") and the alcohol-fueled antics of George "No Show" Jones.

Ultimately, however, these interpretations will themselves give way to others, further expanding the wealth of identities and affiliations available on the American scene. From Christian fundamentalists to longhaired freaks, cowpunks to good ol' boys, every new face makes country bigger than it was before. And there is always room for more unexpected arrivals.