“What the Mother’s Best Flour shows reveal is that Hank was a fully fleshed-out man, with a silly sense of humor, deep religious faith and a sentimental side that comes off as borderline cheesy today,” said Brenda Colladay, curator of the Grand Ole Opry Museum in Nashville. “This isn’t the tortured, tragic genius who died in the back seat of a Cadillac. This is the Hank who can’t quite believe he is playing on WSM radio, has a closet full of custom suits, a string of hit records and a beautiful blond wife sitting next to him as he steers that Cadillac toward his dream house.”
In one touching between-song segment, Williams promises young Bocephus — his nickname for Hank Jr — that he’ll be home for breakfast to “sop biscuits” with him. Williams had just reached new heights in popularity, including appearances on national television programs like The Perry Como Show and being billed above Bob Hope and Milton Berle on the touring Hadacol Caravan. Nevertheless, the eagerness in his voice at the prospect of being home with his family is palpable.
Hank Jr was only three-and-a-half years old when his father died, and he remembers little of their time together. Nearly eight years his senior, Hank Jr’s half-sister Lycrecia Williams Hoover has more firsthand memories of what Williams was like.
“Of the two of us, I always considered myself the luckiest one because I got to do things with Daddy,” said Hoover, 67, a dignified woman with intense blue eyes. A stay-at-home mom much of her life, Hoover, who today works part-time in a beauty shop, spoke from the patio of her home in rural Bon Aqua, Tennessee, about 60km from Nashville.
“Daddy was a fun person,” she said. “He would take me bowling a lot. He would go horseback riding and fishing with me. I just feel like Hank Jr missed out on so much.”
Audrey Williams’ daughter from an earlier marriage, Hoover wasn’t enthusiastic about the prospect of another retrospective about her stepfather when representatives of the museum in Nashville contacted her about the project. She doesn’t shy away from talking about her parents’ “fussing and fighting,” or about Hank’s darker side or drinking. She was, however, wary of yet another tabloid treatment of the Williams legacy.
“They said, ‘We promise you this is not going to be like the others,’” she said.
Particularly welcome, Hoover said, is the museum’s depiction, through telegrams and other documents, of her mother’s career as a businesswoman. Audrey married Hank in 1944, at a gas station near Andalusia, Alabama. After playing a critical role in helping her husband start his career, Audrey, a performer who has often been portrayed as conniving and shrill, went on to become a successful song publisher and movie producer. In 1964 she was a founder of Aud-Lee Attractions, Nashville’s oldest privately owned talent agency (now called Buddy Lee Attractions).
“Had it not been for Mother, I just don’t think Daddy would have gotten to Nashville, unless somebody else could of got a hold of him and pushed,” Hoover said. “Daddy, he liked to entertain. He was a genius, but Mother was the mastermind behind getting him where he needed to be.”
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