The moon just went behind the clouds

Covers of Hank

A nice dopamine hit last week: Kind words from David Brooks in the New York Times on my Oxford American Hank Williams piece, which he picked for a Sidney award for the year’s best essays.

I’m guessing most Tropical Depression readers have already seen the Hank piece, but if not, check it out!

Brief sample from my take on “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”:

Hank had an insight, or an intuition, whether or not he would voice it quite this way, that would shape country music forever. It was an insight best expressed, it turns out, with twang and steel guitar and fearsome warbling through the nasal passage. (This would get a little lost, later, in the smothering schmaltz of the Nashville Sound, but not yet.) Here is what Hank knew, somehow: The human experience of loneliness is cosmic. It is not narcissistic; it is where the Holy Spirit dwells. The universe, like the West, is mostly empty space.

Hank said it was the best song he ever wrote, and I am inclined to agree. As I talk about in my OA piece, I have always sung it to my children. It comforts them, but especially in those early months, you are mostly singing to yourself: In the dark, rocking the baby to sleep, which can take a while, with interruptions of wriggling and crying, but must be done—a different way of spending time, intimate with someone you love but functionally alone, a long stretch of lonely darkness until the baby’s breathing becomes heavier and steadier, a sweet lonely feeling as the noise machine and the baby’s gurgling breath and the sound of your own voice singing syncs up in the darkness.

I find myself singing “I’m So Lonesome” in my own peculiar way. Lots of people have it in their little repertoire of songs they sing—in the shower or on the porch or to keep awake on a long roadtrip. And there’s an elasticity to the tune, somehow. I think lots of people find a personal way to interpret the song. Hank’s performance is so understated and restrained. It leaves room for such interpretation, even though we know that Hank’s version is perfect as it is, so singular and spare.

“I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” has been covered more than three hundred times. At least. There’s probably no way to get an accurate count.

There is something jarring about covers of deeply familiar songs that appeals to me. They encourage more open, spongier listening, because it’s inherently strange to have your deep-set expectations ruffled and reshuffled. It’s like an alternate universe, more or less like ours, with the same songs on the radio but sung by a different voice. It’s a woozy feeling, like the uncanny valley effect—a replica that doesn’t quite sit right. Sometimes I like that woozy feeling. Sometimes I like to take a little trip to that universe that branched off in an odd direction to produce a radio station that’s just a little off.

So here’s a sampling of cover versions of an already perfect song. Sublime, ridiculous, and Terry Bradshaw. If you listen to them all in a row, you may find yourself in a very strange groove indeed (if you like the uncanny valley of cover songs, I recommend the mind-unspooling experience of listening to two hours straight of around 50 different covers of “Eleanor Rigby,” via our friends at Chances with Wolves, episode 90).

I like a cover that finds something newly beautiful and distinctive. I also like a goofball cover. The worst thing you can do is just sing it back straight, or try to hide your own predilections. This comes up a lot with this song. There is something intimidating about “I’m So Lonesome” that maybe leaves imitators too reverent, like they don’t want to let their grimy hands touch a museum piece. That’s too bad: Wanda Jackson’s cover uses sentimental strings with no rockabilly edge; Tommy James and the Shondells’ version is about as psychedelic as a freshly ironed dress shirt. I always love to hear Waylon Jennings and Tanya Tucker and Willie Nelson sing but although their versions are nice to listen to, none of them is quite distinctive enough to file high in their catalogs.

I listened to more than a hundred of these “I’m so Lonesome” covers. I don’t know why, I just did. Let’s try some samples. (Note: Some of these actually outdid Hank on the charts. “I’m So Lonesome” was originally the B-side for “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It,” which hit #2 on the country charts in 1949. But our lonesome ballad on the flip didn’t make much noise. It was re-released as a single in 1966, more than a decade after his death, and hit #43.)

The Carter Family (1967)

Beautiful rendition. The Carters might have had complicated feelings about ol’ Hank. Hank was eager to ingratiate himself with country music’s first family (he called Maybelle Carter “mama”). And the Carters were intrigued with the talented young man, at times treating him like an adopted family member (Maybelle’s husband Eck thought he was a genius, and Hank reportedly pushed to get the Carters on the Opry). But things got weird. He came over to their house all the time, where Maybelle would feed him cornbread and June Carter (the future Mrs. Cash) would try to convince him to give up booze, which would work until it didn’t. Hank, then married and twenty-seven years old, became smitten with Anita Carter, then eighteen, and began making flirtatious inquiries and drunk dialing her at all hours of the night. June was close buddies with Hank’s wife Audrey. One time, she was trying to keep the peace between the tumultuous lovers and Hank fired his pistol, presumably aiming for Audrey but the bullet whizzed past young June and nearly killed her—a morbid sliding doors moment in country music history. Another time, Hank thought he saw Audrey in the car with June (it was actually Anita) and tried to run them off the road. Maybelle told him he better not harm her girls. “But mama…” he started, trying to explain himself. “Don’t you call me mama,” she said. According to the eldest Carter sister, Helen, Hank crumpled like he’d been whipped.

Al Green (1973)

Hot damn. This is probably the only cover of this song that the singer absolutely makes his own. Green finds new emotional byways, adding layers of verve and despair in a soul rendition. He just crushes it: Lonesomeness as ecstatic transcendence.

George Hamilton (1970)

In the awful 1964 biopic film, Your Cheatin’ Heart, Hamilton lip synchs Hank’s songs, which were overdubbed with Hank Jr. singing in place of his dad. But Hamilton, a lifelong Hank fanatic, had wanted to sing them himself (Elvis supposedly turned down the part and Steve McQueen was another possibility). I guess this always stuck in his craw because six years later he took to the “Ed Sullivan Show” to sing the songs with his own voice. For some reason, he did a six-song medley—three featured in the video below, here’s the others—that must have taken up a good chunk of the program. Again, this was six years after the release of a movie that wasn’t particularly successful. I don’t understand how that happened, unless Hamilton made it a condition of his appearance? Anyway, here he goes, leading this round off with “I’m So Lonesome.” It’s exquisitely bad. But he’s really into it. Which is sweet. Perhaps the least sexy he has ever been. Yet sexy as ever.

Little Richard (1971)

Little Richard grew up listening to country music, at a time when many local hillbilly singers were Black. He always had a soft spot for Nashville, where he lived and performed in clubs for a spell as a teenager (as I recall, this was one of the few topics he was genuinely excited to talk about when I cold called him years ago). If the contingencies had lined up differently, Little Richard would have had a bigger second act as a soul singer in the 1970s. Cue this up and pretend it was so.

The Everly Brothers (1963)

Yes, please.

Marty Robbins (1957)

After Hank’s death on New Year’s 1953, there was an outpouring of tribute songs and people rushed to play their versions of the songs he wrote, or cover songs he had performed. But as far as I know, the first cover of “I’m So Lonesome” recorded and released after his death didn’t come until 1957, with this straight-ahead rendition from Marty Robbins. One of two Hank covers that open Robbins’s second studio album.

Elvis Presley (1973)

I’m just going to have to admit I just love this.

Joni James (1959)

Pop star Joni James’s knack for patient phrasing yields a haunting, plaintive rendition here. She took a cover of “Your Cheatin’ Heart” to #2 in 1953, so she tried an entire album of Hank sons in 1959. Underrated figure in pop music, she sold more than 100 million records—recorded over about a ten-year span before she left the music industry.

Noël Akchoté (2015)

French free jazz guitar version. There you go.

Johnny Cash with Nick Cave (2002)

Cash performed the song multiple times over the years, including a straightforward cover released in 1960. This later one, from his Rubin period, doesn’t quite work—but I still think it’s the closest Cash came to getting something fresh out of the material. There is something uneasy about it that feels like a nice break from this effortlessly confident portion of Cash’s career.

Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan (1966)

And okay, this, too. Maybe the most iconic recent cover because of its place in the Martin Scorsese documentary No Direction Home, here’s a snippet of Cash alongside Bob Dylan’s impressive fingernails backstage in Wales. Originally filmed by D.A. Pennebaker for the doomed Eat the Document, which was meant to be a followup to the Dont Look Back documentary. Cash and Dylan both happened to be playing at two different nearby venues in Cardiff in May 1966. They both apparently have taken heroic doses of amphetamines. Each is focused deeply on something, though it’s not clear that the object of their focus is singing this song.

For a similar dose, here’s Dylan and Joan Baez likewise scuffling their way through the song about a year earlier at the Savoy Hotel in London.

Jimmie Dale Gilmore (1993)

I dig this one, maybe the only cover that manages to fully conjure the song’s cosmic atmospherics.

Terry Bradshaw (1976)

Oh my. Football fans will recognize the bumbling, bumptious Terry Bradshaw, longtime television announcer and four-time Super Bowl champ as the Steelers quarterback in the 1970s. Midway through his NFL stardom, he also had this weird stint as a big-time country singer. Bradshaw is one of the biggest fools in public life, but he was very committed to a workmanlike classic country persona and he does just fine. He took this cover to #17 on the country charts and #91 on the Billboard Hot 100. America is a strange place.

I can’t figure out how to embed it, but please please take a minute and watch this video of Terry Bradshaw performing the song live, it is quite a document.

Carla Thomas (1966)

Memphis soul version. Disconcertingly sexy. Feels like the one she misses will return. She won’t be lonely long.

Hurray for the Riff Raff (2013)

This one I think would work best in a crowded dive bar that suddenly hushed when the singer’s voice came out through the speakers.

Jerry Lee Lewis (1969)

The Killer kills it, natch. Made it to #43 on the country charts.

Chris Isaak (1996)

Okay, he was born for this, but he delivers. No surprises here. Just Chris Isaak beautifully singing a haunting song. Like ordering a burrito from a trusty burrito place. It’s good. Probably the most cinematic rendition of the song. Would love to have this on the soundtrack to a Sergio Leone film. Or Wim Wenders?

Charlie McCoy (1972)

This one could be a very different movie soundtrack. Maybe a Terrance Malick wide shot of dogwood flowers in the wind as the sun is setting, just before someone sinister arrives to disrupt the Garden? Or an interlude in a Hong-Kong crime flick? Believe it or not, Charlie McCoy’s instrumental harmonica version went to #23 on the country charts. Can I go back to 1972 radio? I just wasn’t made for these times.

Tom Jones (1998)

I need to go to therapy for how much I cannot stand Tom Jones. I don’t know why he’s so popular, but I also don’t now why I dislike him so much. The whole thing confuses me. This rendition is awful.

Don Helms (1962)

Good vibe here, mostly instrumental version from Hank Williams’ steel guitarist. Aloha.

Yo La Tengo (2015)

Solid effort here, but not the brilliant reinterpretation that Yo La Tengo has pulled off with other cover songs, most notably their remarkable take on George McRae’s “You Can Have it All.”

Volbeat (2008)

I say this honestly: I thought a Danish metal version would be really good. But this is very bad.

Foggy River Boys (1950)

As far as I know, the very first cover of “I’m So Lonesome,” released on Decca a few months after Hank’s original. Vibe sound familiar? This is an early incarnation of the Jordanaires, who recorded secular music as the Foggy River Boys at this time.

Leon Russell (1973)

Too much of an homage to the original to really stand alone but arguably Leon Russell comes closest here to sounding like a man on the verge of a mental health breakdown of any of these Hank imitators. Surprised to learn this version made it to #78 on the Hot 100.

Ronnie Hawkins (1960)

It is a spooky song, but not quite sure what to make of this one. The Hawk conjures horror-movie vibes. Feels like this is what Leatherface’s family in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre might listen to on a cool, breezy evening.

Let’s stop there because it goes on forever: I haven’t even mentioned versions by Dean Martin, Townes Van Zandt, Bill Monroe, Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Porter Wagoner, Chaley Pride, Jimmy Dickens, Glen Campbell, Donny Osmond, Ray Price, June Webb, the Cowboy Junkies, and literally hundreds of others. Or renditions from Hanks’s kin: Hank Williams Jr., Hank III, Jett Williams, Holly Williams.

Everyone has taken a crack. B.J. Thomas and the Triumphs, I believe, had the biggest hit of all, taking it to #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 (!) with their cover in 1966. Charlie Rich absolutely nails it. And there’s a silky jazz version from Cassandra Wilson, and a novelty ska version from Me First and The Gimme Gimmes, and on and on and on and on and on.

There is something about this song that wants to be sung. Sing it to your babies in whatever private key you share. The song contains multitudes: A loner’s lament, and a family tradition.