One Artist, One Song Series: Hank Williams - Hey, Good Lookin' (1951)

Hank Williams: Hey, Good Lookin’

My general perspective on country music as a whole has not evolved all that much over decades of occasional listening experience: I give the country-western genre full credit for being, along with the blues, one of the foundation stones of classic rock and roll, but «pure» country, for the most part, at best leaves me indifferent, and at worst, stirs up acutely negative feelings. This is natural, because, arguably, country music has always been the most stereotypically «American» — or, more accurately and quite evidently, «rural American» — of all the popular music genres, as clearly seen from the fact that non-U.S. country acts around the world are scarcer than hen’s teeth, as opposed to, say, non-U.S. jazz combos, non-U.S. rock bands, or even non-U.S. hip-hop artists.

Some of the urban rock’n’roll boys’ attempts to reclaim country for themselves, as it happened during the back-to-roots movement in the late 1960s (think the Byrds’ Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, Gram Parsons etc.), left us with curious historical mementos, but on the whole, I’d say, the movement was fruitless, though it did help bring along things like «outlaw country», «alt-country», and other iconoclastic sub-genres — all of which attempt to expand on the classic country formula but still do not usually manage to make this brand of American export as successful as all those other ones. The reasons here are both sociological («country» tends to be associated with either conservative values or very local issues of the American South) and musical (like the blues, country music essentials are highly limited, with lyrics often being the only element of note to differentiate between compositions), but I’m in no mood to write a detailed treatise on the ups and downs of country music as a whole; all I want to say is that, perhaps, each and every civilization needs something all-its-own, and from that odd perspective, country music is easily the least imperialistic thing America has ever unleashed on the world at large, heh heh. Oh, and my own personal favorite country album of all time? Ween’s 12 Golden Country Greats, of course. As if we needed this question in the first place, duh.

That said, every once in a while in the history of country music comes a figure which, even if it fails to completely break down the rigid rule set of the genre, still transcends it with such an overriding personality that it is easy to overlook the bars of the cage and simply remain awestruck with the exquisite glow emanating from within. In other words, truly great, transcendent country music thrives on personality, which can be a subjective and subtle thing but sometimes feels undeniable. For instance, I’ve never felt that much individual personality between the allegedly great Nashville queens (from Patsy Cline to Dolly Parton, etc. — it feels like mostly a matter of oscillation between the «vulnerable Southern belle» vs. «strong independent cowgirl» stereotypes), but the exclusiveness of Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson is indeed hard to deny. Not to mention the early birth of country period, when genre lines were still extremely blurred and people like Jimmie Rodgers pretty much worked the same circuit as people like Blind Blake, with one foot in white subcultures and the other one in the black ones — with the cycle later repeated by Elvis on a different scale.

This could hardly be said of Hank Williams, who was country through and through — an Alabama boy by birth, a proud son of Nashville by primary occupation, and there’s hardly a surviving photo of the man without his trademark hat and typical Nashville garb. Nor is there anything in his compositional style or lyrical subjects that would significantly challenge the rigid framework of the genre; he is every bit as loyally country-western as, say, Iron Maiden is loyally heavy metal. Nor was he an exceptional musician, like Chet Atkins — and even his lyrical abilities, while certainly towering over the typical word-craft level of the average country performer (and praised for that reason by just about every singer-songwriter who ever lived in the aftermath), do not formally elevate him above the standard conventions of the country genre in the same way as, say, Bob Dylan’s lyrics transcend the world of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.

Nor am I listing all these nors merely for the sake of a standard writing convention (pull the pendulum all the way to the side, then give your readers a nice whack to get their blood flowing). All I really want to do is stress how country, a genre that usually leaves me indifferent, takes on a whole new life for me when it’s Hank Williams singing it (important addendum: only when he is actually singing it, as opposed to lots and lots of tracks that he recorded with spoken words, each and every one of which can go straight to hillbilly hell for all I care). His voice does for country music much the same thing as Billie Holiday’s voice does for vocal jazz — that is, it makes me forget that I am listening to «country music» or «vocal jazz», and makes me realize I am listening to an individual human being, and a pretty sympathetic one at that.

In thinking which one of Hank’s great recordings could act as the perfect illustration to this reaction — and the choice is not that large, because Hank’s total recorded legacy is fairly limited, and many of the remaining tracks are either spoken word recitals or inferior rewrites of superior takes — anyway, in thinking of that, I was, of course, first remined of the great heartbroken ballads, all the ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’ and ‘Cold, Cold Heart’ and ‘You Win Again’ stuff, but I think the charms of these songs are more or less self-evident, and furthermore, they weren’t the kind of material that first made me lower the anti-country barrier to issue Mr. Williams a special pass. That kind of material was usually the more rock’n’roll-minded stuff, like ‘Move It On Over’ in the early days or ‘Jambalaya’ in the latter ones — but then, extolling the virtues of ‘Move It On Over’ might make it seem like I only respect Hank for being a predecessor to Bill Haley, which is definitely not the case.

In the end, I realized that I only had to answer myself this simple question: «Which Hank Williams song ended up as the most frequent guest on any of my spur-of-the-moment playlists?» The answer was simple and objective, though it might come along as a little surprising — but at least I’ll have something relatively out-of-the-boxish to write about, rather than cry pre-packaged tears over ‘Cold, Cold Heart’ for the millionth time in World Wide Web history.

Not that ‘Hey, Good Lookin’ is some sort of obscure gem, far from it: in June 1951, it went straight to the top of the country charts, became one of the few surviving examples of Hank performing live on video, has been covered by a shitload of country and non-country artists alike (always in inferior versions), and was even inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001. Most people who know anything about Hank Williams, or country in general, are likely to be quite familiar with it, and probably enjoy it as much as I do. But is it for the same reasons that I do? Let’s try and find out.

The story goes that Hank wrote the song in about 20 minutes while on a plane trip with Little Jimmy Dickens, a bit of a novelty country clown mostly remembered for songs with titles like ‘May The Bird Of Paradise (Fly Up Your Nose)’; having asked Hank for a potential hit tune, he immediately got one, only to have it quickly taken away by the author with the explanation that "that song’s too good for you". Which is my impression exactly: ‘Hey, Good Lookin’ feels like a jokey, nonchalant, lightweight tune all around, but there’s a bit of seriousness — maybe even disturbing seriousness — underneath, which is really only discernible when Hank himself does it.

The alleged speed with which the song was written certainly might have something to do with its main hook being lifted directly from the song with the exact same title, originally written by Cole Porter for the musical Something For The Boys in 1942: Porter’s "hey good lookin’, say what’s cookin’?" became "hey good lookin’, whatcha got cookin’?", and although the verse melody came entirely from elsewhere, it’s a bit surprising that Cole did not sue for copyright — not that this was as common a practice in 1951 as it became in the modern era of pop-making, but still, it’s probably only because Cole has left no offspring that the song has somehow managed to avoid getting involved in copyright wars. It’s quite telling, by the way, that although we tend to think of Hank Williams as country music’s exemplary lyricist, revered and idolized by the likes of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, the song’s grammatically quirkiest line — "no more lookin’, I know I’ve been tooken" — also comes directly from Porter ("hey hey good lookin’, if you’re not already tooken..."), to whom such amusing mutilations of English came quite naturally, so let’s give proper credit where proper credit is due.

Nevertheless, in the hands of Hank and his Drifting Cowboys the song becomes some­thing bigger than Porter’s fluffy little ode to having casual fun in the moonlight. First, I love the relatively slow tempo of the original recording; live, as can be easily heard on the versions in the Complete Hank Williams boxset or seen from surviving TV footage, Hank and the band would speed the song up, and this is also usually the way it is done by various cover artists — but the relaxed, unhurried tempo of the classic take is perfect for conveying the song’s attitude: if you were a fancy-dressed gigolo flirting with a girl on a hot, summer day, would you be rushing it as if to let her know you got another thirteen encounters like that planned on the same day? The overall charisma level of the song drops in direct proportion to any extra beats per minute.

Second, the one thing that even a Star Trek-level replicator couldn’t properly replicate: the timbre and mood of Hank’s voice. There are many ways in which you could sing "hey good lookin’ / whatcha got cookin’ / how’s about cookin’ something up with me?", and most of them involve getting sleazy if you’re a male singer, or getting pin-uppish if you’re a lady. Hank’s raspy drawl — the extended sustain of those heeeeeey, whaaaaaat, and with meeeeeee forms the bulk of the vocal melody’s appeal — has not one whiff of sleaze, nor does it come across as whiny or grotesque; instead, it projects something I’d describe as a mix of power and pleading, with a ringing intensity that’s almost literally peerless. For all the superficially simple-minded fun of the song, you can catch a hint of painful desperation in that drawl, very, very faintly implying that there’s a deeply tortured soul behind the playful cowboy exterior — and this gives a whole extra coloring to the care­free verse as well ("I’ve got a hot rod Ford and a two-dollar bill / and I know a spot right over the hill"). Most people who cover this stuff only get the reckless fun aspect of it by definition; Hank’s original overlays it with a dream of escapism, much the same way — but, of course, with far less pomp and pretense and far more laconicity — as Bruce Springsteen’s long-winded teen dream epics would be doing in the 1970s.

Then comes my favorite part — the instrumental break. There are many fabulous examples of Don Helms (steel guitar) and Jerry Rivers (fiddle) nicely complementing Hank’s vocal melodies, but I’ll be damned if there’s a more perfect example than this one. For ‘Hey, Good Lookin’, they do not stray far away from the actual vocals: Helms starts out imitating the verse melody, then Rivers comes in on fiddle to do the bridge, and then Helms returns with a few more bars of the verse. If you want pure, crystal-clear steel guitar perfection with a bit of cocky sass to it, you need go no further than Helms’ plucking — with just a few well-placed notes, he shows you who’s the boss over the space of three or four bars. Rivers gets the bridge, which is more long-winded and «flourishy», weaving a slow country-dance melody which flows out of the main steel guitar verse as naturally as it dissipates back into the reprise of the steel guitar verse. The two form a happy dialog — the sassy, but restrained «male» courting of the steel guitar is counter­acted by the «gallant maiden» curtsying of the fiddle — and every frickin’ time I get to this instrumental break, I am taken away to one minute of paradise. Perhaps only the Allman Brothers with ‘Jessica’, out of all the rootsy Americana music ever produced, can reach to the same heights of joy as the Drifting Cowboys do here — and ‘Jessica’ takes a lot more effort and a lot more wind-up to get all the way up there.

The second verse/bridge iteration could, by some, be regarded as Hank’s obligatory concession to the world of conservative morality and family values, seeing as how he transforms this story of a gigolo’s casual affair into a moral awakening ("I’m gonna throw my date book over the fence..."). However, while the words do bring on a whole new aspect, the mood remains exactly the same — the mix of total joy with just a whiff of pain and suffering — and so you can interpret it any way you like. For instance, you can think that the last verse is all about bullshitting the poor gal, where all of the singer’s declarations are really "sweet nothings". Or, on the contrary, you can suggest that he was already all smitten and serious in the first verse, just not yet fully realizing it himself back at the time. Reality check (with Hank’s own marriage to Audrey pretty much in shambles by 1951 due to his constant infidelity) would heavily speak in favor of the former, but on the other hand, reality checks are a poor guide to artistic feeling, so the best thing to do is concoct your own narrative around the song and go with it. Like any truly great art, it’s flexible enough to let you do that.

As I already mentioned, ‘Hey Good Lookin’ has the distinction of being one of the very few songs represented by a saved-for-posterity TV performance (on NBC’s «Kate Smith Evening Hour» in April 1952) — unfortunately, it’s an abridged and sped-up version, fully integrated in the overall cheesy Nashville setting at that... and all you get from the magnificent instrumental break is a couple bars of Don Helms plucking that steel guitar, almost as an insulting rape of the original (well, then again, I guess you had to leave plenty of time for those generic fiddle jigs on the show). It’s still a precious historic document, given that surviving video footage of Hank is so scarce it’s always worth its weight in gold — but please stick to the studio original, with its ideal tempo and immaculate steel-guitar-fiddle conversation, for that one perfect example of how «simple» and «formulaic» country music, given the right touch of genius, can transcend both formula and simplicity to take you away for three minutes of pastoral nirvana.

Oh, and, actually, given my additional passion for video games, I cannot refrain from mentioning just how brilliant was the inclusion of the song into the soundtrack for Grand Theft Auto San Andreas more than half a century later. For those who never played the game or do not remember the story (though it’s pretty hard to forget if you did ever play), there’s this moment in it when Carl "C.J." Johnson, the protagonist, after a lengthy period of living through the pleasures, temptations, atrocities, and general crazy­ass hustle-bustle of Los Santos, finds himself betrayed, evicted, and thrown out of the big city to live small-scale in the remote countryside — and if you’re lucky, the very first song you get to automatically hear when entering your first vehicle there, on the «K-Rose» radio station, will be none other than ‘Hey, Good Lookin’, more than anything else giving that segment of the game a whole new vibe: peaceful, relaxed, paradisiac, yet with the same faint shade of pain and suffering which suits C.J. just as fine as it did Hank himself in the deep, deep past. There’s even a sentimental YouTube video commemorating that first impression, which shows I’m not alone in remembering the experience with such fondness.

In conclusion, I reiterate that I do not at all insist ‘Hey, Good Lookin’ is the best Hank Williams recording ever made, or even that it is the most representative one, or even that it is the one that best fits my current mood (that would probably be the one that goes "no matter how I struggle and strive, I’ll never get out of this world alive"). I am merely listing it as a great example of how something which formally does not pretend to be much more than a playful trifle can, through a sheer accidental conflux of circumstances, trigger feelings of comparatively phenomenal power. Like, really truly, there’s Beet­hoven’s 9th, and then there’s hey good lookin’ whatcha got cookin’ done by a Nashville dude who’s got glittery musical notes embroidered on his suit, and you’re not even sure which sound it is to cause your heart go bumpety-bump-ier. Strange thing, music.