BMG To Release Hank Williams Photo Book And Six-CD Set Of Remastered Live Recordings

On Feb. 7, 2020, BMG will release a Hank Williams table-top book and six-CD set of remastered live recordings, titled Hank Williams: Pictures From Life’s Other Side—The Man and His Music in Rare Photos and Recordings.

The recordings have been pulled from a discovered collection of recorded broadcasts from a radio show Williams started hosting in 1951. Sponsored by Mother’s Best Flour Company, the 15-minute broadcasts were aired every weekday.

The find more than doubled the number of known Williams recordings; as the six-CD collection features 144 tracks representing the complete rundown of Williams’ performances from the existing transcription discs. Along with classics such as “Lovesick Blues,” “I Saw the Light,” “Cold Cold Heart,” and “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” the Mother’s Best recordings represent the only known versions of dozens of Hank Williams performances.

The compilation was produced by Cheryl Pawelski, and each track was carefully restored and remastered by Michael Graves. Together, they earned Best Historical Album Grammy award for their work on Hank Williams’ The Garden Spot Programs, 1950 compilation in 2015.

The recordings are packaged in a slipcase with a book that chronicles Williams’ career in photographs. With the assistance of Grammy nominee Scott B. Bomar and Hank photo collector Ken Campanile, the 272-page hardbound volume was assembled by leading Hank Williams expert Colin Escott, who wrote the definitive biography of the American music icon and has won two Grammy awards for Best Historical Album for his production work on previous key Williams releases. Williams’ daughter, Jett Williams, contributed a foreword for the book.

To gather the photos, the team coordinated with Marty Stuart’s Congress of Country Music, the Grand Ole Opry Archives, the Center for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, the production company behind Ken Burns’ Country Music documentary, and various Hank fans and historians, including photos that had been saved by Hank Thompson, as well as fellow Grand Ole Opry star Little Jimmy Dickens. Additionally, fan photos were licensed from the Tom Sims Photo Archive, one of the world’s largest collections of country music photos.

Click here to pre-order Hank Williams: Pictures From Life’s Other Side—The Man and His Music in Rare Photos and Recordings.

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LB Cantrell

LB Cantrell is Editor/Director of Operations at MusicRow magazine, where she oversees, manages and executes all company operations. LB oversees all MusicRow-related content, including the publication’s six annual print issues and online news. She is a Georgia native and a graduate of the Recording Industry Management program at Middle Tennessee State University.

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