Hank Williams Jr Album Cover Art Oop San Diego Ca

In 1975, Hank Williams Jr. found his voice but almost lost his life.

Until then, Williams had been unable to escape the shadow of his legendary father, who had transformed land music and died when his merely son was 3. The younger Williams began making music and touring when he was just a male child, finding fame by singing his father'due south songs in his father'due south way.

Merely it wasn't enough.

After a suicide try and a movement from Nashville to Cullman, Alabama, Williams spent the first one-half of 1975 recording what would exist his breakthrough anthology, "Hank Williams Jr. & Friends." Featuring two songs written by Toy Caldwell, a founding fellow member of the Marshall Tucker Band, the album marked Williams' movement from the traditional "lonesome" style made famous by his male parent to the rambunctious, land-rock sound he's since built a career on.

But before Williams had a hazard to promote the album, he went mount climbing in Montana.

On Aug. eight, Williams, then 26, and a friend went hiking forth rugged terrain near Ajax Lake in search of goats. Williams slipped and fell nearly 500 feet, sustaining "serious head injuries every bit he struck jutting rocks," according to a story from The Associated Press that ran on the front end folio of the Aug. 11, 1975, issue of The Tennessean.

A helicopter was forced to land about a quarter of a mile abroad from the blow scene. All told, the rescue took vi hours, with 6 men carrying Williams to the helicopter, which flew him to Missoula Community Hospital.

There, Williams spent over 7 hours in surgery — led by a squad of five doctors — for head and facial injuries.

The last days of Hank Sr.:Retracing each of Hank Williams' mystery-filled last hours out of Knoxville

When Williams awakened in his hospital room, he had two special visitors: his godmother, June Carter Cash, and her husband, Johnny.

"When I roughshod, there were only ii people I saw when I woke up in the hospital bed, and that was Johnny and June," Williams told Rolling Stone in 2015. "June put a cantankerous on me and told me information technology was all going to be OK. I never knew if I would sing once more or non, talk once more or not, permit alone think about what I was going to look like. It was a scary fourth dimension."

Williams' mother, Audrey Williams, a shut friend of June Carter Cash, flew from Nashville to Montana to be by her son's side.

"Information technology's simply a miracle the boy is living, only he'due south immature and he's tough," she told The Tennessean that month. "It was just God's will for him to alive."

(Audrey Williams died less than 3 months afterwards her son's accident at the age of 52. She had been facing financial struggles and her domicile had been seized by the IRS for failure to pay taxes, nonetheless her son's near-decease experience weighed heaviest on her. A member of her personal staff told The Tennessean that "she'd been depressed ever since Hank Jr. got hurt. I think that'due south what really did it.")

Williams was tough, only so was his recovery, which took ii years and multiple surgeries.

Today, the human backside six platinum albums wears a beard and sunglasses to hide his scars.

"I've had dreams nearly it," Williams said in 1989. "I should have died. The dr. said he had worked on plenty of boys in Vietnam and, to be frank, they looked adept compared to me."

Williams' fall was chronicled in film — 1983's "Living Proof: The Hank Williams Jr. Story" — and in vocal.

In 1980'due south "All in Alabama," Williams sings:

"I just had to show 'em/ I didn't need 'em/ And so I headed out west to see some old friends of mine.

"I thought if I'd climb upwardly old Ajax Mount/ Maybe that would help me become it all off my listen.

"I made it up to the meridian/ Picked out a articulate spot/ I thought a whole lot/ About the rest of my life.

"I had no idea then/ Soon information technology would nearly end/ Upward on this mountainside/ I would nearly die."

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Source: https://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/music/2020/08/08/hank-williams-jr-nearly-died-after-falling-off-mountain/5541191002/

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