2/10/1980 Hank Williams Jr., DuMaroc, DeSoto, IL


 41 years ago today...

February 10, 1980 - DeSoto, IL

Tired of playing his daddy's songs, Hank Williams Jr. showcased his raw Southern rock sound and continued a career renaissance at DuMaroc nightclub.

I was privileged to interview Hank Jr. before the show and wrote about his story and a concert review for the college newspaper.  

The accessibility and candid conversation that he offered a 20-year-old student reporter was incredible.  A newspaper photographer and myself were invited on to Hank's tour bus for a 30-minute chat prior to his show.  

A few years earlier, Hank Jr. had fallen while hunting in Montana, and went skidding 400 feet down Ajax Mountain, virtually landing on his head and nearly killing him.  During the interview, Hank removed his hat and tinted glasses to show his surgically-repaired forehead and cheek, now clearly formed from plastics.  One eye looked at you while the other looked away.  Without a touch of ego or vanity, he showed us all of his scars.  When the photographer went to capture the moment, Hank's manager jumped in the way of the shot, and said no pictures without the hat and the glasses.

"I went through years of stepping stones, playing my daddy's songs, but about 1974 I started turning up my guitar and playing 'Sweet Home Alabama' at shows instead of 'Your Cheatin' Heart.'  I'm playing for Bocephus (his nickname) now instead of my daddy's fans," he told me.

Following his sequin suit and rhinestones phase, he cut a record with Charlie Daniels, Toy Caldwell of Marshall Tucker Band and the Allman Brothers' Chuck Leavell titled "Hank Williams Jr. & Friends," a rock-oriented but Southern-sounding album that Rolling Stone hailed as his emergence as a major contemporary artist. 

Hank Jr's show was performed in front of a "full house" of more than 400, a crazy-small venue for the future Country Music Entertainer of the Year.  My review noted big ovations for his most recent hits "Family Tradition" and "Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound," but that the loudest cheers were for his version of Waylon Jennings' "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way."  

I saw Hank Jr. a few years later at the Arthur (IL) County Fair where he signed the photo that we had taken together following the interview.

I will never forget the kindness and respect that Hank Jr. and his manager showed to a couple of college kids.










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