My Top Ten Hank Songs: I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry (#1)

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And so, after a long day that began in the ER and ended with a four-hour recovery "nap" (if you sleep for four hours, is that really a nap?), I'm home, NOT eating what I ate last night that sparked the GERD attack, and closing out another series. This one celebrates Hank Williams, one of the most legendary and easily recognized names in country music. Here's my favorite Hank song. #1: I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry Elvis once did this song and called it "the saddest song I've ever heard." Yeah, that's a pretty good description. This masterpiece was inspired, per the Colin Escott book, by Hank's tumultuous relationship with his first wife, Audrey. Now, you might remember that line in "The Conversation" with Hank Jr. and Waylon Jennings, where Hank Jr. said, "He's got one arm around my mama, he sure did love Miss Audrey." Oh, no, he didn't. Audrey ran around on him, supposedly (she was the "cheatin' heart" referenced in that song), and he ran around on her (the evidence of that is Jett Williams, Hank's daughter born less than a week after he died). Hank and Audrey put the funk in "dysfunctional." So he poured out his frustrations about an unhappy marriage in song (such as that "loveless mansion on the hill"). And here he not only wrote it, he sang it so convincingly that you'd swear his heart had literally broken by the last verse (that magical, poetic "the silence of a fallen star lights up a purple sky, and as I wonder where you are I'm so lonesome I could cry"). Hank may have been laughing all the way to bank, but part of the magic of Hank Williams was the raw emotion that he put in songs, distilled to their simplest form. Thanks for reading. I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry Written by Hank Williams Released as a single, 1949 Recorded in Cincinnati, Ohio (there's a marker out in front of the building where he recorded this):