Hearing Another Side of Hank Williams

What new can you say about the late Hank Williams, the most important songwriter ever in country music and one of the dozen most influential post-World War II figures in all of pop?

Not much, probably, but Mercury Records’ new “Health and Happiness Shows” album gives Williams’ fans something new to hear.

Part of the label’s “Chronicles” series, the two-disc collection brings together for the first time on CD the eight 15-minute radio shows that Williams, wife Audrey and his Drifting Cowboys band recorded in the fall of 1949. The programs were sponsored by Hadacol, a patent medicine company that was popular at the time in the South--hence the “Health and Happiness” title.

They came too early in Williams’ career to include such later classics as “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “Jambalaya” and “Cold, Cold Heart.” But the album does include renditions of “Lovesick Blues,” which spent four months at No. 1 on the country charts in the spring and summer of 1949, and the mournful “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” which was never a hit for Williams but which now stands as one of his most-prized works.

Beyond the music, the charm of the album is the informal, rural nature of the shows--a “hiya, neighbor” sensibility that has largely faded from the country music experience as the music has become more urban and relatively sophisticated.

The first show, for instance, opens with Williams singing the Sons of the Pioneers’ “Happy Rovin’ Cowboy,” which, surprisingly, was the program’s theme song. About midway through the tune, Williams is interrupted by the announcer:

“Well, howdy, neighbors, it’s ‘Health and Happiness’ time with the ol’ ‘Lovesick Blues’ boy. . . . Yes, the singing sensation of the nation, Hank Williams, is back again.

“Well, confidentially, neighbor, I just looked over Hank’s shoulder and I saw some of the numbers on today’s program and there’s a couple of tunes in there that have amounted to millions and millions of record sales.”

After singing “Wedding Bells,” another of his 1949 hits, Williams introduces “Lovesick Blues” by saying, “There’s a lot of suffering in this song. . . . We hope you never have to go through nothing like this. . . . We have to go through it quite often, though.”

While Williams laughed at the end of the sentence, there is a bittersweet ring to the line because many of his most enduring songs spoke with unflinching honesty about his own troubled relationships.

“Health and Happiness Shows”--which also features some folk and gospel numbers--is by no means the definitive Williams collection, but it is a warm, disarming peek into a sidelight in Williams’ career and into the milieu of commercial country music in the late ‘40s.