The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams

iTunes Review

Few albums have as strange a story behind them or such fantastic results. The songs here were created using lyrics that country legend Hank Williams had written in his notebooks but never got around to putting to music. Williams’ death at age 29 on New Year’s Day, 1953, froze his legacy with a catalog of unrivaled brilliance. Now, with the help of a first-rate cast, his unfinished songs are given life. It isn’t just country stars who re-create the Williams sound. Levon Helm, drummer from The Band, pulls from his Arkansas childhood for “You’ll Never Again Be Mine.” Sheryl Crow puts on her cowboy hat for the beautifully styled “Angel Mine.” Few albums have as strange a story behind them or such fantastic results. The songs here were created using lyrics that country legend Hank Williams had written in his notebooks but never got around to putting to music. Williams’ death at age 29 on New Year’s Day, 1953, froze his legacy with a catalog of unrivaled brilliance. Now, with the help of a first-rate cast, his unfinished songs are given life. It isn’t just country stars who re-create the Williams sound. Levon Helm, drummer from The Band, pulls from his Arkansas childhood for “You’ll Never Again Be Mine.” Sheryl Crow puts on her cowboy hat for the beautifully styled “Angel Mine.” Alan Jackson couldn’t come closer to Williams’ vocal ache for “You’ve Been Lonesome, Too.” Vince Gill and Rodney Crowell take “I Hope You Shed a Million Tears” and turn it into a tune that Williams’ alter ego Luke the Drifter would’ve recorded, complete with spoken word. The track features the last recorded evidence of Williams’ pedal steel player Don Helms. Merle Haggard takes the spiritual with “The Sermon on the Mount” and makes it a collaboration between two country legends.