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Oldies

Mount Olive, Alabama, MGM Records

Hank Williams

Hank Williams was born Hiram Williams on September 17, 1923, in Mount Olive, Alabama. He took guitar lessons from Rufus "Tee-Tot" Payne, a Black blues street performer. In 1937 he won a Montgomery talent show, and he went on to sing on WSFA radio and tour with his band, the Drifting Cowboys. MGM Records signed him in 1947. In 1949 his cover of a decades-old song went to No. 1 on Billboard's country chart, and his Grand Ole Opry debut that June got six encores. In all, 55 of his singles made the country top 10. The Opry fired him in August 1952, and he died in a car near Oak Hill, West Virginia, on January 1, 1953, aged 29.

Wall Lake, Iowa, to Branson

Andy Williams

Andy Williams was born Howard Andrew Williams on December 3, 1927, in Wall Lake, Iowa. He started out in a quartet with his brothers, who sang on a 1944 hit with Bing Crosby and joined Kay Thompson's nightclub act in 1947. From 1954 he was a featured singer on Tonight Starring Steve Allen, and after signing to Archie Bleyer's Cadence Records he reached No. 1 in February 1957. He went to Columbia in 1961. In 1963 one of his albums sat at No. 1 for 16 weeks. The Andy Williams Show won Emmys in 1963, 1966 and 1967, and the Christmas specials got him the name Mr. Christmas. In 1992 he opened his own theatre in Branson, Missouri, and he died there in 2012, aged 84.

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