Hank Williams By Releasing Two New Digital Projects September 13th
Available For the First Time Digitally The Entire 143 Song Grammy Nominated “Hank Williams:The Complete Mother’s Best Recordings….Plus!”
Fairfax, VA (August 19, 2011) — Hank Williams’ talent and life story continue to fascinate music fans around the world nearly sixty years after his death. As a result, Williams has become one of Time Life’s most successful artists during the last three years and now the company has partnered with Warner Distribution Company as a continuing part of this project for a new e-book about the music legend, Hank Williams: The Mother’s Best Shows In Words And Music that releases September 13, 2011. The book is written by the renowned Hank Williams historian, Colin Escott and takes the reader on a voyage of discovery into the roots of Williams’ music and the stories behind some of his most successful songs. His text considerably expands his work on the three top-selling box sets from the Mother’s Best recordings, including the highly acclaimed and Grammy nominated Time Life project, Hank Williams: The Complete Mother’s Best Recordings….Plus!.
Hank Williams: The Mother’s Best Shows In Words And Music is a new direction for Time Life by releasing the book digitally, and offering a unique synthesis of words, music, and photos. Besides providing the background on the history of the Mother’s Best radio shows, the e-book creates a compelling portrait of an artist that gave almost no interviews during his short 29-year life and results in a fascinating understanding of why this Pulitzer Prize winning artist still resonates with us after all these years.
According to Hank’s daughter, Jett Williams, “The relationship between the man, his music, his sense of humor, his overwhelming charisma, and the genius and tragedy of his short life all come together in these new initiatives. His awesome talent has not only survived the ages, it has survived and embraced the technology revolution and has become available once again to his ever-widening fan base.”
“From the beginning of this project we wanted to re-present Hank Williams in a fully three dimensional way sharing new insights into the man, his personality, music tastes, influences and his genius,” says Mike Jason, Senior Vice President/Retail, Time Life. “The e-book format has enabled Colin Escott to blend music, the story, photos and video into a more full representation. The forty-minute documentary included with the e-book features Williams’ daughter Jett interviewing two of Hank’s original band members. It wonderfully hits the mark, blending deeply personal reminscences and humor from these former Drifting Cowboys.”
At the same time, Time Life will digitally release the entire Grammy nominated project, Hank Williams: The Complete Mother’s Best Recordings….Plus! that was also instrumental in Williams becoming the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize Award last year. The box set will be available at all digital music outlets. The project contains 72 complete 15-minute shows, featuring 143 performances by Hank Williams together with conversation, and much more. The recordings are from Williams’ Mother’s Best Flour shows, recorded at the pinnacle of his career in 1951. When Williams was planning to be out on tour, he prerecorded his Mother’s Best shows, and 72 of them miraculously survived.
As announced earlier, September 13th will also mark the release date of Hank Williams: The Legend Begins that includes the very first recordings of Williams at fifteen-years-old, home recordings from 1940 and his first radio series, Health And Happiness. All of the music in the 3-CD package has been meticulously restored with state of the art technology and brings Williams once again into the living room of the listener, as it would have over sixty years ago.