Hank Williams: From Life to Legend

Goodlettsville TN: Published By the Author. Near Fine. (ca.1995; c.1967). Second Edition [see notes]. Softcover. [light handling wear only, a touch of residue on inside front cover, apparently from a removed bookplate]. (B&W photographs) A self-published memoir of country legend Hank Williams, by a member of his original band, the Drifting Cowboys. (Rivers was the fiddle player, and joined the group in 1949.) It's not very well-written, but is still valuable for its up-close-and-personal perspective. Rivers created the "Second Edition" of the book (originally published in 1967, as he explains in his Foreword) by adding a "Special Section," inside which the original edition is sort of sandwiched. (Pages 1-8 consist of new material, pages 9-48 are the original book, and the remainder of the book (through page 56) contains more new material, including a page on Hank Williams Jr., an account of the later career of the Drifting Cowboys, who got back together and started recording and touring again in 1976), and a continuation of the Hank Williams discography from the original book. The actual date of the printing of this book is impossible to determine, however; it's not stated anywhere, so one is left to suss it out of the textual details. In terms of actual content, nothing later than the early 1980s seems to be discussed, and the author makes several references to it being "thirty years after" Hank's death, which would make in 1983 -- but on page 50, at the tail end of the Drifting Cowboys discography, it's noted that "Sammy Pruitt died in 1988" and "Bob McNett died in 1995," so obviously this particular copy was "amended" much later than 1983. (Jerry Rivers himself died in 1996, so this printing was likely the last.) Also notable is the inside back cover, which is largely an account of the then-supposedly-rising career of Jett Williams, who was "declared by court order dated October 26, 1987 to be the biological daughter of Hank Williams," and made her singing debut in 1989. .