Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Lovesick Blues
2. Wedding Bells
3. You're Gonna Change (Or I'm Gonna Leave)
4. Why Don't You Love Me (Like You Used to Do)?
5. Comedy With Hank Williams/Red Foley/Minnie Pearl
6. They'll Never Take Her Love from Me
7. Moanin' the Blues
8. Nobody's Lonesome for Me
9. Dear John
10. Cold, Cold Heart
11. Hey, Good Lookin'
12. Honky Tonk Blues
13. Let the Spirit Descend
14. Baby, We're Really in Love
15. Comedy With Hank Williams/Rod Brasfield
16. Old Country Church
17. I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love With You)
18. Jambalaya (On the Bayou)
19. Half as Much
20. Window Shopping
21. Long Gone Lonesome Blues

Disc 2:

1. Aunt Jemima's Plaster - Red Foley
2. Lead Me to That Rock
3. I Just Don't Like This Kind of Livin'
4. Comedy With Minnie Pearl
5. Lord, I'm Coming Home - Red Foley
6. Oh, You Beautiful Doll
7. Comedy With Jamup & Honey
8. Lovesick Blues
9. You Ain't Got Faith
10. Church Music - Red Foley

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30420 in Music
• Released on: 1999-09-28
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: Extra tracks, Live

Amazon.com
Some years ago, MGM Records issued an LP of 11 Hank Williams Opry performances originally recorded for broadcast on Armed Forces Radio. Years of digging have unearthed much more Hank at the Ryman in crystal-clear monaural sound. Disc 1's 19 songs, punctuated by onstage joshing with singer Red Foley and Opry comics Minnie Pearl and Rod Brasfield, begin with his June 1949 debut as an Opry regular, ending in July 1952, a month before his firing over drinking-related no-shows. These powerful live renditions include the broadcast debuts of "Jambalaya" and "Window Shopping" along with two stark, chilling gospel numbers. Even with his physical stamina failing--as it clearly was on the final two songs--these raw performances are powerful testaments to Hank's charismatic genius and remain as arresting today as at the moment of broadcast. Disc 2, a complete 1950 Opry segment featuring Williams, Foley, and other Opry acts, is a historically valid, though musically inferior document, and including it on a Hank Williams package tends to dissipate the album's overall focus. --Rich Kienzle

Customer Reviews

2 Unearthly Performances
This 2-CD set brings together some truly sublime performances (the Grand Ole Opry armed forces debut of "Lovesick Blues" and "Move It On Over") on disc 1, but little of consequence is contained on disc 2. The "Move It On Over" track was 'recently discovered' in Mercury's vaults, but most of these live recordings were released on the 10-CD box set, lending truth to my suspicion that Mercury is hoarding the majority of these unearthly live performances and will release them one at a time, packaging them around fill (as in disc 2 of this set), intending to fleece the pockets of Hank Williams, Sr. fans. I would think that CD sales figures from Nashville's highest paid lap dancer (Shania Twain) should be more than enough to sustain Mercury's profit-hungry accounting department. This box set proves that to be wrong.

Nice, but should've been condensed down a bit!
Ok, anything new by Hank is essential! But, the problem is that Mercury Nashville knows this & uses this to make a quick buck off of Hank's fans. Here's what you get with this set. You get disc one that is comprised of all Hank, but runs only about 60 minutes. The second disc has only one song by Hank. The rest is throw away stuff like a comedy skit by Jamup & Honey and some other lesser knowns. Yes, it's nice to hear Red Foley doing a live rendition of a gospel song, but when I buy a Hank CD, I do not want to hear Red Foley unless he is MCing the show. This second disc runs short of 30 minutes making it a total waste. Mercury should've taken the one song off of disc two and put it on disc one. If you are going to have this as a two-discer, how about some of the live stuff not included here? How about the video versions of "Cold, Cold Heart", "Hey, Good Lookin'" or the live version of "I Can't Help It" w/ Anita Carter? How about the live version of "Dear John" that appeared on the bootleg CD "Jambalaya"? I'm beginning to think Kira Florita & Mercury Nashville are more intent on fleecing the pocketbooks of Hank's fans than providing excellent retrospectives on Hank!

Ok, it's a start
This set is a start by Mercury of what should be a long lived series of releases of live recordings. Hank recorded so much live material in his career that this only touches the tip of the iceberg. I'm thinking here of "live" recordings that have found their way onto bootleg CD's such as the oft-mentioned "Jambalaya". No, we're not talking "Mother's Best" here, but so many have made the point that even though CD#2 is a "bonus", it is practically worthless except to historians, completists or fans of these other artists, so that is a turn-off to this set. Polygram done a heckuva job in the 1980's with their multi- volume set, so I'd suggest Mercury take the same road with the live recordings and do some sort of a commemorative set of "live" recordings for the completists out there.