Hank Williams trivia still fascinates fans

The work of Hank Williams, whose family is the subject of “Family Traditions,” an extensive exhibit at Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame, has had a profound impact on today’s musicians.

Here are just a few things you might not know about this giant of country music:

* His name was misspelled on his birth certificate as “Hiriam.”

* Williams suffered from crippling pain caused by spina bifida occulta, a spinal deformity.

* In 1950, Williams recorded 14 narrative and talking blues songs. These were released under a pseudonym — Luke the Drifter — to prevent jukebox owners from ordering material so different from his popular material.

* Williams married his first wife, Audrey, at a filling station near Andalusia, Ala.

* Most of Williams’ friends and family discouraged him from recording his megahit, “Lovesick Blues,” which they considered a piece of fluff. It spent 16 weeks in the No. 1 spot in 1949, his first song to do so.

* A scrap of paper containing one of Willliams’ last songs was found in the Cadillac in which he died. The song was about his ex-wife Audrey, from whom he had been divorced for a year.

* Williams’ last single released during his lifetime was “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive.” It posthumously reached the No. 1 spot after his death in 1953.

* “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “Kaw-Liga” and “Take These Chains From My Heart,” were also posthumous No. 1 releases. All were recorded over the course of a three-hour session in 1952.

* In 1961, Williams was the first artist to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Source: The Country Music Hall of Fame, Hankwilliams.com, PBS’ “American Masters Series”