CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

Where’s Hank?

YOUR CHEATIN’ HEART A Biography Of Hank Williams by Chet Flippo (Simon and Schuster)

by Susan Whitall

Rosanne Cash, Johnny’s firstborn and as I write, No. 1 on the country charts, was quoted in Esquire: “A lot has happened in country music since Hank Williams.”

Yeah...and the fact that country music survives despite decades of Hollywood Strings, cosmic cowboys, Kenny Rogers, mechanical bulls, Hee Haw, zoned-out L.A. session men, Kenny Rogers records, and much worse is a testament to its hillbilly grit. Listening to “Cold, Cold Heart” or “I’m So Lonesome 1 Could Cry,” I can’t believe that anyone thinks “Elvira” or even “Seven Year Ache”—pick any 1981 country hit—has a patch on it. Thirty years have gone by, but the “progression” of country music has been much slower—it’s more like a cyclic thing, with rock and pop coming in at five-year intervals to corrupt it, and with hillbilly roots being alternately, disdained and “rediscovered.”

The country songwriters and singers like Hank Williams who have lasted are usually the least pretentious, the most likely to touch a nerve with a simple folk ditty drawn from Anglo-Saxon ballads, black blues, and what the old lady said last night in between smacking the singer upside the head. “New country” stars like Ms. Cash may have more haute punk cool, but I find the clean lines of “Jambalaya” or “Your Cheatin’ Heart” more sophisticated ultimately than fake 50’s jazz licks played by Malibu session guitarists.

One heartening sign is Elvis Costello’s forthcoming Nashville album, on which Elvis croons “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “Why Don’t You Love Me” by old Hank, as well as songs by Johnny Cash, George Jones, Gram Parsdns...the real stuff. So Chet Flippo’s biography of Hank Williams came as a welcome surprise. It’s about time for rock to ponder over its part-hillbilly ancestry for awhile (1972’s a long time ago) and what better touchstone than the “Lovesick Blues” boy himself?

Unfortunately, the Alabama hillbilly has eluded Flippo—what we have here is the dreaded psychobiography...and not in a magazine, where it belongs, but in a real book,

boasting a subtitle “A Biography Of Hank Williams” and bearing the imprint of a distinguished publishing house.

Exactly when “biographers” started novelizing their subject’s lives is a moot point—why people keep doing it is one of the mysteries of the ages. Norman Mailer seems to have made a career out of psychobio-' graphing—E.L. Doctorow parlayed his “gift” into a hideous best seller.

At least Flippo’s intentions were pure: he writes in the preface that he wanted to “write an account of Hank Williams’ life with the immediacy and fire that I feel it deserves.” And that’s fine—for “new journalism,” for an irnpressionistic piece on Hank Williams. / would have shelled out a buck and a half for a Rolling Stone with such a story. The closest anybody’s come to writing a book in the same full-tilt style as the music and musicians written about was Nick Tosches in his book Country (Stein & Day hardback, Dell paperback; get it if you still can). Because Nick was writing about maniacs like Jerry Lee Lewis, of course, he didn’t have to novelize anything. And it would seem that the facts of Hank Williams’ life are also enough for several vivid books.

But merely describing how drunk, how messed up Hank is endless times; recounting the sins of his obnoxious, domineering mother and then devoting several chapters detailing the sins of his obnoxious, domineering wife just don’t seem to call up the ghost. In between idly counting how many times “cunt” recurs in the text (and hasn’t that hip sobriquet really come into its own more in the banal 70’s? In the 50’s, perhaps an occasional “bitch” or “slut” would have been more common...), I kind of hankered for the less sensational details of old Hank’s life that I felt were being denied me in the interest of “atmosphere.”

An earlier biography, Hank Williams by Jay Caress (Stein & Day), yields more traditional bio-type “facts” and “sources” in a less bombastic style. It’s heavier Ipn analysis and a slower read but I came away understanding more, and feeling that the music was all the richer for knowing the whys and wherefores. Caress was probably privy to no more private conversations than Chet Flippo, but I found it more helpful to read what longtime Williams sidemen Jerry Rivers had to say, in his own verbal cadence, than to read what Hank’s dad might have been thinking on some long lost Alabama day in the 30’s.

Ultimately, the cataloguing of Hank Williams’ vices, as interesting as they are, doesn’t give us any insight into what made just another Alabama “cowboy” singer into Hank Williams. He comes off so stupid in the book it’s amazing he could tune his guitar, much less compose the formidable catalog Acuff/Rose has been flogging over the years. Which brings us to the account in the book of Hank buying “Cold, Cold Heart”—well, the lyrics anyway—from Morehead College student Paul Gilley. If this is common knowledge in Nashville, OK, but it comes as a surprise to us up here in Yankee land. Is this a startling new revelation or what people have suspected all along or what? I turned to the Jay Caress book, which describes Hank writing each song, in pretty satisfying detail; telling just what his publisher and producer Fred Rose contributed, or what he would borrow from a friend or a fellow musician to incorporate into each song. It seemed to ring true.

If then, Hank was responsible for at least part of his songs, as Flippo would suggest, or all of them, as Caress would prefer, Your Cheatin’ Heart doesn’t leave a clue as to how he did it— nowhere is there evidence of any sort of artistic genius in this macho, drunken rube.

What I find most disturbing is why Hank Williams is so compelling a legend to music critics in their 20’s and 30’s. I suspect that because he was a pioneer of sorts in country music for taking drugs, that he’s set off from being just another drunk hillbilly singer because of his reputed amphetamine habit (among other things). He’s modem—like us—a cool guy who burned out in as splashy a way as any rock ’n’ roll hero.

Aside from the fact that the music does indeed stand up, whether the pilling and swilling legend of Hank Williams enthralls you or not, it seems weird that we need to catapult our heroes out of their snug, homey eras into our own. Our generation—that is, the generation spanning the 20’s and 30’s age group, for argument’s sake—has no corner on heavy drinking, drugging, fooling around with bad wimmin orgeneral wild boy behavior. To modernize Hank Williams is to distort him—he was intensely religious, for one thing, and according to his Drifting Cowboys, had a cigar box in the touring car on the road that anybody who took the Lord’s name in vain had to pop a quarter into. Not the sort of thing any 1981 urban cowboy would admit to...

Personally, I think every American child should have the experience of driving top fast down a two-lane blacktop highway in a largish car with “Why Don’t You Love Me” or “Jambalaya” or “Hey Good Lookin’ ” on the tape deck.

If the years are stripped away a bit and it seems like there’s more distance between towns, less people, more honky tonks, and the car seems to be as fast as a robin’s egg blue ’52 Cadillac...well, all the better.

■ ☆ ☆ ☆

(One of the best buys of the summer has been Hank Williams’ Greatest Hits (SE" 3918) in your neighborhood cut-out bin. Any other albums are pretty much sold as they turn up. but the various Greatest Hits compilations, thankfully, have remained in print throughout the years. The single-record MGM hits package, now licensed by Polygram. is highly recommended.)

Robin Was A Hood

ERROL FLYNN:

THE UNTOLD STORY by Charles Higham , _(Dell)_

That Errol Flynn was a lovable bastard has been general knowledge among movie fans for years. The actor debuted as Captain Blood in ’35 and made a career out of playing attractive rogues—including, notably, Robin Hood and Don Jifan— earning simultaneously an offscreen reputation as a hard-drinking womanizer, a reputation that peaked, publicly at least, with the infamous rape trial of ’43. Fortunately for Flynn, the two girls involved, both minors, were less than angels and it was mainly their lack of credibility that led to his acquittal. Besides, you don’t send Robin Hood to the slams just because two underage bimbos think he’s rude. After the trial “in like .Flynn” became the byword among all the hep Lotharios, and the national idolization continued—tho some female fans, watching the perfect charmer’s smile and laughing eyes, must have remembered the headlines \ and felt ambivalent. Whatever the case, everyone who saw Flynn in his heyday movie roles agreed that here was' one cool dude.

And now Charles Higham has come along to burst the bubble (actually he burst it last year but this spring has brought a paperback edition of his book with an added chapter and index and a fresh wave of publicity). According to Higham, Flynn was more than just a boozing rake with a passion for the manly pursuits of sailing, fishing and hunting—he was also a heavy hard drug user and smuggler, a bisexual with a fondness for young Mexican male prostitutes and Tyrone Power, and—4h(s is the big news here—a Nazi spy. Finding out that Flynn, who was the scourge of Nazism in movies like Desperate Journey (’42) and Edge Of Darkness (’42), was in fact sympathetic to the Nazi cause is like finding out that Boris Karloff was really a pussycat (and he was) and Stan Laurel was really not (and he wasn’t). Only this time the revelation is, perhaps, a little more serious...

Higham’s accusation is only partially convincing. After describing Flynn as being ‘“frozen in that dangerous fascist period of first puberty when the human male feels his oats and is ready to try anything” he goes on to detail and document Flynn’s lifelong friendship with a notorious but bungling Nazi spy, Dr. Hermann F. Erben. Throughout the 30’sand during World War II, Flynn aided Erben in his various ill-fated espionage attemps on behalf of Hitler’s Third Reich, This, Higham shows, is a matter of record, as is Flynn’s social relations with various top Nazis both before and during the war, and his virulent anti-Semitism. But as to whether or not Flynn actually did any aggressive spying, the evidence is a little, vague. He seems, at worse, to have been a wealthy and influential aid to the actual spies. Which is moderately amazing enough by itself.

Even more amazing is how boring Higham’s rendition of this juicy, scandalous life is. The reader wades through page after page of B-movie spy hijinks detailed in flaccid journalese, as well as tales of Flynn’s monetary and domestic problems, his sinus attacks and organ failures, wading and waiting wistfully for the next sexual indiscretion...and fortunately they come, a rape here, a blowjob there, keeping the book tolerably interesting.

So Errol Flynn was a Nazi symp—does anyone still get excited when heroes turn out to be villains? Hopefully so. And yet, Higham has been reduced to a state of such abject miserableness by his discovery—in the book he describes the “tears of grief and shock rolling down my cheeks” when he first learned of Flynn’s deception, and recently on a Detroit TV talk show he lamented it as a “shattering discovery...it gave me no pleasure at all’'—that one feels compelled to reassure him that it’s all right, it ain’t such a big deal. Flynn was only a movie star, after all, qnd it all happened a long, long time ago.

Richard C. Walls

Notes On The Real Manson Family

THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY (Syndicated)

The Partridge Family is very possibly the single most despised program in television history. Not even Flo or the universally-hated new Saturday Night Live can boast the kind of fanatical hatred that Shirley, Keith, Danny and the rest of the putty inspired so effortlessly. 1 have yet to encounterone “person” who will admit to intentionally watching the show, much less liking it.

Except for me, naturally. Now, I’m really very flattered that they run the Partridges 82 times a day around here especially for my viewing enjoyment, because nobody else is watching, that’s for sure. Just thinking about the thousands of ad dollars wasted urging me to think about cabinets, dessert magic and purses that unfold into field hospitals warms the cathodes of my soul. Let’s hear it for free enterprise!

What is it about this program that so many people detest? Could it be the disoriented, snivelling crew of actors? The ding-ding, toot-toot, peep-peep of their awful toy music? The pink cobwebs of unrequited cuteness that hover above each episode like over-inflated lily pads? Check answer D .—all that and more!

The cast of the Partridge Family was a carefully assembled scrapheap of downhill racers and sitcom strikeouts. Not counting the bus, Shirley Jones’ cryptically named Shirley was the most highly developed character. Snicker, elbow, etc. How they ever lured an established screen actress into this teddy bear ambush, I’ll never know. If I was her, I’d be pretty damn embarrassed! Of course, after all the smooching and rolling around in her slip with Elmer Gantry, she probably didn’t care anymore.

For all ypu assassination buffs, let’s not forget that P.F. was the sanitation vehicle David Cassidy rode to big bucks and peewee depravity. He wasn’t really that bad as Keith P.—could he help it if the mere glance of his grinning puss made little girls writhe in tongues and rip open the sluice gates in their. Underalls?

Or how about my idol, Danny Bonaduce, that bloated little fire pail full of old Mountie jockstraps? A textbook example of freckles gone too far, this kid could sell smoke alarms to arsonists. Plus—it was Danny himself who conned Mom into joining the group and Reuben into managing them. Thanks a lot, kiddo, and don’t do us any more favors.

Speaking of Reuben, don’t.

The female sex-object was superstar cover girl Susan “It’s Not My” Dey, yet another representative of the popular Lip School of teen appeal. Of her overbite, Danny once revealed “when she bites on a carrot, she only crimps it.,” Although she spends most of. her time onscreen standing around with her jaw hanging down like a broken tennis racket, if Susan were to walk up to my door and say “Hey Rick, how ’bout some cruel and wicked animal passion?” I would gladly can the Lip Farm jokes.

And, of course, let us not forget Chris, and Tracy, a pair of child actors so wiped out they make autism look like tap dancing.

Most of the episodes involved the family’s unlikely gigs, Keith’s unending girl troubles, or—worse yet—both. As a showcase for aspiring yc\ung models-turnedactress.'the role of Keefie’s squeeze introduced the early lust outlines of future slurps like Meredith Baxter Birney, Cheryl Ladd and a freshout-of-college Farrah Fawcett who played—you guessed it—a rock.

It’s a real tuffy selecting the best episode of this well-written but bargain-mounted series. It is the one where Danny sells Loverboy’s belongings—from his codpiece to his leftovers—to fans in order to buy Mom a mink coat? ‘‘Where did my asparagus go?” asks Keith. “I don’t know. Why don’t you call the Bureau of Missing Vegetables?” Danny replies. Author! Author!

Or how about one of the many wholesomely horrifying runaway hippie-girl episodes, particularly the one where Shirley runs down creepy Laurie Prange in the bus?. Vroom, splat, hurray!

The only half hour to top these great moment in diddleyfuck was the now-legendary Hamster Episode. Danny, in another one of his get-rich-quick schemes, obtains a hamster named Dean Martin. When Dino begins producing squealing litters of pups that bear an odd resemblance to the McNichol family,. Mom decides it’s time to deliver the old facts-of-life peptalk. As if the mere subject itself wasn’t daring enough for network television, America is then treated to clips from an\actual hamster film. Grunt, pop! Sorry, no Pampers!

After all that precedent-shattering screen squirm, there was no place for The Family to got but down to the bottomless blue. Where are they now? Gone, gone, gone: David’s raising horses, Shirley is being groomed as the next Nanette Fabray, Danny plays the occasional dope pusher and Susan went and took it all off for her first feature film, which the goddamn stupid author somehow missed. Crimp me, you fool!

Ah well, I probably didn’t miss that much after all. As little Dannythen at the peak of his career—so sagely pointed out: “If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.”

Meanwhile on TV, George Washington just saluted me! Does that mean I’m drafted, or do I win something?

Rick Johnson