Garrison Keillor on Hank Williams

"The good years were sweet – he sang on big radio shows in New York, was offered a movie contract by MGM, got to hear his songs covered by pop stars – and then he fell and fell hard. The end was brutal. He was in and out of sanitariums and got hooked on a sedative, chloral hydrate, and became pitiful in a public way: he got booed off a number of stages by his own fans. He was, Hemphill writes, "skinny as a spider, suffering from chest pains, nearing impotence, incontinent to the point he was wetting his bed every night." In the midst of his miseries, he had a last grand hurrah at the Skyline Club in Austin, Tex., and sang every song he knew, some of them more than once, for three hours, no intermission. He stood on stage and wailed. People said it was the greatest thing they'd ever seen."