Hank Williams.
Another madman of the South who pushed a country locomotive with his hands for almost five years.
When - on rails.
And when - just like that, on the grass.
For the one that would later become known as Bluegrass, and nothing else.
A short, too short career even for American show business.
Death with a bottle of whiskey in the back seat of his own luxury Cadillac.
Death is on the way.
From one city to another.
From concert to concert.
Into eternity.
Why the hell was he doing this?
He rested against a huge, oily, smoky and soot-pierced piece of iron.
Moreover, he died from this in incomplete thirty.
I would have lived for myself and lived on the income from the record.
And so ... He left and disintegrated into atoms of music.
Do you know Hank Williams?
The fact of the matter is, very few people know him.
Now.
Now.
It is dissolved in the air, in films and advertisements, in concerts of mega-stars and howls of drunken compasses in the middle of pubs, in children's counters and tongue twisters, in humming whistles - if and when you are in the shower, on the road, in a state of meaningless and boundless happiness.
When and even if you yourself don't know what you are singing.
The gene of musical culture.
Vaccination against dullness.
A chance not to slip into the prophecies of the great five science fiction writers: you will have an alphabet of five letters, and from music - the screeching of a circular saw.
Broken up into atoms ...
"Death and Glory" - and so designate his last (and there was no other) period of creativity lasting less than three years.
Many started out by re-singing the old standards.
Few people managed to build it into a cult, to grab luck by the scruff of the neck.
Try to record any of Hank's songs.
Even on the phone.
In the silence of the night.
When everyone is asleep.
And you sing.
On the kitchen.
Safely covered with a blanket.
What will you get?
Can you hook yourself?
Will you feel at least one prick in your heart?
When will it seem to you that the person under the covers is really singing about something that has turned, dragged and dragged him through life more than once?
Cold cold heart.
I'm so lonesome I could cry.
Only two Williams' standards are enough for a conversation.
Or do you think a country steam locomotive is running on coal?
So, maybe the guitar is worn for warmth - to warm the stomach?
Elvis sang I'm so lonesome I could cry twice.
January 12 and 14, 1973 - at the space show Aloha from Hawaii.
A short little thing, two minutes ...
As if everything is built around her, as if everything revolves around her: "Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps this is one of the saddest songs that I have heard and know from childhood ..."
Midnight train.
Purple of heaven.
The longing cry of a bird.
Bitterness and tears.
The endless loneliness of each of us in this inconceivable, unknown as an arranged world.
“I have sung all two Hank Williams songs in my life ... I don’t consider myself a singer of the level (Elvis !!!) that I could sing his songs just like that, at every opportunity.
This is very special music.
Do you understand?
Like an air.
You breathe it, but you can never say and explain what it is ... "
Long before space programs, long before the first worldwide broadcasts, in the midst of the burning heart and soul of the South, in the middle of white, hell-born cotton, Hank writes his songs.
As if he knows, he probably knows how it is there - when he stepped into the unknown.
No matter how many times I put Aloha from Hawaii to all sorts of people, on this little Williams thing, sung by Presley, on I'm so lonesome I could cry, they freeze.
Merge with time, with a live broadcast that ended many years ago.
But it continues to sound.
Or Nora Jones.
You know her for sure.
The very first album of Ravi Shankar's daughter, her very first album Come Away with Me, which sold 30 million copies, disassembled to a penny into singles, collected all the awards in the world and smashed all his radio stations, contained the atom of Hank's old times - Cold Cold Heart with a duration of three and a half minutes.
Recorded by Nora as if the world had collapsed around, as if she was ready to say goodbye to life and, what is worse, to her only beloved.
But finally - we must also talk ...
In the words of old Hank.
I've tried so hard my dear to show
That you're my every dream
Yet you're afraid each thing I do
Is just some evil scheme
A memory from your lonesome past
Keeps us so far apart
Why can't I free your doubtful mind
And melt your cold cold heart ...
A strange property.
Find what everyone has known for a long time.
I rushed to see my friends three years after the release of Norah Jones's first album.
We drank, listened to jazz, and I kept poking her (Hank's) Cold Cold Heart in their nose and yelling, “Listen, you idiots !!!
Only a real person can sing like that! "
And they answered me: “Why are you so nervous?
The album is old, several years old! .. And there are normal songs too! "
Yes there is.
But this one is "the most normal".
Norah Jones had a birthday on March 30th.
She was born in 1979.
As if illuminated by the outgoing era of the great kings of antiquity.
Growing up in the music of three continents.
Since childhood, she has learned to defend her personal, unlike anyone else's "musical opinion".
Take any Jones album and you will not miss a choice.
Jazz.
Blues.
Country.
Ballads ... Hear her singing Love Me Tender ...
As if knowing and foreseeing - everything will fall, castles will collapse, banners will decay, armor and swords will turn to dust ...
What will be left?
Traditions and legends.
And songs.
About those times that can no longer be returned.
I don’t even know what it’s called.
Never mind.
Let.
After all, at the bottom - Hank, Elvis, Roy, Cash.
A lot others.
Whose plans were not always destined to come true.
Whose steps were not always correct, but plans ...
To the gallery page
They all disintegrated into atoms of music.
And they stayed in it.
Maybe that's why we still live in a bitter and fierce present, although they are trying to throw us into a shining future, and after all, there is none at all ...
Listen to music while collecting the shards of eternity.
Catch its echoes and reflections in the outer and inner world.
Appreciate with your heart - money will not always be enough for a beautiful cover.
But even if you have mountains of ringing gold, you are unlikely to buy a grain of Loyalty and Love.
It is necessary and worth fighting for this.
Even if it hurts.
Lonely and empty.
Even if the pockets are less than "not a penny".
There, beyond the mountains of grief ... the dawn will always await us.
Hear that lonesome whippoorwill
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whining low
I'm so lonesome I could cry
Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves began to die
That means he's lost the will to live
I'm so lonesome I could cry
The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I'm so lonesome I could cry
I'm so lonesome I could cry.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.