New Years Eve 1952/53 a sheriff stops a Cadillac Convertible in West Virginia: the man in the back seat looks pretty dead. No, says the 17-year-old driver, that ’s Hank Williams and he is just resting up for the next gig.
Later the boy tries to wake him. An empty bottle of vodka and innumerable pills are lying next to him, a revolver is in his pocket. At 29, looking like 50, the uncrowned king of country music is dead. That week ‘I’ll never get out of this world alive ’ hits No.1 on the charts.
In their search of the real Hank Williams, Wolfgang Büld and Olaf Kraemer document that the country music scene often has little to do with the ‘good clean fun’ and intact world its image projects.
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