Hank Williams:The Complete Mother's Best Recordings... Plus 15 CD (2010)

Hank Williams:The Complete Mother's Best Recordings... Plus 15 CD (2010)
American music legend Hank Williams has long been considered one of the earliest influences on rock ‘n' roll and in fact was the first of a very few artists to be inducted in both the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Country Music Hall of Fame. His legacy will be honored in a new 16-disc box set, Hank Williams: The Complete Mother's Best Recordings...Plus! due September 28th via Time Life.

Hank Williams Complete Mother Best Recordings....Plus! features fifteen audio discs and a bonus DVD with performances including Williams' first-ever rendition of "Cold, Cold Heart" and "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You)" just days after they were written, as well as many songs he never recorded elsewhere such as "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" and "On Top of Old Smoky." On the DVD, two of Hank's original band members reminisce about his brief, incendiary career. The project also contains a booklet with an introduction by Hank Williams, Jr., afterword by Jett Williams and over one-hundred pages on the history of Williams written by respected music writer and Hank Williams historian, Colin Escott. This deluxe, limited edition set is lavishly packaged in a box designed to look like an antique radio with a working radio dial that plays selections from the radio shows. The 16-disc collector's box set contains 72 complete 15-minute shows, featuring 143 performances by Hank Williams together with conversation, and much more. The music and the unguarded conversation make this the first three-dimensional portrait of an American music legend.

The recordings are from Williams' Mother's Best Flour shows, recorded at the pinnacle of his career in 1951 at radio station WSM. Thinking the shows would only reach a small, mostly rural audience in middle Tennessee, Hank was unguarded in both his conversation and choice of songs. Accordingly, we hear him perform many songs he never performed elsewhere, including some from his childhood. . The original acetate recordings were painstakingly restored after they were salvaged from a trash can by a WSM employee and turned over to Hank's daughter, Jett Williams. The sound quality of these exceptional radio shows is at least comparable to his studio recordings, and many critics have remarked that the "direct-to-disc" Mother's Best recordings actually have more presence and clarity.