August 29, 2004
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I was watching an episode of American Masters that I tivoed from PBS, and it reminded me of something I put on my site about a year and a half ago. I highly recommend this episode if you can still catch it, otherwise order it on DVD or something. It's got some really great stuff from people who actually knew Hank Williams and played music with him. Plus all the music built into it is really rich. And finally, there's a couple of those spooky moments with Hank III I've talked about before (he narrates most of the show).
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K100
Address
City, State ZIP |
January 28, 2003
Hank Williams, Sr.
Address
City, State ZIP
Dear Mr Williams:
Thank you for your recent submission, ?Live at the Grand Ol? Opry.? We here at Today?s Hits are impressed with your fine body of work and songwriting capabilities.
I regret to inform you, however, that we can?t find room for you on our playlist. There are no songs about babies, having babies, driving babies around in your car, and deciding whether to have babies. Additionally, there are no songs about your high school sweetheart at the State Fair/Rodeo, or how you wish you had or hadn?t married her. Lastly, your song ?Jambalaya on the Bayou? is quite frankly, unintelligible.
Take heart, though. We believe you can still make it as a country performer. You have several songs that mention drinking; maybe you should consider adding Captain Morgan, Jose Cuervo, or Jack Daniels to one of your songs so that we might better develop some ?alternative income streams? for your songs and thus profit doubly when giving you airtime. Maybe you could consider picking a truck brand too. Other artists, such as Kenny Chesney and Garth Brooks have done well for themselves in that area. For example, cleaning up the English a little, adding a more popular boy's name from today and a brand, you could change "Jambalaya" to something like:
Good-bye Shane
Down the lane
In your Volvo
Finally, Mr. Williams, we feel that there are too many regionalisms and colloquialisms in your music. It just doesn't contain the kind of generalities that will allow it to transalte throughout this country should we need to use some of our jocks' shows on other stations within our Corporation.
Without belaboring the obvious, Mr. Williams, we here at Minnesota?s source for the most Alabama strive to present Country Music that appeals to our core audience. Maybe you should consider hiring a writing partner to help you focus on a more modern brand of music and then resubmit your materials. We look forward to hearing from you again in the near future.
Sincerely,
The Boss
GS/tm
P.S.--Angels, we forgot about angels. Put lots of angels in your songs if you can, especially references to children being angels. If you can come up with a song where a kid gets killed and turns into an angel, that's even better.
Posted by Jack Sparks at August 29, 2004 12:28 PM
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