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Hasil Adkins R.I.P.

Filed under: Imported

Am I the only who didn't hear that Hasil Adkins died? My friend David just sent me the news. He's been dead for some two weeks actually. Apparently from natural causes. He was 67 or 68, depending on which source you believe.

For those unfamiliar, Adkins was a world class bizarro rockabilly hero. He supposedly listened to Hank Williams on the radio as a kid in West Virginia and just assumed that the guy played all the instruments himself. So that's what Adkins did. He played the guitar and the drums and sang simultaneously. Sometimes he blew on the harp as well. He supposedly wrote somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 songs during his lifetime, recording most of them on an old reel-to-reel machine. His specialties were beheading tales and songs about poultry. There's a short movie called The Wild World of Hasil Adkins that I've always wanted to see.

I can't really count myself as an ardent fan, more a respectful admirer. I own one Adkins album--the aptly titled Look at that Caveman Go!--and it's all but unlistenable. It's a live recording taken from shows in Maryland and West Virginia. Adkins variously screams, cackles, sings, and even does his own variation on the human beat box, all the while flailing away on the drums and guitar. I'd recommend smoking marijuana before attempting any appreciation of this stuff.

There are many strange Adkins tales--probably half of which are apocryphal. He supposedly drank two gallons of coffee a day and was known to consume several liters of vodka at a time. During one show he pulled out a gun mid-set and shot out the ceiling fan because it was bothering him. 

There were respectable write-ups in The Guardian and The New York Times, and The Charleston Daily Mail has a nice appreciation, but not much other notice. My favorite anecdote comes from The Guardian obit:

One recipient in 1970 of Adkins's music had been Richard Nixon, who received a tape courtesy of Virginia Senator Robert C Byrd. "I am very pleased by your thoughtfulness in bringing these particular selections to my attention," wrote the then president.

David says that Adkins sent a copy of every recording to the current occupant of the White House. About the only one you can possibly imagine listening to this depraved stuff is Bill Clinton (of course).

David and I plan to purchase Adkins' trailer in West Virginia and open up a museum.

"Like the Bible and toilet paper, the music of Hasil Adkins belongs in every household." -- Nick Tosches

Posted by Paul Demko at May 10, 2005 3:41 PM

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