Jett Williams
Jett Williams never knew someone was making a feature film about her famous father, Hank Williams.’ In fact, it wasn’t until the film was completed that the country songstress even saw a frame.
A miscommunication between Hank Williams’ estate and his actual family led the film makers to believe that the certain permissions needed for shooting a biopic were in place when in reality they weren’t.
However, permissions aside, Jett Williams is still a fan of The Last Ride, a film, directed by Harry Thomason (of Designing Women fame) that depicts the final days of legendary country artist Hank Williams’ life as the struggling singer makes his way from Montgomery, Ala., to West Virginia and Ohio for a pair of New Year’s concerts.
As the story goes, Hank Williams never made it.
“There are so many accounts different accounts of the story, as far as the last 72 hours go, it’s all debatable,” Jett Williams said over the phone from her Nashville, Tenn. home. “No one is even going to really know what happened in that car, but I think this film did a great job of showcasing my father and sharing his life and music with the world.”
Jett, who was still being carried by her mother when Hank Williams died, never got the chance to form a relationship with her father. Instead, Jett grew to know her father through the stories others told about him and, of course, his songs.
“There are two Hank Williams that you see in this film,” Jett said. “You see Hank Williams who became the very first superstar and wrote some of country music’s best songs. And then you have the melancholy Hank who just sits in the backseat reminiscing about life.”
While The Last Ride portrays both sides of Hank as defined by Jett, the film also focuses on the singer’s battle with substance abuse and the problems it inflicted towards the legend’s attempt to gain back relevancy in the world of country music.
Jett claims that her father’s substance abuse stems from a medical condition involving Hank’s back that the singer possessed since childhood, but she also attributes part of the problem to his meteoric rise to fame.
“With any profession – doctors, lawyers, anything, if you have so much success and so much pressure coming at you, substance abuse comes into the picture just to survive,” Jett said.
While Hank Williams is a founding father of country music, Jett Williams believes that when it comes to today’s country music, few artists can be classified as “traditional.”
“There are some bands that I like that are still holding on to the roots of country music,” Jett said. “I really like Zac Brown [of The Zac Brown Band]. Today though, people are watching country music instead of listening to it.”
The Last Ride is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Hank Williams’ estate and keeping the country singer relevant today. Jett says she has “a lot of Hank pots on the stove” at the moment including the release of a new CD in October.
However, as Jett puts it, when it comes to Hank’s legacy, relevancy is never an issue.
“When you’re an artist like my dad, your music just stands the test of time,” she said. “I’ve had plenty of people who have said to me ‘I don’t like Hank Williams’ music’ but then sit down and actually listen to the words and love it. He’s a legend.”
