_____________________________________________________________________________ _ _ __ __ _ ___ \\\\\___| |_| | \ \ / / / \ | __|___\"-._ /////~~~| _ | \ / / _ \ __ ~~~/.-' |_| |_| \/\/ /_/ \_\ |___| _____________________________________________________________________________ THE HANK WILLIAMS APPRECIATION SOCIETY INTERNATIONAL 1978 _____________________________________________________________________________ Charles Carr, RIP _____________________________________________________________________________ Update July 2, 2013 By John Shryock - bio | email MONTGOMERY, AL (WSFA) - A man forever connected to the late country music legend Hank Williams has died. Charles Carr was the driver of the car in which Williams died, according to the Hank Williams Museum in Montgomery. Museum officials did not wish to do an interview at this time. Carr was just a teenager when he agreed to drive the singer to a concert in Canton, Ohio. The trip was more than 1,000 miles from Montgomery, but Carr had the time and agreed to the trip. The trip was not without issues. Williams, complaining of back problems, decided flying would be better. However, the plane had to return to the airport because of bad weather, so Carr and Williams continued via car. Carr was given a speeding ticket in the early hours of January 1, 1953 as Williams slept in the backseat of his blue 1952 Cadillac. A short time later, while stopped for gas in Oak Hill, West Virginia Carr discovered Williams had died. The vehicle is one of many pieces on display at the Hank Williams Museum in Montgomery. Williams' body was returned to Montgomery where more than 20,000 people are said to have crowded in and around the Municipal Auditorium to say goodbye. He was buried in Oakwood Cemetery annex. Carr was quested by people for years about the time leading up to the singer's death, and is said to have politely answered. An interview as late at 2009 is now sold at the museum. Carr, 77, was still residing in Montgomery at the time of his death. Funeral arrangements are expected Tuesday. Background information: http://hankwilliams.nl/english/death/ride.html From: www.wsfa.com _____________________________________________________________________________ Hank Williams' last ride: Driver recalls lonesome end _____________________________________________________________________________ Kevin Glackmeyer/AP In a Montgomery museum this month, Charles Carr sits behind the wheel of the Cadillac he was driving in the wee hours of New Year's Day 1953, when singer Hank Williams died in the back seat. _____________________________________________________________________________ By JIM THARPE The Atlanta Journal-Constitution MONTGOMERY -- Just before sunrise on New Year's Day 50 years ago, a sleek baby-blue Cadillac roared up to the rural Oak Hill, W.Va., hospital in the cold Appalachian darkness. The driver was just 17, exhausted and scared. The passenger was barely 29 and dead. At the wheel was Charles Carr, a college freshman on Christmas break from Auburn. The man in the back seat was singer-songwriter Hank Williams. "I ran in and explained my situation to the two interns who were in the hospital," said Carr, now a 67-year-old Montgomery businessman. "They came out and looked at Hank and said, 'He's dead.' "I asked 'em, 'Can't you do something to revive him?' One of them looked at me and said, 'No, he's just dead.' " It was a last ride that would help define American music and pop culture for decades to come. Long before there was Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix or Kurt Cobain -- self-destructive stars who flamed out at their zenith -- there was Hiram "Hank" Williams, a hard-drinking, rough-around-the-edges Alabama country boy who wrote simple, heart-tugging songs about loneliness and then, still young, died alone in the back seat of his car. The last hours of his troubled life long ago passed from reality to myth. Biographers have breathlessly speculated about what really happened. Officials have issued sketchy reports that only increased the mystery. Songwriters and playwrights still rhapsodize about it. An off-Broadway play, "Hank Williams: Lost Highway" is currently running in New York. A Web site dedicated to Williams estimates that more than 700 songs have been written about the singer, whose own recording career lasted only five years. But only Carr knows the truth about those final hours. For years, he avoided most requests for interviews. But in recent years, he has begun to talk, trying to set the record straight. He thinks Williams died -- the official cause was heart failure -- somewhere between Bristol, Tenn., and Oak Hill on the way to a New Year's Day 1953 show in Canton, Ohio. "I'm certainly not an authority on Hank Williams," said Carr. "But I'm the only authority on Hank Williams' death." Theories abound Some biographies have speculated that Williams died at a Knoxville hotel and that porters unwittingly placed his corpse in his car for the trip north. Still others have him dying on the road with an unfinished song in his hands, bedroom slippers on his feet and a pint of vodka in his coat pocket. All bunk, retorts Carr, who maintains Williams was very much alive and wearing white cowboy boots, a stylish blue overcoat and a white fedora when he left Knoxville at 10:45 p.m. New Year's Eve en route to a concert 500 snowy miles north. "The story seems to get better as every year goes by," said Carr. "But Hank's life doesn't need to have anything added to it. It was sensational enough as it was." But by the time Carr got behind the wheel of Williams' ragtop Cadillac on Dec. 30, 1952, the troubadour's life was in a full-tilt meltdown. He was divorced from his first wife, Audrey. Though remarried, he was staying at his mother's downtown Montgomery boardinghouse, having been demoted from the Grand Ole Opry to the Louisiana Hayride, the farm team of country music. He was taking morphine shots for constant back pain after major surgery the year before (he suffered from spina bifida), ingesting a dangerous sedative, chloral hydrate, to sleep and playing the same backwater clubs he'd escaped just a few years earlier. Williams knew Carr's father, who ran a Montgomery taxi service, and the teenager was asked to drive an obviously ailing Williams to gigs in Charleston, W.Va., and Canton, major concert dates that Williams hoped would be the start of a comeback. "Dad was a friend of Hank's and tried to look out after him in the tough times," Carr said. "He was there talking with dad and Hank asked me if I'd be interested in making the trip." It was a journey that seemed doomed from the start. By the time Carr helped Williams load his guitars and stage suits into the car trunk, the weather across much of the South was deteriorating. Rain was turning to ice and snow. Carr recalls the 6'2" Williams was sick and frail at the time, weighing perhaps 130 pounds, but disputes reports that the singer, long a heavy drinker, was guzzling booze most of the trip. "He had a very low tolerance for alcohol at that point," Carr said. "We bought a six-pack of Falstaff [beer] in Montgomery before we left, and there were several cans left when he died." A rudimentary autopsy found Williams had traces of alcohol in his blood when he died, but it found no drugs, although it's unclear if pathologists tested for them. Carr remembers Williams being in good spirits as the trip began. They told jokes, sang songs and traded tales as they navigated the two-lane highways of the pre-interstate South. "Hank's song 'Jambalaya' was just out on the radio and he asked me what I thought of it," Carr recalled. "I told him I didn't care for it, that it didn't make a bit of sense to me. Hank laughed and said, 'You son of a bitch, you just understand the French like I do.' "We were just a couple of young guys on a car trip having fun." They spent the night at a hotel in Birmingham and got an early start on New Year's Eve as the weather continued to worsen. Carr remembers Williams buying a pint of bonded bourbon in Fort Payne, Ala. He also made one waiter very happy. "He walked up to our server at a restaurant we ate at and said, 'Here's the biggest tip you ever got.' And he gave him $50. Money didn't mean anything to Hank." Final hours It was snowing by the time they reached Chattanooga, and Williams decided to try to catch a flight from Knoxville to make the Charleston show on time. The flight took off at 3:30 p.m., but was turned back due to the bad weather, so they found themselves stuck in Knoxville for the night. The Charleston show was a bust, but they still hoped to make Canton. Carr got them a room at the 17-story Andrew Johnson Hotel and they checked in about 7 p.m. to wait out the storm. "We talked a while and ordered dinner up in the room," Carr said. "As I remember, Hank didn't eat much of anything. He had the hiccups real bad." Carr called a doctor, who came and gave Williams two injections -- later determined to be morphine mixed with vitamin B12. "He calmed down after that, but looking back, maybe the hiccups or the indigestion could have been the beginning of a coronary," Carr said. Williams dozed off fully clothed, but about 10:30 p.m., Carr got a call from the concert promoter telling him they had to leave right away and drive through the night to make the Canton show. "There was some kind of penalty clause in his contract . . . so we had to be there for the New Year's Day concert or else," Carr said. "When we left the room, they sent a wheelchair," Carr said. "They rolled him down to the car and Hank got in on his own. I clearly remember that." Carr said there was little traffic as they pulled out of Knoxville. "What traffic you did see was moving at a slow pace because the roads were so bad," Carr said. "We were trying to push it but we didn't have much luck." Carr got a ticket about an hour later in Blaine, Tenn., when he almost ran into a patrolman while trying to pass another car. He paid a fine and got back behind the wheel with Williams asleep in the back. It was after midnight by this time -- already New Year's Day -- and Carr had been behind the wheel since early that morning. The teenager stopped in a small town to gas up and get a bite to eat. Carr said it could have been Bristol, Tenn., about 120 miles northeast of Knoxville, or it could have been Bluefield, a town in West Virginia. It was dark and he was bone-tired in unfamiliar territory. He specifically remembers a service station on one side of the highway and a diner and a cab stand on the other. He pulled in to gas up. "I remember Hank got out to stretch his legs and I asked him if he wanted a sandwich or something," Carr said. "And he said, 'No, I just want to get some sleep.' "I don't know if that's the last thing he said. But it's the last thing I remember him telling me." At the cab stand, Carr picked up a relief driver who helped him drive for a few hours before getting out somewhere in rural West Virginia. Carr drove on, but became increasingly concerned about the eerie silence in the back seat. He pulled off the road to check on Williams, who was lying with his head toward the passenger seat and had his left hand across his chest. "He had his blue overcoat on and had a blanket over him that had fallen off," Carr said. "I reached back to put the blanket back over him and I felt a little unnatural resistance from his arm." Carr pulled into the next service station he saw and told the owner he needed to get to a hospital fast. The man pointed the way, and Carr remembers seeing a road sign for Oak Hill, six miles away. Revisiting the scene On a bright December day a few weeks ago, Carr strolled through the Hank Williams Museum in downtown Montgomery. He sat for a few minutes in the driver's seat of the Cadillac he drove that night. The overcoat that Williams was wearing is in a glass case nearby, as is one of his pearl-handled pistols and the shoeshine kit he used as a boy to help support his family. Carr moved on after that long-ago brush with fame. He went back to Auburn University, got a degree, served in the military, got married, had kids and became a successful businessman. He now has a home in Montgomery and a weekend lake house. He has a framed poster for the concert that he and Williams never got to, and he keeps a pair of cowhide gloves the singer gave him on that final trip. He'll attend a New Year's Day memorial service for Williams at his much-visited grave in Montgomery's Oakwood Cemetery annex. A few surviving members of Williams' "Drifting Cowboys" band will be there as well, if they are able to make it. They are old men now, some in their 80s. "But I'm not going to make a day of it," Carr said. "I just want to honor Hank." A visitor observes that Carr has survived the years about as well as the old Cadillac, which has been immaculately restored. Carr laughs at the suggestion. "No, no," he said. "I'm an old man. But Hank Williams never had to worry about that. He'll always be young to me." ____________________________________________________________________________ © 2003 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ____________________________________________________________________________ ADDITIONAL ARTICLE JAN 15TH 2007 Hank Williams’ driver recalls legend’s final days ____________________________________________________________________________ By Susan Williams Staff writer - wvgazette.com Daniel Pitts Carr and Hank Williams Sr. were close friends. Williams would play in clubs near where Carr had a cab business in Montgomery, Ala. Williams would join Carr and some of Carr’s employees for breakfast after a night of playing music. The friendship between the two men led Williams to ask if Carr’s 17-year-old son Charles would be willing to drive Williams north to some concerts. Charles Carr said Friday he was a freshman at Auburn University then, but he was home for Christmas. "I told him I’d enjoy going, but I had to be back when school started again," Carr recalled. Neither Carr nor his famous passenger could anticipate what would happen. Williams died on the trip 54 years ago in Oak Hill. At one time, Carr said, his father owned 104 vehicles in his cab business. His father’s business received national recognition for being the best cab operation in the United States, the aptly named Carr said. Carr said Williams had great respect for Carr’s father. "He gave me the same respect he gave my dad," he said. "We had no idea he had any health problems," Carr said, although they did know that Williams had spina bifida. Williams had just had back surgery, and he was on his way to Ohio and West Virginia for some of the first concerts after the surgery. "It started raining when we started out. The weather just got worse and worse. It started snowing," Carr said Friday. "When we got to Knoxville, we flew out of Knoxville trying to get to Canton, Ohio, for the concert, but we could not land. We had to go back to Knoxville. Many people don’t know that." On the trip, "we had lots of laughs. We talked about music and people we knew," Carr said. "Hank was not a star to me. He was a friend." Carr said he had never before traveled where he and Williams were traveling. A relief driver helped him briefly, and he got a map and filled up the tank in Bluefield. At some point, he realized Hank’s blanket had fallen off him, and when he tried to put it back, he knew something was wrong. About six miles south of Oak Hill, he pulled into a 'cut-rate gas station' where he remembers a man was sitting on a rocker, and he could see 'a gas heater glowing through the window.' Carr said he stopped and the man came over to the car and looked at Williams. Carr remembers the man saying, 'I think you have a problem.' He said the man told him he was six miles from the Oak Hill Hospital. Many people have believed that Carr pulled into the Skyline Drive-In outside Oak Hill for food and coffee. Those stories maintain that Carr looked in the back seat and saw that a blanket had fallen off Williams. According to that version, Carr knew then he had to get Williams to a hospital. But Carr said he did not stop at a drive-in restaurant outside Oak Hill. Another part of the story has Carr stopping for directions again at the Pure Oil Station in Oak Hill close to the hospital, but Carr said he drove straight to the hospital, where Williams was pronounced dead from a heart attack on Jan. 1, 1953. "There is no mystery to Hank’s death. It was a heart attack," Carr said. For years, he never talked about his experience, he said, and misinformation sprouted about what happened. Carr was driving Williams’ Cadillac. To keep the Cadillac safe, Carr drove it to the Pure Oil Station, where the late Pete Burdette let him kept it in a garage bay so that no harm could come to it. Carr said Williams’ mother and wife each told him to take care of the Cadillac. Although fans tried to turn the former gas station into a museum, it has now been leveled. At that time, Tyree’s Funeral Home was across the street from the hospital on Oak Hill’s Main Street. Joe Tyree prepared and dressed Williams’ body. He also helped take him home to Alabama for burial. Carr remembers Tyree and the help he gave him. Though his life was short (he was only 29 when he died), Williams had a long impact on music. The impact is still felt in music today. "It was God’s gift," Carr said. Williams had so much talent, and so little time to develop it. Carr was studying business at Auburn and went on to several successful business ventures. Now at 71, he said he has collected about every record that Williams ever recorded. "I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry," and "Cold, Cold Heart" are two of his favorite Williams tunes. Carr does not believe the people of his hometown ever appreciated Williams as they should have. "As you get older you realize the talent he had. I remember him carrying his guitar at the shoeshine stand. A musician never gets the recognition he deserves in his own hometown. "This was a part of my life and the end of Hank’s life," he said of his trip to West Virginia. "I told Hank Jr. that if all the musicians who said they played with your dad ever got together, they could not put them in the Colosseum." Former Kanawha County Magistrate Herb Pauley has been trying for years to get a museum to honor Hank Williams in West Virginia. Last week, he and his wife toured the two in Alabama to get ideas for a future museum. "Everything stopped when they torn that building down," Pauley said of the gas station and the museum efforts. "But I know we can do it. We just have to put our ideas together. I’m trying to help Hank." To contact staff writer Susan Williams, use e-mail or call 348-5112. FROM: http://wvgazette.com/section/News/2007011317 _____________________________________________________________________________ Note: Join Robert Ackerman's Hank Fan Mailing list. _____________________________________________________________________________ Email: Hank1@mtaonline.net _____________________________________________________________________________