_____________________________________________________________________________ _ _ __ __ _ ___ \\\\\___| |_| | \ \ / / / \ | __|___\"-._ /////~~~| _ | \ / / _ \ __ ~~~/.-' |_| |_| \/\/ /_/ \_\ |___| _____________________________________________________________________________ THE HANK WILLIAMS APPRECIATION SOCIETY INTERNATIONAL 1978 _____________________________________________________________________________ LUM YORK 1918-2004 _____________________________________________________________________________ Please Scroll Down for UPDATE: August 16, 2004 - News of Lum York's Death _____________________________________________________________________________ Hank Williams' bass player, comedian makes home in Baton Rouge _____________________________________________________________________________ By JOHN WIRT jwirt@theadvocate.com Entertainment writer _____________________________________________________________________________ As a member of Hank Williams' Driftin' Cowboys band for nearly five years, Lum York worked with country music's most enduring and beloved performer. A resident of Baton Rouge since 1954, York played for Williams in 1944 and then again from 1945 through 1949. His Driftin' Cowboys stay as bass player and comedian included Williams' run at the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport. But when Williams' 1949 hit, "Lovesick Blues," made him a national star, he disbanded the Cowboys and moved to Nashville and the Grand Ole Opry. The Driftin' Cowboys remained at the Louisiana Hayride as staff musicians, but York soon left for Nashville, too, after Williams got him a job with bluegrass star Bill Monroe. "I went up there and worked a little bit with him," the 84-year-old York recalled in the living room of his south Baton Rouge home. "I didn't like it up there." York returned to Shreveport but then drifted again, this time down to Baton Rouge to perform with a band there. In 1952 he joined another country music star, Lefty Frizzell. "Lefty come through and this friend of mine got me a job with him," York said. "He was hunting a bass player and a comedian, too. So I went with him for a little over a year." Still working with Frizzell, York happened to be in Baton Rouge when he heard the sad news about his former boss. On Jan. 1, 1953, the chauffeur who'd been driving the 29-year-old Williams to a show in Ohio found the singer dead in the Cadillac's back seat. "It was kind of hard to believe," York remembered. "That morning before he left to go to Ohio, Marie, his cousin, told me he come there on the steps and he told them, 'Old Hank won't spend another Christmas with y'all.' He said, 'I'm closer to the Lord then I've ever been in my life.' They said he'd been down there to a church in Montgomery." Shortly before Williams' death, York added, Williams asked the bass player to come work with him again. York's music business connections took him back to Nashville in 1953. "I was freelancing. I'd go out on the road with different groups (including Marty Robbins and George Morgan). The booking agents kept me working, but I got tired of that, going out every week with a different band. I come back to Baton Rouge and went to work for this guy here, Bruce Broussard. I worked around here and I got married in '54." York got a job with the East Baton Rouge School Board in 1955, but continued playing music, working with pop and bluegrass bands. Meanwhile, the legend of Hank Williams grew with each passing decade. "I mean it's amazing," York said. "All these years, 50 years, he still sells good. They say he sells about a million copies of his records a year. That ain't bad." Though many musicians were Driftin' Cowboys, York probably spent more years with Williams than any other player. The two had been friends before York joined the Cowboys, too. "On stage, Hank, he had a good personality," York reflected. "But, really, he didn't have that much offstage. He had enough to make people like him offstage, but on stage they didn't come no better. It was just a gift to him, I guess. Hank was the kind that could just talk and hold a crowd. People listening. It wasn't like a lot of them get up there and have a bunch of stuff. "And Hank had one of the best memories of anybody I ever seen. He'd see you today and if he seen you next year he'd remember you and tell you where he'd seen you at. And the songs he wrote was just about everyday living. Just like 'Mind Your Own Business,' people were in somebody else's business. And 'Your Cheatin' Heart,' people cheat on one another. People were living that." _____________________________________________________________________________ Meeting Hank _____________________________________________________________________________ York and Williams were friends in Montgomery, Ala., long before the fame and hit records. "I knew him. I listened to him on the radio some and I used to hang around the station there. One day he was up at WCOV and he'd come off the air. We happened to be in there, but all them been gone but me and this friend of mine. Hank asked me to get him a half-pint of whiskey. He give me the money. Most of them would keep the change, but I brought his change back. I didn't want to take his money. And he just started off and we got to talking and all." York and Williams worked together in the Mobile shipyards in 1942. Later in Montgomery, York saw a Bill Monroe show featuring bassist and comedian Wilbur Westbrook. "I thought he was the best I ever seen. I start to watching him. That's what really made me want to start to playing the bass, and being a comedian." In 1944, York went to a club where Williams was playing. "The bass player, he had to go to the restroom. I'm standing there by the bandstand and he said, 'Come sit in for me while I go to the bathroom.' I played the number and Audrey (William's wife) and Hank was dancing. I got outside when the dance was over and Hank come up to me and say, 'You want to go to work for me?' I said, 'Well, I don't know how to play too good.' He said, 'You want to learn?' I say, 'Yeah, I'd like to learn.' He say, 'Well, I'll give you $20 a week and room and board.' That was a lot of money in them days, because I was working in the woodworking shop, wasn't making but 50 cents an hour. Twenty dollars a week sounded big." Working with Williams and the Driftin' Cowboys in the '40s, York played a circuit of school houses through Alabama, Georgia and Florida. He also played for a Williams recording session in 1947, cutting four songs. "Sometimes Hank was a lot of fun," he remembered. "Then again, he'd read these love story comic books. That's where he got ideas for a lot of songs. And I lived on one side of the town and he'd moved on the other side. He'd come over there and say, 'Come on, go home with me at the house.' And I'd go over there and he'd grab one of them books and start reading. And I'm sitting there doing nothing, you know. I'd get up and come back home and, wouldn't be about a hour or two, he'd be back over there and get me again. Finally, I got where I just try to dodge him, you know." During a late-night drive to Montgomery, York inspired the title of one of Williams' most famous songs. "It was in a book somewhere where they said his mother drove him around and she mentioned something about 'the light,' and that's the reason he wrote the song. But that's not true. Mrs. Williams didn't even drive in the first place. But we'd been way out of Montgomery and we was coming in one night and I saw the light out there at the airport, about five or 10 miles from Montgomery. So I said, 'Boy, I see the light.' And that's when Hank said, 'Boy, that's a good title for a song.' That's when he wrote 'I Saw the Light.' " While York admits his boss man drank, he doesn't like the drunken image that's often presented of Williams, including one seen in a recent CMT biography. "They had one where it looked like he was just a regular drunk. I didn't like that. When I was with him -- and I was with him about four-and-a-half years -- he didn't drink that much. Every once in a while, maybe every six months, he'd go without drinking. But I knew just as good when he was fixing to start back drinking. He'd buy him a box of them St. Joseph's aspirins and he'd go to eating them things just like you eating candy." York and his wife of 49 years, Nita, obviously value their connection to the country music legend. Two portraits of the singer-songwriter hang in their home, both gifts from the artists. Merle Kilgore, manager of Hank Williams Jr., sent the couple a singing, standup figure of the younger Williams. The Yorks are regulars at the annual Hank Williams Festival in Georgiana, Ala. York also has shared the stage with Hank Williams Jr., Jett Williams and Hank Williams III. These days, though, he plays spoons more often than bass. His recent appearances include a show with Richard Barksdale at Lambert's R.B.D.'s. Writers seek York out for their research about Williams, including Colin Escott, author of Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway and Hank Williams: The Biography. York himself is the subject of a piece in the January 2003 issue of England's Country Music People. Fans who want to hear York's story in his own words can purchase his two cassette tapes, Memories Are Forever and My Life and Times with Hank Williams Sr., and his video tape, Lum York: The Life of a Country Music Legend, by contacting: _____________________________________________________________________________ nita_york@hotmail.com _____________________________________________________________________________ LUM YORK 1918-2004 _____________________________________________________________________________ ATTENTION HANK FANS - I am sorry to have to pass this news to you all....Meeting Lum was a very special event in our lives..... Nita - thanks so much for taking the time to let us know - and our sorrow and prayers are with you in this difficult time. Robert & Michelle Ackerman Palmer, Alaska _____________________________________________________________________________ Dear Friends, It saddens us to inform you that William "Lum" York peacefully passed away at 11:26 am central time on Sunday, Aug.15, 2004 at the Baton Rouge General Hospital Bluebonnet. Funeral arrangements are pending. For more information contact Juanita York at: _____________________________________________________________________________ nita_york@bellsouth.net _____________________________________________________________________________ Please keep Lum in your prayers. He will be missed. May God Bless You! The York Family _____________________________________________________________________________ Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html Doctrine of International Copyright Law ____________________________________________________________________________ Note: Join Robert Ackerman's Hank Fan Mailing list. _____________________________________________________________________________ Email: Hank1@mtaonline.net _____________________________________________________________________________