Twenty Greatest Albums of the CU Era: Hank Williams III, Straight to Hell

Hank Williams III

Straight to Hell

2006

Whereas Rosanne Cash’s Black Cadillac took an introspective and mournful approach to reckoning with her lineage, the contemporaneous Straight to Hell by Hank Williams III was an attempt to take ownership of his legacy via externalized rage. Stuck in a restrictive contract with Curb Records– a contract that would only grow more contentious and eventually litigious in the years to come– Hank III responded with a magnum opus that proved he could do far more than make Minnie Pearl think she’d seen the ghost of his grandfather.

A footnote to Straight to Hell is that it was the first country album released by a major label to bear a parental advisory sticker for explicit language. And, to be sure, Hank III leans hard vulgarity and vice over the course of the double-album, but he does so not for mere shock value. At his best, Hank III does what director Rob Zombie does– most effectively in The Devil’s Rejects and the director’s cut of his Halloween II– in giving a voice to the underclass who believe they’ve been wronged by polite society.

In Hank III’s case, Straight to Hell tackles head-on the way he’d been pigeon-holed as an uncanny mimic of Hank Sr. on his first three records. Solid as those records may have been, they still yoked Hank III to his grandfather’s identity, rather than allowing him to have one of his own. And, as someone who’d cut his teeth as a performer in the punk and metal scenes, he knew he could do more. Over the course of a breakneck first disc of this double-album, Hank III reintroduced himself as an artist of rare and uncompromising vision, marrying a mastery of his grandfather’s country songwriting conventions to a sleazy, sweaty aesthetic that made cowpunk and alt-country acts like X and Slobberbone sound downright demure.

He spits and barks and yelps his lines about living a life of a “crazed country rebel” while his Damn Band throws down some impeccable, fast-paced twang and fiddle. He’s so committed to burning everything to the ground– if he’s bound for Hell, he’s going to enjoy the ride– that only his sense of humor keeps the record from pure nihilism. That he directs so much of his ire at Music Row is telling. Even if it’s delivered in character, there’s a slur in “Dick in Dixie” that’s just indefensible; otherwise, it would stand as perhaps his most scathing indictment of the state of the industry that his family helped to build.

Once he’d freed himself from Curb, he’d continue to mine similar territory and to take massive artistic swings. But for most of the last decade, Hank III has been largely off-the-radar, occasionally popping up on social media to spout some truly noxious conspiracy theory trash. While the “art from the artist” separation might hold in some cases, it seems that the venality and distrust of systems that made Straight to Hell such a riveting work have also led Hank III himself down a different dark path. 

CU-era Family Traditions

• Ghost to a Ghost, the first half of a double album (the latter half, Gutter Town, is a significant step-down in quality), and the last album on which III really pushed hard into what he could do with his distinct persona.
• Holly Williams’ The Highway, song-for-song, as strong as any studio record with the Williams’ family name attached.
• Sam Williams’ Act I: Scarlet Lonesome, on which Sam stakes a claim that he may yet emerge as the most creative and most provocative act in his lineage.

Country Universe: A 20th Anniversary Retrospective

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