The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams [CD]

When Hank Williams died, aged 29, Bob Dylan was 11 years old. Had Hank lived as long as his family, friends and fans would have liked, he would have come to know the work of Bob Dylan. In time, the two of them might have performed together. Who knows, there might even have been a song-writing collaboration.

Not that Hank ever seems to have been stuck for words to his songs. We learn from this album and its notes that he travelled with a battered suitcase containing notebooks and other papers on which were written lyrics for dozens of songs yet to be fully realised and recorded. Michael McCall of the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum writes, "Hank wrote songs the way he drank whiskey; like there was no tomorrow. For Hank, drinking .... was not a communal, shared activity.... It was a pain-killing pursuit exercised alone. He wrote songs like that too."

How far Hank got with a tune for each of those 'lost' songs we will never know, but the collaboration that might have been with Bob Dylan, and a dozen other song writers and performers, has come about. Bob was offered the lyric books by the successors to Hank's music publisher and the result is this album. And it's definitely one to savour.

So we get 'You've been lonesome too' from Alan Jackson, 'The Love that faded' from Bob Dylan, 'How Many times have you broken my heart?' from Norah Jones, and nine more, all with words by Hank Williams Senior and music by the performer in question (Levon Helm and Patty Loveless further collaborated musically with, respectively, Larry Campbell and Emory Gordy). The familiar Hank Williams sad and lonesome theme predominates, but is set aside for 'Angel mine', sung by Sheryl Crow, and 'The sermon on the mount', a pious dialogue provided by Merle Haggard as the final track. All tracks are superbly produced and recorded and most make use of steel guitar and/or a fiddle. Merle Haggard's track indulges us with a bit of honky-tonk piano too. Nice.

Highlights include Jack White's 'You know that I know', plaintively sung and seemingly an expression of real pain. On 'I hope you shed a million tears', Vince Gill and Rodney Cowell smoothly conjure a bitter image of a marriage quickly gone wrong (Hank's own steel guitar player, Don Helms, played on this track). Holly Williams, granddaughter of the great man, sings 'Blue is my heart' with great authority (father, Hank Williams Junior, is also heard on the track); and Jakob Dylan's finger-picked call-and-response guitar on 'Oh Mama, come home' brings to mind all time blues greats from way-back such as Richard 'Rabbit' Brown and Julius Daniels, plus of course father Bob in his World Gone Wrong period.

Bob Dylan, on whose Egyptian record label the album is distributed, has done us proud in getting this together, as have all the artists and others involved. Quite likely many of them felt a debt to Hank Williams similar to the one expressed by Bob himself. All can now feel Hank has been repaid with generous interest.

Though not quite so generous as it could have been; total running time of the CD is only 36:59. So space could readily have been found for contributions from Keith Richards, Tom Petty, Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler, all of whom put in memorable work on the earlier Bob Dylan co-ordinated collection of Hank Williams songs, Timeless, but don't appear here. But that is to carp; what we have is very worthwhile.

How to categorise this album is by no means an easy task. Is it a careful work of historical restoration taking the mother lode of lyrics produced in 4 large notebooks by Hank Williams the legendary genius of the country movement and treating them to latter day reverence? Alternatively is it an act of retro fitting Williams copious lyrics giving them a pristine new revamp in song structures imagined by an impressive range of performers? Ultimately its a bit of both and has at its heart the ultimate archivist in the form of the one and only Bob Dylan acting as the guiding curator for a treasure trove that he was first offered as far back in 1967 when approached with a shoebox full of Williams's lyrics. The rights for these unfinished songs were only acquired in 2004 but as Rolling Stone states Dylan has performed a remarkable feat here offering these base metals to a range of great songwriters and turning "a vaguely necrophiliac idea into a startling reincarnation".

Hank Williams was the high lonesome prophet of honky tonk country who wrote the greatest heartbreaking classics of the genre. He was also the sad template for the "live fast die young" philosophy which has taken so many artists at a criminally young age and which saw him in the grave by the age of 29 ravaged by morphine and alcohol. Despite the passing of 60 years since is death in 1953 his legacy grows at pace and he has previously been covered by artsist ranging from Nat King Cole to the Mekons. On this album Dylan has assembled a top notch team, asked them to choose a lyric from the notebooks and set it to music. All have thankfully largely followed the Williams "house style" and as such the songs are immediately accessible and strangely familiar despite their newness. To be fair all participants come out of the exercise with credit with Jakob Dylan probably producing the most modern reading of the lyrics in the lovely alt country style ballad "Oh mama come home" while the most classic interpretation comes from the excellent country neo traditionalist Alan Jackson in the form of "You've been lonesome too' where the ghost of Williams is most clearly invoked. In between there are are some great songs not least from the always impressive Norah Jones who is no stranger to Hank Williams covers with her previous version of "Cold Cold Heart". Her hint of Tex Mex in the sumptuous "How many times have you broken my heart" sung in her smoky voice is a true joy and an album highlight. More rough hewn and invoking the outlaw elements of Williams songwriting is the song by former White Stripes main-man Jack White whose "You know that I know" demonstrates yet again that Hank Williams's words amounted to him being the Shakespeare of cheating songs. Aside from providing the guiding principles Bob Dylan himself contributes the "The love that faded" showing that the old curmudgeon is still in great voice, but even more remarkable is the unmistakable vocal of the Band's Levon Helm whose "You'll never again be mine" is underpinned by his earthy Southern pastoralism. Talking of fine voices Lucinda Williams is almost the female counterpoint to Helm and her "I'm so happy I found you" is one of the saddest of the collection; it is however another Williams that provides the most fitting tribute. Indeed Holly Williams is the granddaughter of Hank Williams and her "Blue is my heart' deserves to enter the canon of great country music songs. The whole thing is topped off with a fine contribution from the old "Okie from Muskogee" Merle Haggard whose "The sermon on the mount" is a fitting conclusion to proceedings.

Its a very fair bet that if Hank Williams had got round to recording the lyrics in the notebooks that further classics would have been added to a repertoire already sardine packed with the some of the best country songs ever recorded. That this exercise guided by Dylan succeeds in cementing that reputation is a testimony to the talents of the songwriters concerned to whom we should offer a very loud vote of thanks for this excellent piece of musical refurbishment.

This is the stuff of country legend. Hank was found dead in the back of his car with a briefcase containing his lyric notebooks in 1953, aged just 29 - and now those tracks have been put to music by these incredibly high calibre fans of Hank.

The Lost Notebooks truely is the holy grail for any Hank Williams fan, and it is rare that a posthumous release becomes such an essential part of an artists catalogue - but after one listen to the thought and care that has gone into this beautiful album, The Lost Notebooks will soon become just this.

Favourite tracks are from Norah Jones, Lucinda Williams, Jack White, Jakob Dylan...and of course, his dad and curator of this album, Mr Bob Dylan. Fans of any of these artists will really enjoy this.

Excellent.