On this day, January 1, 1953, Hank Williams was found dead in the back seat of a car.

[rsdsharp]

2. I was working at a radio station with a modern country format on January 1, 1983.

A little after noon, some obviously hung over guy called and asked, “When does the Hank Williams special show start?” I wittily replied, “Huh? What Hank Williams special?”

He reminded me that it was the thirtieth anniversary of his death, so OF COURSE we’d have a special tribute show. I started flipping through the log, looking around the control room for some “special” that nobody had told me about.

Nobody told me, because there wasn’t one. We played modern country. We didn’t even play Hank Sr. oldies. After a moment of initial panic I realized that this was the same hung over guy who called every weekend to ask me to play, “A little thing called-a ‘Queen a Hearts,’ by Juice Newton,” even if I’d played it ten minutes ago.

I told him there was no special, and hung up. It’s hard to believe that was 43 years ago.