Van Morrison & Hank Williams.

It is Friday morning, and it is raining. I don’t think I will be venturing out today, not until the evening pub visit anyway. I thought this might be a good opportunity to write something to pass the time. I am listening to Van Morrison’s most recent album Moving On Skiffle. Apart from the standout track Green Rocky Road my favourite songs are the two Hank Williams compositions I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry and Cold Cold Heart. It got me wondering just how many songs of Hank has Van recorded? I can think of nine. If I have forgotten any others, please let me know. I don’t think any other artist has had more of their songs covered by Van than Hank.

I read in an interview with Van years ago that he first heard Hank’s music during Sunday afternoon jam sessions in a neighbour’s yard in Hyndford Street where one of the neighbours knew all the words to Hank’s most popular songs. Something in the raw emotion of the lyrics must have struck a chord with Van because Hank has been a huge influence on Van’s songwriting ever since. Van’s lyrics are scattered with Hank Williams references. In the song Cyprus Avenue on Van’s classic album Astral Weeks in 1968 Van sang, ‘I may go crazy before that mansion on the hill’. Hank had a hit song in 1948 called Mansion On The Hill, so I am quite convinced that Van got that line from Hank. In the same song Van mentions where the lonesome engine drivers pine. Hank’s songs are also full of lonesome trains and whistles. The train & whistles imagery crop up again in Ancient Highway on Van’s Days Like This album where he sings, ‘In a town called Paradise near the ancient highway, when the train whistle blows, all the sadness that Hank Williams Knows’. On the track Evening Train on Magic Time Van sings Love to hear that lonesome whistle blow. Hank recorded songs called On That Evening Train and Hear That Lonesome Whistle, So I don’t think we have to look far to see where Van got the idea from.

I may be wrong, but I think the first song written by Hank that Van recorded was Hey, Good Looking at The Troubadour in Los Angeles in 1973, but it didn’t see the light of day until 2016 when it was included on Vol 2 of It’s Too Late To Stop Now. Van chose a Hank composition You Win Again as the title track of his 2000 ill-fated album with Linda Gail Lewis. That album also contains two other Hank Williams songs Jambalaya (On The Bayou) and Why Don’t You Love Me (Like You Used To Do). Van released his Country album Pay The Devil in 2006 on the Lost Highway label. That is quite appropriate because Lost Highway is also a Hank song. The album contains three songs made famous by Hank. His own composition Your Cheating Heart and Half As Much and My Bucket’s Got A Hole In It.

In his song That’s Entrainment on the 2008 album Keep It Simple Van sings ‘When we're listening to the little whippoorwill’. Well, I ain’t no ornithologist, but I’m pretty sure you don’t find whippoorwills around Belfast. I’m sure Van found that bird in Hank’s song I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry where Hank sings, Hear that lonesome whippoorwill, He sounds too blue to fly, The midnight train is whining low, I'm so lonesome I could cry. I can’t think of any other links between Van and Hank right now, But if you can, let me know. I think I have shown though that the great Hank Williams has been a huge influence on the equally great Van Morrison.

PS, Thanks to Alan Lloyd for this Hank reference in Van's lyrics that I had forgotten about.

And for every cross cuttin' country corner

For every Hank Williams railroad train that cried.

And all the chains, badges, flags and emblems

And every strain on every brain and every eye

As we gaze out on St Dominic's preview.