Mother's Best, 1951

One of the welcome consequences of staying in bed, trying to recuperate from illness, is the opportunity for sustained listening -- between stints of sleep -- of radio, whatever comes up. In my case, it would be OPB public radio. I fell asleep with BBC World News at about 2am and awoke at about 6am with NPR Weekend Edition. This morning the latter included Scott Simon interviewing Jett Williams, the daughter born to Hank Williams right after his death. Jett Williams was there to help kick off the recent publication of "The Unreleased Recordings of Hank Williams", consisting mostly of 1951 live performances from "Mother's Best Flour" (NPR cites this as "Mother's Best Flower", but it surely has to be mistaken) radio program from Nashville. Jett says the recordings were made directly without compression and other-artifact-inducing techniques and that sense of real presence is preserved in this release.

Read all about these recordings, hear the interview, and -- best of all -- listen to some of the songs for yourself at:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96085241

(You can also buy them from iTunes, and Jett said they would be available as a boxed set from Time Life, but I could find no mention at timelife.com.)

Go to Jett Williams' own site for even more information.

Here's hoping that father-in-law Doug gets to hear this stuff from his hospital bed; I will definitely make sure he does as soon as he gets home!