This morning’s selection is the hard-rocking “Long White Cadillac” by the Blasters, from their 1983 album, Non-Fiction.
Sometime after midnight on January 1, 1953, a ’52 Cadillac Convertible pulled out of an all-night diner in Bristol, Virginia, scratching at the loose gravel.
Alone in the rear seat was country singer Hank WIlliams, Sr.; in the front was his driver, Charles Carr. They were traveling all night, pushing to make a New Year’s concert in Canton, Ohio.
At the restaurant, Carr had asked Williams if he wanted anything to eat. Williams, who’d been sick and was drinking and taking sedatives, said no. Another 150 miles up the road in Oak Hill, West Virginia, the Caddy stopped for gas. When Carr checked Williams in the back seat, he was gone. Somewhere on the dark two-lane highway between Bristol and Oak Hill, Hank Williams had died.
This song is about that night.
Hank Williams – what a life. Probably better to shine brightly but briefly than glow dimmly for a long time, like most. On the other hand, it’s the stayers that keep things going… Ooh, a conundrum!
To me, this song sounds like a pitch-black two-lane highway.
I never understood why the Blasters didn’t enjoy greater success. I only discovered them by accident when I came across a Blasters cassette in a record shop in the early 80s, and was blown away by songs such as “Marie Marie” that should have become rock’n’roll classics. But they could also do darker tunes like the one above and “Dark Night”. Here in Australia at least, they had zero radio coverage and remain quite obscure.
They never made it in the States, either. To me it seemed as though they got mislabeled as a revival or retro act. Their one big exposure was in the odd-ish movie Streets of Fire, where they performed the old Honey Bears rave-up, “One Bad Stud.” The clip from the movie is on YouTube and it’s… compelling.