Song 301: This week on the playlist, it’s a good time for Honky Tonkin’ by Hank Williams, who also wrote the song. I don’t know how I managed to get past the 300 mark on this list before including a Hank Sr. track, but realizing that I had neglected him, this seemed like the right week to make up for that lapse. During my early childhood, my parents and grandparents made a yearly visit every summer to my father’s relatives in western Ohio, and by the age of 7 or so I had gotten acquainted with the relative family’s country music album collection and their stereo record player, to the point that my aunt and uncle felt totally at ease with letting me choose and play whatever LPs I wanted to hear, knowing that they could trust me to handle both the records and the equipment with appropriate care, and also with some genuine affection. I listened to a lot of Hank Sr., along with other major country talents like Patsy Cline and Roy Acuff, and got to know many of those songs by heart, including this one. Growing up in a very religious home where alcohol and cigarettes did not intrude, and bars were thought of as dens of iniquity, I didn’t exactly know what to picture when Hank sang about honky tonkin’, and I also thought it a bit odd, from the male-centered perspective of the era, that he expected the woman to bring along some dough, but I never let any of that hinder my enjoyment of his performance. I didn’t know if I would have enjoyed honky tonkin’ with Hank, but I always had a good time hearing him sing about it.
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