Hank Williams is one of the giants of American popular music and one of the icons of American Country music. Having been taught to play guitar as an adolescent by a Black street performer Rufus Payne, within a few years he was hosting his own weekly radio show, playing local honky tonks and eventually signed as a songwriter to Acuff-Rose Publishing and recording for MGM Records scoring 11 #1 hits during his lifetime. All of this is well known. What’s not normally acknowledged is that his legal name was Hiram King Williams; his father, Elonzo, was a Mason and his mother Lillie a member of Order of the Eastern star who named him after Hiram, King of Tyre – one of the three founders of Freemasonry according to Masonic tradition.
Read the Wikipedia article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Williams
Thanks to Sister Amy for the tip!
