Living proof

"Almost singlehandedly Hank Williams, Sr. changed country and western music into a national mania. When he died in 1953, he became a mythic figure. From the day his famous father died, Hank Junior was pushed to fill his father's shoes. By the time he was seven, he had been tutored by Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Brenda Lee. At the ripe old age of eight, he played his first show, singing his daddy's songs and telling his daddy's stories, and even then it was apparent he had inherited his father's musical genius. His rise to fame was spectacular: at eleven he premiered at the Grand Ole Opry and at fourteen was a hit on the Ed Sullivan Show. At nineteen Hank Junior was perched atop show business. But success too its toll. The demons of drugs and booze that had destroyed his father began to claim the son. Two marriages failed. Hostile audiences came to watch him forget lyrics or drop his guitar. The pressures were so enormous Hank Junior wanted to die. Then in 1975 Hank's death wish was almost granted when he slid five hundred feet down a mountain in the Rockies, landing head first on a boulder. Awaiting certain death in the snow, his face split apart, Hank had a powerful revelation-he wanted desperately to live, and amazingly de did. With a sense of wonder, Hank takes his survival as a sign he isn't to end up like his father."--Book jacket