Audrey Williams: Reframing the Muse
Rethinking how women are remembered in music history
The artistic muse — typically a beautiful woman who inspires the work of a brilliant man, but does not challenge him and never dares to compete with him by producing her own work. We now know the names of these muses in fine art and have made attempts to return to them their accomplishments beyond knowing famous men. But I fear the same has not quite been accomplished for the muses in music.
As part of my country music education, I read the Colin Escott biography of Hank Williams, which is supposed to be the definitive word on Williams’ life and career, and serves as the source material for the 2015 biopic with Tom Hiddleston as Williams. What shocked me about the book was not with William’s excessive drinking throughout his life or his prolific recordings in his short six year career, I was shocked by how disparagingly William’s first wife Audrey is portrayed.
Many things have been said about Audrey Williams, and very few of them kind.
“Audrey couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket and the more she practiced, the worse she got.” (73)
“Her duets with Hank were like an extension of their married life as she fought him for dominance on every note.” (73)
“Horace Logan recalled: Audrey was a pure, unmitigated, hard-boiled, blue-eyed bitch. She wanted to be a singer and she was horrible, unbelievably horrible.” (93)
Not only has Audrey only been remembered for her proximity to her famous ex-husband, but she has additionally not been given credit for the impact she did have on his career. Instead, she has been criticized for her voice, her ambition, and the way she managed her husband’s career. But knowing that no one is all good or all bad, the truth of who Audrey was must lie somewhere between the real person and the one described by Williams’ biographers.
After all, the same woman whose ambition “would [have been] easier to applaud if her singing were better” (73) was also the woman who, without her diligence, we may have never heard the name Hank Williams. She’s also the woman whose marriage was tumultuous and had many heated fights with Hank over his drinking, cheating, and money, but inspired “Cold, Cold Heart,” “Why Don’t You Love Me,” and “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”
Hank was far from a perfect husband. He would get angry when Audrey allegedly had affairs while he was on the road despite Hank having many dalliances of his own and considering them “perks of the job” (152). He also (allegedly) shot at Audrey in an argument, and had been quoted saying plenty of awful things about her when he lived, but he must have loved her to have written such heart-wrenching songs and to have rightfully prophesied “Audrey, I won’t live another year without you.”
After the death of her ex-husband, Audrey went to work to secure the future of her and Hank’s only child together, Hank Williams Jr. She had booked Hank Jr. at the age of 14 to sing his father’s songs on the same stages where his father once stood. Some have called this a greedy grab for cash and fame by Audrey, but is it also possible that this was a mother trying to build a future for her child in the only way she knew how? She did manage Hank Sr.’s career for many years and was instrumental in getting him a contract with Acuff-Rose which led him to the Grand Ole Opry, so why wouldn’t she have done the same for her son?
Audrey Williams died in 1975, long before my time and long before the writing of this biography. For as many times as she is mentioned in the book, all of her recounting comes from a series of interviews done with Dorothy Horstman in 1973. The author did not get a chance to interview Audrey himself or corroborate any of the claims made against her by those who knew and worked with Hank, including his second wife, Billie Jean Horton.
Very few people writing about Hank and Audrey anymore knew them personally, so to print such a negative picture of Audrey in a book about her ex-husband, while she is no longer here to defend or refute anything said about her, and to not even have her living daughter respond on her behalf seems, at best, diminutive, as if all she was in life was the villian in Hank’s story. I think I would have honestly preferred if the author had such disdain for a key character in his subject’s life, he just not even mention her. Not only was this book not about Audrey, so it would have been easy to get away with only mentioning her when absolutely necessary and only providing the basic biographical details, but the author goes out of his way to malign her, adding negative jabs and digs at her when completely inappropriate. Such as when writing about a song that Hank wrote for his second wife, Billie Jean recalls Hank telling her, “I can say one thing, baby, I could never be ashamed of you.’’ to which Escott adds outside of Billie Jean’s quote, “Like he had been of Audrey.” (226) And there is no note as to how Escott would know definitively what Hank Williams was thinking of Audrey in that moment.
My hope is that, moving forward, we as journalists, historians, and biographers can have compassion for our subjects’ imperfections while not ignoring them, but knowing that they do not paint a whole person, particularly if we are unable to interview the subjects ourselves. My point of this article is not to paint Audrey Williams as a perfect person, as I also did not meet her. My point is simply that, just as it would be unfair of me to paint Audrey as an angelic figure, despite having not met her, it is equally unfair of biographers to paint her as the villian despite not knowing her personally and only going off the testimonies of those who may have their own prejudices and biases against her. That is not to say not to print their negative experiences with her — their recollection is their recollection. But it was unprofessional and frankly uncalled for that Escott would insert his own personal opinion into, what was supposed to be, an objective biography of Hank.
But this isn’t just about Audrey. This is about every woman throughout music history whose accomplishments or contributions have been minimized, their characters maligned, and who are only remembered for their positions in proximity to the famous men they knew. This is as much about Marianne Faithfull as it is about Audrey Williams. Or Anita Pallenberg. Or Pamela Des Barres. Or Pattie Boyd. Or Priscilla Beaulieu. Or even June Carter, who had a successful career all her own, but that is overshadowed by her famous lineage or even more famous marriage. And there’s plenty of names we may not even know who have been casualties of the patriarchal male-dominated world of music history and academia.
It might be too late to reframe Audrey’s story. She’s been gone 45 years and her oldest daughter Lucretia, who remembers life with Hank and Audrey, is now 81 years old and we may not have much time left to use her as a resource.
But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying to honor Audrey and all the women in music history who have stories yet to tell.
And I know I’m not alone. I’m linking here two projects that have inspired me to re-examine the concept of muses and groupies as well as women’s place in music history and academia:
@mckennakayleigh on Tiktok:
Tanya Pearson, author of Why Marianne Faithfull Matters
Sources Consulted:
