Whose Country?

Hank Williams—the first Hank Williams—was born in 1923 in Butler County, Alabama, and grew up in and around Greenville, the county seat. In the early 1930s, when the young Williams was shining local timber workers’ boots, he befriended Rufus “Tee-Tot” Payne, a black blues musician forty years his senior. Payne, whose nickname was a joking […]