Johnny Cash Wanted To Marry Hank Williams's Widow. She Said No

Milano, Texas, November 5, 1960, about half past one in the morning. Johnny Horton is driving home to Shreveport from a show at the Skyline Club in Austin, the same club where Hank Williams played his last concert on the road. A pickup truck comes the other way on a narrow overpass. By morning his wife, Billie Jean, is a widow for the second time. She is 27. This is Billie Jean Jones as the record has her. Married at 15 in Bossier City, Louisiana. Faron Young's girlfriend, and the story Faron told about Hank Williams and a gun. A wedding in Minden and two more on a stage in New Orleans, and a divorce paper signed ten days too late. Ten weeks as Mrs. Hank Williams, then a fight with his mother and his ex-wife over the name, and an agreement in 1953 that paid her thirty thousand dollars and left out the one thing nobody in the room knew about. Then Johnny Horton, Tillman Franks, Honky-Tonk Man and The Battle of New Orleans, the séances in the back yard, and the death he always said he expected. What Robert Hilburn's biography says happened next with Johnny Cash, and why she said no. The film that erased her from Hank's life, the jury that agreed with her and gave her nothing, and the federal judge who ruled in 1975, after twenty-two years, on who Hank Williams's widow really was. If you want the record behind more of the legends you grew up with, subscribe. If this one changed how you see her, leave a like. And tell me in the comments, where are you watching from? Sources include the federal court decisions in Hill and Range Songs v. Fred Rose Music (Middle District of Tennessee, 1975 and 1976); Robert Hilburn, Johnny Cash: The Life (2013); Colin Escott's writing on Hank Williams and Johnny Horton; Tillman Franks's accounts; and contemporary reporting in Billboard. Film from the Prelinger Archives. Images from the Library of Congress and Wikimedia Commons contributors. #billiejeanhorton #hankwilliams #johnnyhorton #johnnycash #countrymusic #theprivaterecord