By Tony Russell
From The Guardian (UK)
Wednesday December 22, 1999
Submitted by Robin Jones
Hank Snow, who has died aged 85, was a distinguished senior figure of the
country music establishment. A prolific recording artist, he was also a
member, for more than 40 years, of the Grand Ole Opry, steadfastly faithful,
in his besequinned and cactus-decorated stagewear, to old-fashioned notions
of showmanship.
Snow is reputed to have sold 70m records and to have had more than 40 top 10
country hits. His most famous number, I'm Movin' On, headed the country
chart for almost half of 1950. Years later, country-music disc jockeys voted
it their all-time favourite record. Like the railroad anthem Golden Rocket
and the tongue-twisting I've Been Everywhere, it was his own composition,
reflecting a lifelong fascination with travel and trains inspired by an
unhappy boyhood and the restless, evocative songs of his idol, the pioneer
country singer Jimmie Rodgers.
Rodgers, who died in 1933, was known as the Singing Brakeman. Snow, who
began making records three years later and emulated Rodgers's yodeling
refrains and wry narrative style, was first dubbed the Yodeling Ranger,
and, when yodelling went out of style, the Singing Ranger.
It was always a shock to remember that this eloquent exemplar of a music
rooted in the American South was a Canadian, born in Liverpool, Nova Scotia.
His parents were divorced when he was eight, and his stepfather, as he would
recount, "treated me like a dog. I still carry scars across my body from his
beatings." He bought his first guitar with the earnings from a two-week
stint unloading salt from a freighter, and while still in his teens earned
his own radio show in Halifax. In 1936, he made his first record, Lonesome
Blue Yodel, for the Montreal branch of RCA Victor. Over the next dozen or so
years, he produced almost a hundred recordings for the Canadian market; they
sold well, particularly The Blue Velvet Band, but were seldom even issued in
the US.
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In the mid-1940s, he finally found a toehold in the American country music
business on the Big D Jamboree, a Saturday-night barn dance programme on the
Dallas station KRLD. He had an influential supporter in the then popular
country singer Ernest Tubb, who secured him a spot on the Grand Ole Opry.
His place was assured by the success of I'm Movin' On, and further hits in
the 50s and 60s, such as Rhumba Boogie, I Don't Hurt Anymore and Yellow
Roses.
Even in the mid-60s, Snow continued to tour widely - one of his supporting
acts on a 1955 tour had been the young Elvis Presley - and to sell, steadily
and internationally, enormous quantities of albums. By the time he was
dropped from RCA's roster in 1987, he had recorded more than a hundred LPs,
many of them conceptually designed to frame sections of his huge repertoire,
such as railroad, hobo and cowboy numbers and his personal treasury of
Canadian country songs.
In the 70s and 80s, Snow became a taciturn and unclubbable patriarch. Henry
Gibson's performance as the country star Haven Hamilton, in Robert Altman's
film Nashville, eerily embodies his dignity, bordering on self-importance,
as well as his slightly unbelievable coiffure. But he was also an excellent
guitarist, who could hold his own with a country virtuoso like Chet Atkins.
Unable to forget the misery of his youth, Snow did a great deal of work for
the cause of abused children. He also made a point of playing for US troops
in Vietnam. He secured US citizenship in 1958 and was elected to the
Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1978 and the Country Music Hall of
Fame in 1979. Together with Ernest Tubb, he was among the founders of the
Jimmie Rodgers Memorial Day, held annually in the singer's home town of
Meridian, Mississippi.
He is survived by his son, Jimmie Rodgers Snow.
Tony Russell
Clarence Eugene (Hank) Snow, country musician, born May 9, 1914; died
December 20, 1999
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