He was twenty-nine years old and had recorded just eighty sessions when he died on New Year's Day 1953. Yet those songs—“Hey Good Lookin'," "Your Cheatin' Heart," "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry"-made Hank Williams the most influential country musician ever. He is the essential pre-Elvis performer, molding American music into a new art form, and creating descendants that range from Garth Brooks to Beck. But for all that his music reveals, we know remarkably little of the man himself. His formal interviews barely filled a page, and even those who claimed him as a friend admit they barely knew him. Hank Williams fans, devoted and avid, have been cherishing the same few Hank pictures and reminiscences for decades. Now this book will reveal a previously unseen wealth of photographs, letters, interviews, and the handwritten lyrics to twenty-nine newly discovered songs in a beautifully designed tribute.