Hank Williams

While Hank Williams acted out his American tragedy, Hugh Cherry stood by like a member of an ancient Greek chorus, joining the action in some scenes but mainly watching and bearing witness to one of the most significant, endlessly resonant rises and falls in popular music.

The late Hank Williams (1923-53) generally is regarded as the most influential, most beloved country-and-Western artist of all time. An immensely gifted and prolific songwriter and musical visionary, Williams did for country what Elvis did for rock and roll, Louis Armstrong did for jazz and Muddy Waters did for modern blues. But Williams was neither a prisoner of genre nor a slave to temporal convention.

Every time Hank Williams III steps onto a honky-tonk stage, two things happen: Someone will bring him a drink, and someone will challenge him on his name and on his talent. He's got a ready response for both. "There's always that guy who walks up while I'm singing and gives me the first shot, and I'll always pick it up and shoot it right down," says the gaunt, intense, 26-year-old Williams, who bears a striking physical resemblance to his famous grandfather.

It's tempting to read Steve Earle's first novel, "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 256 pp., $26, forthcoming in May), through the filter of pop music; the title comes from a Hank Williams song. Yet while Williams' ghost plays a significant role in the narrative, the motivation, Earle explains, is more complex. "It's about mortality," the singer-songwriter says by phone from his New York apartment. Hence, the name of the book, a reference to the last song Williams released before he died on Jan. 1, 1953, in the back seat of a car, on the road to a New Year's Day gig in Canton, Ohio.

Ultra-deluxe box sets for Miles Davis, Elvis Presley, Hank Williams and others are priced at up to $1,200. Scanning the upper stratosphere of this year's end-of-the-year holiday-centric music releases, it's tempting to think some record company execs decided it's time to head into full kamikaze-dive mode. Despite so much news revolving around the record industry's struggles to sell 99-cent singles and $9.99 album downloads, several labels have recently cooked up ultra-deluxe box sets for Miles Davis, Elvis Presley, Hank Williams and others priced at $200 up to $1,200.