An Interview With Hank Williams' Daughter Jett Williams Over At The 9513

Jett Williams, daughter of the legendary Hank Williams, was born in Montgomery, Alabama, five days after her father died on his way to Canton, Ohio, where he was to perform on New Year's Day, 1953. Relinquished by her natural mother, Bobbie Jett of Nashville, the infant was taken from the hospital where she was born into the home of Hank's mother, Lillian, who adopted her. Lillian, who started her lengthy adoption process within days of Hank's funeral, completed the adoption in December of 1954. Unfortunately, she was dead within two months and the Williams family no longer wanted the infant, whom Lillian had named Cathy Yvonne (for the "Yvonne" in "Jambalaya"). The Williams family made Jett a ward of the State of Alabama and she was relocated to a foster home in Pine Level, Alabama, at the age of three.

During her youth, Jett had no idea who her natural parents were, let alone that her daddy was Hank Williams, but from a very young age she demonstrated an unusual and natural talent for music, singing, and her guitar. In the early 1980's, at the urging of her adoptive father and armed with a few facts and a little rumor, Jett set out to learn what she could about who she was and what had happened to her. After years of futile effort, fortune smiled and Jett got proof-positive that Hank Williams was her father. Not only was he her father, he had made all provisions for her and her well being. In fact, three months before Jett was born, Hank had prepared and executed a notarized pre-birth custody agreement giving him full custody of his as yet unborn daughter. The rest is history, and is documented in the files of the Alabama State Court and in the scores of newspaper and feature magazine articles written about Jett and her saga.

Jett Williams was declared by court order dated October 26, 1987, to be the biological daughter of Hank Williams. On June 5, 1989, the Supreme Court of the State of Alabama, reversing a lower court ruling, found that Jett, since birth, had been the victim of fraud and judicial error in that her identity was concealed from her for financial gain. The Supreme Court declared all prior orders in the Estate of Hank Williams to be null and void, since procured by fraud on the court, and reopened Hank's estate, making Jett Williams a legal heir, entitled to one-half the estate proceeds. Her autobiography, entitled Ain't Nothin' as Sweet as My Baby, chronicles the saga of her struggle.

Hank Sr has a brand new box set of unreleased recordings that comes out this month called Hank Williams- The Complete Mother's Best. I had a chance to talk with Jett in an interview for The 9513 about the new project and her role as guardian over her father's name and likeness. Check out the snippet below and then click HERE to read the whole interview.

"When you hear that version with him telling you about it or when you hear him talk about how out of all the songs he’s recorded this one or that one is his favorite, it’s special. That’s opposed to hearing people say that Hank said this or Hank said that or reading that Hank said this. Now I’ve got Hank saying that. And [it is meaningful] to hear him talk about why he selected the song to sing and why the song means so much to him. But then you can hear him banter between the emcee and the band members. That is cool too. Mistakes were made on-air and you get to hear him laugh at himself. It’s so personal. It’s absolutely fantastic. You can hear songs he wrote and other people’s songs. There are songs you’ve never heard him sing before. There are many of those. I don’t remember the exact amount, but there are 140 songs. Some of them were before the masters were cut for those songs."