The alter-ego is a mainstay of pop music. Some performers adopt them for a single album (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Chris Gaines, Sasha Fierce). Others use them in concert to articulate a skewed perspective, (the Night Tripper), more closely resemble the subjects of their songs (Boxcar Willie), or to
assume a different frame of mind (the Man in Black, the Fly/MacPhisto). Occasionally, the arrival of a novel persona can signify a foray into new musical territory (Ziggy Stardust) or the exorcism of the baser elements in one's soul (Slim Shady, T.I.P., Roman Zolansky). With "Luke the Drifter," Hank Williams sought to cultivate a space in which he could touch upon some of the more devoutly Christian strains in his thought. Already a superstar by the mid-1950s, it was important for him to insulate the success he'd had with his winning formula of secular songs about honky-tonkin' and heartbreak. And musically this album is as much a departure for Williams as its thematic content. The vast majority of these tracks feature the Drifter waxing philosophic about all manner of vice in a salt-of-the-earth spoken word, with only the occasional singing. His cowboy cadence mostly follows a simple A-B-A-B scheme, but some of the rhymes are downright amazing. Williams scores major points, for instance, in "The Funeral," when he says "rose a sad, old colored preacher / from his little wooden desk / with a manner sort of awkward / and a countenance grotesque." Unfortunately, he loses all of these points elsewhere in the song when he refers to the minister's "Ethiopian face" and the "curly hair" and "protruding lips" of the child he's eulogizing. There are several moments like these that might make the modern ear recoil, but some would be shaky in any age. Consider "Be Careful of the Stones That You Throw," Williams' rebuke of hypocrisy. A woman comes to gossip about a young female neighbor and her hard-partying ways (which our dear departed singer certainly knew something about). But, lo and behold, when that same woman's child is later saved from an oncoming car, guess who it was came to the rescue? Unfortunately, the muddled moral doesn't quite fit with the rest of the story. The chorus would have us guard against finding fault in others, but the conclusion seems to suggest there is both good and bad in everyone. "Please Make Up Your Mind" is a song sung by a man dealing with his fickle woman. Somehow it seems unfair to lump her faults in with the others. And I'm really not sure what's going on with "Everything's Okay," where a farmer, condemned to Job-level misfortune, keeps insisting that just being alive makes everything hunky-dory. Of all the songs, "Just Waitin'" is the best, boasting a trove of wry observations about how life works, but even it's not enough to right the rest of this album's wrongs. Moralizing like this would be a little hard to take in the best of circumstances, but from an unrepentant scoundrel like Hank Williams it'd be downright intolerable. Good thing Luke the Drifter does the talking. Grade: D
