Friday, 09/29/06

After legal win, Williams kids say they hope to release disputed radio shows

By RYAN UNDERWOOD
Staff Writer

     Dozens of Hank Williams recordings rescued from the trash decades ago may be heard by the public again, thanks to a Tennessee Supreme Court ruling that has put radio shows the country great recorded in the 1950s in the control of his children.

The possible commercial release of material on the 40 to 50 acetate recordings by Williams, including everything from unreleased songs to gospel performances, comes at the end of nearly nine years of legal wrangling between Williams' children and recording companies that had staked a claim to the music.

     Keith Adkinson, an attorney in the case and the husband of Williams' daughter, Jett Williams Adkinson, said there's a "ton of material" that could eventually make it to consumers more than a half century after the legendary singer's death.

Adkinson said the family planned to issue commercial recordings, although when and how is still being discussed.

The state Supreme Court's decision, issued earlier this week, let stand an appellate court ruling made in January that affirmed the rights of Williams' heirs, Hank Williams Jr. and Jett Williams, to control the fate of the recordings made by their father in 1951 and 1952 of a WSM radio show sponsored by Mother's Best Flour.

     "I am delighted at long last this treasure trove of previously unreleased material will finally be available to my daddy's fans," Jett Williams said in a statement.

     The legal battle was ensnarled in a set of hazy circumstances stretching back to a less-than-watertight 1947 contract between Williams and the record company, MGM.

     The narrative of the case goes like this: Mother's Best Flour made a series of more than 40 acetate recordings of Hank Williams' appearances on a 1950s WSM radio show as a way to broadcast material while Williams was on the road.

     In the 1960s, as WSM was moving its operations from downtown Nashville, a photographer who worked for the company, Les Leverett, rescued the recordings from a pile of debris that was headed to the trash. Leverett kept the recordings until 1982, when he sold them to Hillous Butrum, a former member of Williams' band.

Butrum "enhanced" the re-cordings, according to court records, eliminating skips and hisses while dubbing some of his original music and voice-over commentary. In 1997 Butrum sold the recordings to Brentwood-based Legacy Entertainment Group, which planned to release them ahead of a 1998 comprehensive 10-disc Hank Williams box-set being prepared by PolyGram Records.

PolyGram and the Williams' heirs successfully sued to stop Legacy Entertainment from issuing the recordings. However, in the midst of those legal proceedings, PolyGram's claims to the material also were denied, a decision that was later appealed.

Finally, on Jan. 20, the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled that Williams' heirs were the rightful owners of the material, a decision that will stand as a result of the Tennessee Supreme Court's denial to hear the case.

     "If a song were written about this matter favorable to Legacy's claim, it might have been entitled, 'I Found a Gold Mine in the Radio Station Trash,' " wrote appeals court judge Frank G. Clement Jr. in the ruling.

But, Clement said, "an appropriate title attributable to Legacy's claim would be, 'Your Bucket Has a Hole in It.' " That was a reference to Williams' hit, "My Bucket's Got a Hole In It."
 

     Contacted Thursday, Adkinson said the ruling in favor of the Williams children should be viewed by older performers as a landmark case.

     "This ruling has far-reaching implication for those older artists who entered into similar contracts with recording labels decades ago," Adkinson said.

     "All these years they have been led to believe that their record labels owned something other than the original recordings made by them."

     Hank Williams Jr. said in a statement issued by his publicist that the struggle over the material, though lengthy, was a valid one. "I can't think of a better time for 'new' material by my dad to be released 53 years after his death," he said. "He must be smiling today."