Hank Williams

Polygram Records has just released the fifth and sixth volumes of its heroic effort to get back onto vinyl every song that country great Hank Williams ever recorded. This pair of two-record sets, Long Gone Lonesome Blues ( ) and Hey, Good Lookin' ( ), covers the period from 1949 to 1951, when Williams had settled into his fame while producing such masterpieces of melancholy as "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You)," "Cold, Cold Heart" and "The Angel of Death.

Agents for country singer Hank Williams Jr. have agreed to pay $65,000 to reimburse concertgoers and cover other damages incurred when the country singer aborted an appearance in Baton Rouge, La., Saturday night. Fans became infuriated when Williams, incoherent at times, started and stopped songs, threw his fiddle in the air, cursed the crowd and stumbled off the stage after 20 minutes. They tossed beer bottles, burned Hank Williams Jr. T-shirts and demanded refunds for their $17.50 tickets.

Hank Williams Jr. is not about to be left behind in the current war- drumming. The country star wrote an anti-Iraqi song Thursday, rounded up his good musician buddies Friday and recorded it - and it should be in your neighborhood record store by the end of this week. "Don't Give Us a Reason" suggests that the United States and the Soviet Union will kick Iraq's assets if given sufficient reason. One part goes: Don't give us a reason to go gunnin' for for you 'cause the odds don't look good.

To paraphrase an observation once made of that other outrageously talented egomaniac, James Brown, it don't matter if nobody else loves Hank Williams Jr., because Hank will always love himself. Sunday night at the Taj Mahal Casino's Mark G. Etess Arena, Randall Hank Jr.'s affection for Randall Hank Jr. was abundantly obvious. At various points in his hour-long, over-the-top set, Williams played before three banners of himself, in about the size and style Saddam Hussein might use to decorate a Baghdad boulevard.

Removed after 23 years as the musical intro to Monday Night Football, country singer Hank Williams has responded by writing a song rebuking his critics. ESPN dropped Williams from MNF on Oct. 3 for making a statement comparing President Obama playing golf with House Speaker John Boehner to Hitler playing a round with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Williams is offering the song "Keep the Change" as a free download on his website. He's also scheduled to appear on The View and Hannity on Tuesday.

The much-ballyhooed Waterfront Entertainment Centre - adjacent to the New Jersey State Aquarium in Camden - is ready to open its doors. The $56 million, 25,000 capacity, indoor/outdoor, year-round facility makes its entrance into the Philadelphia area concert promoters' sweepstakes tonight with . . . (drum roll please) . . . Hank Williams Jr.? I know what you're thinking: Couldn't they do any better than that? If the super-rich partners in this state-of-the-art building wanted to make a big splash, couldn't they have corralled a bigger marquee draw than the most proudly piggish hat act in existence?

Cathy Yvonne Stone, who battled to be declared the daughter of Hank Williams Sr. and continues to fight for a cut of his copyright royalties, got a big boost yesterday when the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a lower-court ruling saying she's entitled to a jury trial to decide the case. Stone, 37, was born five days after the country legend died in 1953. Her mother, Bobbie Jett, and Williams signed a document noting that the then-unborn Stone might be Williams' child. Alabama courts ruled that she was his daughter but not a legal heir.

Twelve never-released recordings by Hank Williams Sr., including five songs that Williams wrote, make up Hank Williams: The First Recordings, an album now being released by the Country Music Foundation (CMF). "These tracks precede Williams' MGM (Records) hits by three years," says Bob Pinson, the foundation's principal researcher. CMF director Bill Ivey notes that considerable material "has been written about (Williams') short life and career (he died at the age of 29), in particular those years after his MGM hits first dazzled country audiences.

As you walk into the WPA Theater and locate your seat for The Night Hank Williams Died, a succession of country-music classics is being played over the sound system - Hank Snow's "I'm Movin' On," Bob Wills' version of "San Antonio Rose" and, most ominously and just seconds before the play begins, Hank Williams' "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive. " The Night Hank Williams Died is written by Larry L. King, author of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, but unlike that jaunty, big-hit musical, this small play is bleak and even despairing just below the surface of its lively corn-pone humor.

Tonight is the night. Tonight, Camden's new Waterfront Entertainment Centre will open with its first show and its backers will get a sense of whether their $56 million gamble will pay off. The 25,000-capacity facility will host country-western entertainment furnished by Hank Williams Jr. as part of his "Hog Wild Tour '95. " The opening, with a projected audience of between 6,000 and 8,000, will launch a new era in the Philadelphia pop-music...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Hank Williams Jr. is about to have his say. Williams has cut a new song, "Keep the Change," calling out Fox & Friends and ESPN after an interview last week on the Fox News talk show led to the end of his association with the sports network and Monday Night Football , long home to his "Are you ready for some football?" theme. "I've been recording for five decades, and I knew that old over-the-fence feeling on this one," Williams said in an interview Monday.

Removed after 23 years as the musical intro to Monday Night Football, country singer Hank Williams has responded by writing a song rebuking his critics. ESPN dropped Williams from MNF on Oct. 3 for making a statement comparing President Obama playing golf with House Speaker John Boehner to Hitler playing a round with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Williams is offering the song "Keep the Change" as a free download on his website. He's also scheduled to appear on The View and Hannity on Tuesday.

Are you ready for some football? Hank Williams Jr. isn't anymore. The country singer and ESPN each took credit for the decision Thursday morning to ax his classic intro to Monday Night Football . The network had pulled the song from the game earlier this week after Williams made an analogy to Adolf Hitler while discussing President Obama on Fox News on Monday morning. "After reading hundreds of e-mails, I have made MY decision," Williams said in a statement to the Associated Press.

HANK WILLIAMS JR. has lost his mind. You might have noticed you didn't hear Bocephus wailing "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight" before last night's "Monday Night Football" game. ESPN pulled the song - which has been associated with "MNF" for 20 years - after Williams compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler on the show "Fox and Friends" yesterday. Williams was interviewed live from Tennessee, via satellite, by hosts Brian Kilmeade, Gretchen Carlson and Steve Doocy.

Clips of the Kendra Leigh Baskett sex tape are all over the Net, and, like toothpaste, the cinema vérité masterpiece (clearly influenced by the '66 classic Battle of Algiers ) can't be squeezed back into the tube. Kendra shot the tape when she was 19 with one Justin Frye . She tells Us Weekly she told her hubby, Eagles receiver Hank Baskett , all about the dirty deed before they married. "I just wanted to get all of the skeletons out of the closet," says Kendra, who will turn 25 on Saturday.

One of the surprises of last week's announcement of the Pulitzer Prizes was a special posthumous citation of Hank Williams for his "pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life. " In a public career that lasted just six years, from 1946 to 1952, Hank Williams took country music to new heights of popularity. Until his time, country music, then called "hillbilly," was regarded as a quirky genre that appealed only to slightly disreputable rural types - "poor white trash" in the minds of many.

The end has come. For real. The world is ending, and not with a bang, or a whimper, but a film: Indian director T. Rajeevnath wants to cast celebutante Paris Hilton in a biopic about Mother Teresa. I'm not being some grubby pulpit moralist guy outraged that the star of a home sex tape might portray the nun who worked among Calcutta's poor, though that's ghastly enough. I'm talking dialectics: Philosopher dudes through the ages have said the cosmic journey will end once all dualities are resolved.

Choosing the next American Idol can wreak serious havoc on the social life. Just ask Paula Abdul. The former dancer-singer-cheerleader will team up with Dr. Phil to find her latest beau on Love Smart, a CBS prime-time special scheduled to air (Channel 3, 9 p.m.) on Valentine's Day, Feb. 14. Dr. Phil and Abdul will "explore the life of an unmarried international celebrity who is looking for love. " Hopefully, they won't find it the herds of wannabe Idols singing their hearts out in front of Ms. Abdul, Randy Jackson, and meanster Simon Cowell.

If power corrupts, then celebrity warps. That's the motto we have hanging on the wall here at Newsmakers Central. We consult it often. Current case in point: Dr. Phil McGraw, the nation's favorite shrink and espouser of people getting along. Fame has apparently distorted the man's values big-time, according to the New York Post's Liz Smith. Asked to speak at an obesity forum hosted by California first lady Maria Shriver, Phil insisted that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger introduce him. When he was told that scheduling conflicts made that impossible, Phil pouted, saying, "I am not happy," and he refused to speak.

That baleful sound you heard Sunday night was that of a thousand hearts breaking. Channel 6 meteorologist-duathlete Cecily Tynan's getting hitched. Anchor Rob Jennings broke the news during WPVI-TV's 11 o'clock report, when he coaxed the weather wonder to show everyone what was "lighting up the studio. " At that, Tynan hoisted her new engagement ring, which she announced she'd received that day from her beau, whose identity she did not divulge. "It was a good day to get engaged," the strawberry-blond bicyclist/marathoner said.