Hank Williams, Jr. and Sammy Kershaw

Williams' early career definitely seemed to centre around his father's music. Williams first performed on stage by singing one of his father's songs when he was eight years old. In 1964, he made his recording debut with 'Long Gone Lonesome Blues', one of his father's many classic songs. Williams provided the singing voice of his father in the 1964 film 'Your Cheatin' Heart' and also recorded an album of duets with his father.

Williams' early career was guided, and to an extent dominated, by his mother, who is widely claimed as being the driving force that led his late father to musical superstar status during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Audrey promoted young Hank Jr. as a Hank Williams tribute act, even to the extent of having stage clothes designed for him that were identical to his father's, and encouraging vocal styles very similar to those of his father.

This all became too much for the young musician who eventually severed the ties with his mother in an attempt to find his own musical voice. By the mid-1970s Williams began to pursue a musical direction that would eventually make him a superstar. At the time of recording a series of moderately successful songs, Williams began a heavy pattern of both drug and alcohol abuse. Upon moving to Alabama, in an attempt to refocus both his creative energy and his troubled personal life, Williams began playing music with Southern rock musicians including Waylon Jennings, Toy Caldwell, and Charlie Daniels.

He has achieved huge commercial success on the US Country charts over his career, most notably a run of six albums released between 1984 and 1988 which all topped the chart. He has had countless wins and nominations at Academy of Country Music and the Grammy Awards.

There could easily be a biopic made about Sammy Kershaw’s life and career up until just before the release of his debut album. What’s more, it would still be one that could stand alongside Walk The Line and Ray in terms of dizzying personal successes and crushing failures even before showing Kershaw in the 1990’s, when he was one of the biggest Country stars in the U.S. After receiving his first guitar from his grandfather when he was eleven years old, Kershaw started dreaming of becoming a country singer like his third cousin, Doug Kershaw. Even his father passing away in the same year couldn’t stop Kershaw from chasing his dream, where he’d perform at local roadhouses after spending the whole day working to provide for his family.

It started to pay off as well, and after apprenticing under the Louisiana legend J.B. Pere, he started headlining at bigger and bigger local shows until he was supporting national stars like Merle Haggard and George Jones. However, he was still young, far too young to be that ensconced in the music industry, and he soon became mired in drug and alcohol addiction at around the same time that most kids his age would be learning to drive. He lost himself in a big way and spent the better part of a decade in a narcotic haze, until he finally saw a way out, and stepped away from music in 1988 to work in a Wal-Mart store. However, he didn’t stop writing and sending out demo tapes, and one of those tapes was picked up by Mercury Records, who signed him up for the release of his debut album “Don’t Go Near the Water” in 1991.

With nearly 20 years of music industry experience under his belt Kershaw knew exactly how to deal with the enormous success of his debut, which was certified Platinum soon after its release and carried four top 20 singles with it in the form of “Cadillac Style”, “Yard Sale”, its title track and “Anywhere But Here”. The rest of the 1990’s were extremely kind to Kershaw, with five of his six albums released that decade being certified Gold or Platinum, and ever since then, Kershaw has remained one of the most beloved names in country music. With a back catalogue rivalled by few other songwriters like him, and a live show fuelled with nearly forty years of experience, Sammy Kershaw comes highly recommended.