50 Years Ago, Hank Williams Jr. Barely Survived a Fall Down a Mountain

Before Hank Williams Jr. was leading Monday Night Football sing-alongs or making blues records, he had a brush with death that could have ended everything. In 1975, a hike in Montana almost turned deadly. He opened up about the scary fall in an interview with The Bobby Bones Show.
“530 feet was a long way and 17 operations … yeah I have a little bit of back pain,” he quipped.
He was on Ajax Peak when one wrong step sent him tumbling down the mountainside and he said he remembered every bit of it, but that’s what saved him. He was found, strapped to the outside of a helicopter in the freezing air and fought to stay conscious as they carried him to a hospital. Doctors worked through the night in 17 separate operations to repair the damage. “They cut everything off,” he recalled. “I told them, don’t cut my cross off.”

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“When I fell, there were only two people I saw when I woke up in the hospital bed, and that was Johnny [Cash] and June,” Williams Jr. told Rolling Stone in 2015. “June put a cross on me and told me it was all going to be OK. I never knew if I would sing again or not, talk again or not, let alone think about what I was going to look like. It was a scary time.”
The recovery was slow and painful. Learning to sing again felt like starting from scratch, but Williams Jr. refused to quit. After the accident, he stopped trying to be a carbon copy of his father Hank Williams and started creating his own sound, a bold mix of rock, blues and Southern country that was entirely his. He referenced the scary fall and recovery in several songs including “All in Alabama.”
Williams Jr. is still making music and performing. He is currently on a tour that will go around the country until the end of August. Get tickets on his website.

Kings Of Country
March 2022
From outlaws Willie & Waylon to the Man in Black, Johnny Cash, we have every tear in your beer covered
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