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About Hank Locklin

Hank Locklin (b. Lawrence Hankins Locklin), one of country music’s great

tenors, was born February 15, 1918, in the small town of McLellan, located

in the lumbering district of the Florida Panhandle. The youngest son of four

children, he went to a one-room schoolhouse and was musical even as a

young child. Locklin was injured at the age of eight in an accident and the

long recovery process was the time when he first begin to learn music.

Although interested in the guitar early on, it was not until his mid-teens that

he really began to master that instrument. Locklin was active in music in

high school (which he never finished), and at 18 won first prize in a talent

show. He went on to do spots on the local radio station as he became more

and more interested in entertaining. By the mid-’40s he was playing on the

radio and doing in-person performances in Florida and nearby states. For

the next ten years or so, Locklin worked many jobs (musical and otherwise),

played with a variety of groups, and, through a variety of trials, gradually

worked his way up the country music ladder to recognition. (A good

account of these years can be found in the Bear Family box set liner notes,

written by Otto Kissinger.)

Locklin was exempted from military service due to his old leg injury, and

during the war he began playing guitar in various bands around Mobile, AL,

and also started singing and writing songs. His vocal style was originally

influenced by Ernest Tubb, but he later began developing his own approach

to singing. Late in World War II, he joined Jimmy Swan’s dance band as a

guitarist — whose ranks included Hank Williams sitting in occasionally —

and he spent much of 1945 and 1946 playing gigs across the Southeast,

from Florida to Alabama.

It was Locklin’s association with a group called the Four Leaf Clover Boys

that led to the formation of his first group. In the wake of their breakup,

Locklin formed the Rocky Mountain Boys in 1947. The group’s lineup later

changed radically, but it was this original outfit — Locklin on vocals and

guitar, Clint Holmes on rhythm guitar, “Tiny” Smith on bass, Felton Pruett

on steel guitar, and Douglas “Dobber” Johnson playing fiddle — that got

Locklin his first break. They were popular on the radio, and were sponsored

by wealthy businessman Elmer Laird, who was also a songwriter. Laird

proposed starting a record label around Locklin and the group with his

songs, but he died in a stabbing incident on the eve of Locklin’s first

recording session.

They soldiered on, recording for Gold Star and later Royalty without much

success, and eventually the band broke up (Holmes and Pruett hooked up

with Hank Williams soon after). Locklin ended up based in Houston and

signed to Four Star, where he had his first major regional hits with such

songs as “The Same Sweet Girl” and “Send Me the Pillow That You Dream

On.” In those days, Locklin’s sound was that of Texas-style dance band,

and lacked the smooth, romantic commercial veneer of his later Nashville-

based recordings for RCA. In 1953, he finally achieved national recognition

with a number-one country hit, “Let Me Be the One.” His success, however,

was still sporadic, particularly in the face of an awkward contractual

arrangement that had Locklin recording for Decca but belonging to Four

Star and largely restricted to recording Four Star-owned songs. This didn’t

change until 1955.

His career took off when he joined the RCA Victor label in the spring of

1955. Locklin’s work with RCA has the added advantage that almost all of it

was produced by Chet Atkins, often with Atkins himself on rhythm or lead

guitar and with the added trills and fill-ins of Floyd Cramer on piano. The

extreme simplicity of his early works makes the combination of his clear

voice and these particular sidemen very effective. Everyone knows Locklin’s

big hits — “Send Me the Pillow That You Dream On” (written by Locklin),

“Geisha Girl,” and “Please Help Me I’m Falling” — but real fans are in love

with his very simple heartfelt tunes like “Who Am I to Cast the First Stone,”

“A Good Woman’s Love,” “Seven or Eleven,” “I’m Tired of Bummin’ Around,”

“Golden Wristwatch,” “Sitting Alone at a Table for Two,” and many others.

These early songs are characterized by Locklin’s crystal-clear tenor, the

ultra-simplicity of the songs themselves, and their straight-to-the-heart

emotional plea. (Kitty Wells has this same kind of gift.) The result is a

group of incredible songs that, first released as singles, later became

available on Camden, RCA’s budget label. After many years of neglect,

many of these songs became available on the Bear Family box set Hank

Locklin, Please Help Me I’m Falling. Locklin stayed with the RCA label until

the mid-1960s.

Locklin helped pioneer the idea of concept albums; his albums Foreign

Love and Irish Songs, Country Style are examples. He also recorded an

album tribute to Roy Acuff, A Tribute to Roy Acuff, King of Country Music.

His Irish songs are pretty near definitive. As time goes by, the vocal chorus

begins to creep into the Locklin albums a little more than purists might like,

but his crystal-clear tenor never deserts him.

Hank Locklin hit the Top Ten charts again in the 1968 with “The Country

Hall of Fame.” In the 1970s he toured overseas often, was very popular in

Ireland and Great Britian, and made at least one tour with Chet Atkins to

Japan. After leaving RCA, he went on to record for a number of labels

including MGM and Plantation. He since has retired and lives in Brewton, AL,

only some 20 miles from his birth place.

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