Hank recorded “Lovesick Blues” largely because it was a favorite of the Louisiana Hayride crowd. The Hayride, out of Shreveport, Louisiana, was the first nationally-known country show that he had been associated with, and every time the skinny young man would come on stage and hunker down over the microphone to perform the number, the crowd would yell its approval. Much more than any other song, “Lovesick Blues” brought his fans to their feet. Yet, even as Williams stepped up to the microphone at the Herzog Recording Studio in Cincinnati, Ohio on December 22, 1948 and duplicated the sound that had made the song a concert favorite, not everyone sensed the potential sales and power of this release. Especially unimpressed was the man who had guided Hank’s career almost from the very beginning, his mentor Fred Rose, who absolutely hated the song.
It may be hard to appreciate now, but in early 1949, Hank Williams was not a huge star. He really wasn’t much of a star at all. At this point in his career, there was good reason for many to wonder if the self-abusive Alabaman would ever really score big. By March of that year, Hank had released just three singles for the MGM label. The first, “Move It On Over,” had been the biggest hit, charting at #4 in the summer of ’47. The other two, “Honky Tonkin’” and “I’m A Long Gone Daddy,” hadn’t even made it into the top five. By the time he recorded “Lovesick Blues,” the singer’s total weeks on the chart in any position totaled just seven. Comparatively, during this same period of time, Eddy Arnold had spent over fifty weeks just at #1!
