Hasil Adkins 2

Barely Appreciated

HASIL ADKINS – Story of the Month (from May 2011)
 
 

 

1986 article in the Kicks fanzine on Hasil Adkins caused a sensation; and Norton Records was born when they released Out to Hunch later that year, the first of several albums collecting Adkins’s music.  I had heard the most successful of his singles on one of the Born Bad CD’s, “She Said; and even that one song demonstrates that Hasil Adkins can burp and beep and howl his way through a song better than anyone this side of Charlie Feathers (he is known as the “king of rockabilly” and is the co-author of one of Elvis Presley’s earliest hit songs, “I Forgot to Remember to Forget).  However, I didn’t get an entire album until last year.

 

Hasil Adkins is a true wild man; Allmusic calls him a “rockabilly lunatic” and “a frantic one-man band who bashed out ultra-crude rock & roll tunes about sex, chicken, and decapitation into a wheezing reel-to-reel tape machine in a West Virginia shack”.  He was born in a small town there in 1939 and lived in obscurity for most of his life.  After buying a Hank Williams record, he naively assumed that Williams was playing all of the instruments, since there were no other musician credits shown.  By the time he figured out the truth, he had already taught himself to be a one-man band, so he stuck with that. 

 

When rock and roll came along in the mid-1950’s, he jumped in with both feet.  He released about 15 singles back in the 1950’s and 1960’s, though none were big sellers.  In a charming affectation, he always mailed a copy of his records to whoever was President at the time it came out; and Richard Nixon sent him a thank-you note one time. 

 

The Hasil Adkins album that I got is called White Light/White Meat (subtitled:  “Authentic West Virginia One Man Band Home Recordings 1958-1965”) and provides a representative slice of his output:  raucous rockers (“Hot Dog Baby), Hank Williams-style love songs (“You're Gonna Break My Heart), songs about dance crazes (“Come on and Do the Shake with Me), and country weepies (“Lonely Graveyard). 

 

There's plenty more out there:  Allmusic reports that he released 5 or 6 songs about a “lascivious but non-existent dance craze called ‘the hunch’” – collected in that first Norton album, Out to Hunch – and another song about eating peanut butter on the moon.  Norton also released Poultry in Motiona full album of Adkins songs that all have “chicken” in the title.  Thanks to the exposure from Kicks magazine and Norton RecordsHasil Adkins got to enjoy a minor celebrity status during the last 20 or so years of his life. 

 

Rockabilly survives as echoes and grace notes in a dozen or more rock and country subgenres but, in its purest form, might be too kinetic and sinewy for the general public to bear for very long.  Thankfully, in this modern era, nostalgia has morphed into what might more properly be called musical appreciation; and forgotten and unknown gems from all types of popular music are available to connoisseurs like never before.  Reissue CD’s from Norton Records and many other labels abound with rockabilly nuggets, as just one example.  Norton – now celebrating its 25th anniversary – has released at least 8 albums of Hasil Adkins’s music and continues to do so (the album I have came out in 2010 and wasn’t mentioned in the Wikipedia article on Adkins until I added it); and several other record companies have also put out Hasil Adkins albums. 

 

(February 2014)

 

Last edited: March 22, 2021