Hank Snow - Hank Snow Sings Grand Ole Opry Favorites '1973 / 2023

Tracks list

Tracklist:

01. North to Chicago
02. It's Over, Over Nothin'
03. The City of New Orleans
04. There's The Chair
05. Crack in the Box Car Door
06. Bob
07. I'm Not at All Sorry for You
08. The Texas Silver Zephyr
09. Four in the Morning
10. Everytime I Love Her


 moreBorn and raised in Nova Scotia, Snow (born Clarence Eugene Snow) moved
in with his grandmother when he was eight years old, following the divorce of
his parents. Four years later, he re-joined his mother when she re-married, but
his stepfather was an abusive man who frequently beat Hank. Tired of the abuse,
Snow ran away from home when he was 12 years old, joining a fishing boat. For
the next four years, he served as a cabin boy, often singing for the sailors
onboard. When he was 16, he returned home, where he began working odd jobs and
trying to launch a performing career. His mother had given him a stack of
Rodgers records which inspired him greatly. Within a few weeks of hearing
Rodgers, Snow ordered a cheap, mail-order guitar and tried to learn his idol's
trademark blue yodel. For the next few years, he sang around Nova Scotia before
finally mustering the courage to travel to Halifax in 1933. Snow landed a weekly
unpaid appearance on CHNS' Down on the Farm, where he was billed as both the
cowboy Blue Yodeller and Clarence Snow and His Guitar. The following year, CHNS'
chief announcer, Cecil Landry, suggested to Snow that he should change his name
to Hank, since it sounded more Western.

Snow continued to perform in Halifax for the next three years, often struggling
to get by. He married Minnie Aalders in 1936, and the couple were relieved when
he landed a regular paid program on the network Canadian Farm Hour, billed as
Hank the Yodelling Ranger. By the end of the year, Snow had signed a deal with
RCA Victor's Montreal branch and recorded two original songs: "The Prsoned
Cowboy" and "Lonesome Blue Yodel." The songs were hits, beginning a string of
Canadian-only hit singles that ran for the next ten years; during that time, he
recorded nearly 90 songs. In the early '40s, he had a regular show on CBC, based
in Montreal and New Brunswick. In 1944, he switched to CKCW in New Brunswick.
Around that time, he switched his stage name to Hank the Singing Ranger, since
his voice had deepened and he could no longer yodel.

Though he had become a star in Canada, the American market remained untapped.
Snow tried to break into the U.S.A. several times, playing The Wheeling Jamboree
in West Virginia, briefly moving to Hollywood, and performing concerts with his
trick pony Shawnee, but he was having no luck finding fans, possibly because
most citizens were concentrating on World War II. Another stumbling block was
RCA Records themselves, who refused to let Snow release records in America until
he was well-known in the country. By 1948, Snow was singing on The Big D
Jamboree in Dallas, Texas, where he befriended the honky tonk legend Ernest
Tubb. Tubb pulled enough weight at the Grand Ole Opry to get Snow a slot on the
show in early 1950, and by that time, RCA had agreed to record him for the
American audience.

Snow's American debut single, "Marriage Vow," became a minor hit at the end of
1949, but it fell off the charts after a week. Similarly, his debut appearance
at the Grand Ole Opry in January was not well-received, prompting him to
consider moving back to Canada. However, those ideas were soon abandoned when
his breakthrough arrived in mid-1950. That July, "I'm Moving On" began its
remarkable ascent up the charts, eventually landing at number one and staying
there for a full 21 weeks. In the year after the release of "I'm Moving On,"
"The Golden Rocket" and "The Rhumba Boogie" both hit number one (the latter
staying there for eight weeks), establishing Snow as a genuine star. Between
1951 and the end of 1955, Snow had a remarkable 24 Top Ten hits, including the
massive hit single "I Don't Hurt Anymore," which spent 20 weeks at number one in
1954. Snow not only played his trademark traveling songs, but also country
boogie, Hawaiian music, rhumbas, and cowboys songs. By the middle of the decade,
he was a star not only in the United States and Canada, but throughout the
world, gaining a particularly strong following over the years in the United
Kingdom.

Around 1954, Snow formed a booking agency with Colonel Tom Parker, who would
later become infamous for being Elvis Presley's manager. Indeed, Snow played a
formative role in Presley's early career, convincing the Grand Ole Opry to give
the singer a chance in 1954. Though Elvis' appearance at the Opry was
ill-received, Snow continued to push Presley to move toward country, and Hank
was quite upset when Parker took complete control of Elvis' management around
1955. Still, Snow found a way to combat rock & roll -- he recorded some light
rockabilly singles himself. "Hula Rock" and "Rockin', Rollin' Ocean" were
attempts to capture the beat of rock & roll but tempered with the rhumbas and
boogie that made his singles hits during the early '50s. Though he was
experimenting with the new genre, he hadn't abandoned country and continued to
regularly chart in the country Top Ten until 1965 with hits like "Big Wheels"
(number seven, 1958), "Miller's Cave" (number nine, 1960), "Beggar to a King"
(number five, 1961), "I've Been Everywhere" (number one, 1962), and "Ninety
Miles an Hour (Down a Dead End Street)" (number two, 1963).

During the latter half of the '60s, Snow's career slowed down considerably, as
he wasn't able to make the transition to the new, heavily orchestrated
country-pop sounds, nor was he able to keep pace with the twangy roll of
Bakersfield. Instead, his singles placed in the lower reaches of the charts,
while his concerts and Grand Ole Opry appearances continued to be quite popular.
It wasn't until 1974 that another monster hit arrived in the form of "Hello
Love," which unexpectedly climbed to number one. Between its release in 1974 and
1980, Snow had only two other Top 40 hits, which both arrived the same year as
"Hello Love." Despite his declining record sales, his profile remained high
through his concerts and several lifetime-achievement awards, including his
induction to the Nashville Songwriters International Hall of Fame in 1978 and
the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1979.

In 1981, Snow's recording career ended when RCA dropped him after a 45-year
relationship. Though he never recorded again, Snow remained active in the Grand
Ole Opry into the '90s, and he spent a lot of time working for his Foundation
for Child Abuse. In the late '80s, Bear Family began a lengthy retrospective of
several multidisc box sets that chronicled his entire recording career. In 1994,
Snow published his autobiography, The Hank Snow Story. Late the following year,
he was stricken with a respiratory illness, yet he recovered in 1996, returning
to the Grand Ole Opry in August of that year. Snow died December 20, 1999, at
the age of 85. © David Vinopal



Hank Snow Sings Grand Ole Opry Favorites Hi-Res.rar - 967.5 MB
Hank Snow Sings Grand Ole Opry Favorites FLAC.rar - 154.4 MB

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