Hank Williams Trivia
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58 free Hank Williams trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Hank Williams was dead at 29 and had been a national star for barely four years, yet he wrote more country standards than almost anyone who came after him. This quiz covers the whole story: the boy called Hiram busking outside a Montgomery radio station, the Black street musician who taught him to keep time, the gas-station wedding, the Opry rejection and the Louisiana Hayride, and the Tin Pan Alley cover that finally made him a star. Then the songs themselves, from the doghouse comedy that helped invent rock and roll to the wooden Indian who never spoke up. The second half follows the fall: the fake doctor and his mail-order diploma, the firing from the Opry, the two public weddings, the snowstorm that put a teenager behind the wheel of the Cadillac, and the filling station in West Virginia. It finishes with what came after: the lawsuits over the estate, the daughter born five days too late, the biopics, the lost notebooks, and a son and grandson who built their own careers. Easy questions suit anyone who knows a few of the hits; the expert tier reaches WPA Blues, Herzog Studio and Sneezy Waters. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Williams, his songs, his family and his death, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you want the wider picture, our Grand Ole Opry and classic country pages sit alongside this one.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which make of car did Hank Williams die, aged 29?
Cadillac
Cadillac: the baby-blue 1952 model in which he made his last journey is now a centrepiece of the Hank Williams Museum in Montgomery.
Q 02What was Hank Williams's real first name?
Hiram
Hiram. Under the name Hank he was singing on the radio at 13 and leading his own band a year later.
Q 03In which US state was Hank Williams born and raised?
Alabama
Alabama. His father went into a veterans' hospital when Hank was six, and the household lived on the boarding houses Lillie Williams ran in one town after another.
Q 04On which holiday in 1953 was Hank Williams pronounced dead, aged 29?
New Year's Day
New Year's Day. He was being driven through the night to a show when he was found lifeless in the back seat, and he may in fact have died hours earlier, on New Year's Eve.
Q 05What was the name of Hank Williams's backing band?
The Drifting Cowboys
The Drifting Cowboys were named on his record labels, yet until 1950 the playing in the studio was usually done by hired session men.
Q 06Which 1949 number one, a cover of a 1922 Tin Pan Alley song, propelled Hank Williams to Opry stardom?
Lovesick Blues
Lovesick Blues brought Williams six encores at his Opry debut in June 1949, though he had not written it: he learned the old show tune from earlier records.
Q 07Which record label released Hank Williams's music from 1947 until his death?
MGM Records
MGM Records was a start-up label when it signed Williams in 1947, won over by the regional sales of his first records for a small independent company.
Q 08Which Nashville publisher signed Hank Williams as a songwriter in 1946 and went on to produce his records?
Fred Rose
Fred Rose first wanted Williams only as a writer, to supply songs for the singer Molly O'Day; he then found him a record deal and edited his songs for the rest of his career.
Q 09Which crooner's 1951 cover of Hank Williams's 'Cold, Cold Heart' topped the pop charts?
Tony Bennett
Tony Bennett's hit carried a country song to pop listeners Williams could not reach himself, and other pop singers were soon rushing to record his work.
Q 10Which English actor played Hank Williams in the biopic "I Saw the Light"?
Tom Hiddleston
Tom Hiddleston did his own singing in the film, after working with the country songwriter Rodney Crowell to master Williams's style.
Q 11Who starred as Hank Williams in the 1964 biopic "Your Cheatin' Heart"?
George Hamilton
George Hamilton did not sing a note of it: he mimed every song to another singer's voice.
Q 12Which song about a wooden Indian statue was Williams's posthumous number one for 14 weeks?
Kaw-Liga
It was the A-side to "Your Cheatin' Heart" and, unusually for a Williams record, opens in a minor key and features a drummer.
Q 13Which radio show did Hank Williams join in 1948, two years after the Opry first turned him down?
Louisiana Hayride
Louisiana Hayride took him back in 1952 after the Opry fired him, and two years later the same Shreveport show booked a young Elvis Presley, another Opry reject.
Q 21Which singer, born five days after Hank Williams's death, went to court to prove she was his daughter?
Jett Williams
Jett Williams was adopted as a child and learned who her father was only as an adult; a state supreme court later ruled her an equal heir to his estate.
Q 22Which spinal condition is blamed for the back pain that dogged Hank Williams all his life?
Spina bifida occulta
Spina bifida occulta, a defect he was in all likelihood born with, went untreated; a fall on a hunting trip in 1951 made it worse, and surgery that December did not cure it.
Q 23What was Hank Williams's first hit, a 1947 comic number about a man banished to the doghouse?
Move It On Over
Q 14Why was Hank Williams dismissed from the Grand Ole Opry in August 1952?
Habitual drunkenness and missed shows
Habitual drunkenness and missed shows got him fired about three years after his debut made him the Opry's leading star, and he died without being taken back.
Q 15What was the last single released in Hank Williams's lifetime?
I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive
I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive was his current single when he died and reached number one soon afterwards, a title that could hardly have been more ironic.
Q 16Which street musician gave the young Hank Williams the only musical training he ever acknowledged?
Rufus "Tee-Tot" Payne
Rufus "Tee-Tot" Payne, a Black street singer he trailed around as a boy, taught him guitar, and the blues feel of Williams's songs is usually traced to him.
Q 17Under what pseudonym did Hank Williams record moralising recitations so that jukebox customers would not get a sermon?
Luke the Drifter
Luke the Drifter fooled nobody: the label never seriously tried to hide who he was, and Williams often performed the recitations on stage himself.
Q 18Which woman did Hank Williams marry at a gas station in December 1944?
Audrey Sheppard
Audrey Sheppard's divorce had come through only ten days earlier, and the venue was no whim: the justice of the peace who married them owned the gas station.
Q 19What nickname did Hank Williams give his son Randall, later famous as Hank Williams Jr.?
Bocephus
Bocephus was the name of the ventriloquist's dummy used by the Opry comedian Rod Brasfield, and the nickname stuck to the boy for life.
Q 20Whom did Hank Williams marry in October 1952, having met her at the Opry when she was dating Faron Young?
Billie Jean Jones
Billie Jean Jones, the 19-year-old daughter of a police officer, married him in three ceremonies, at least two of them on stage before paying crowds.
Move It On Over climbed into the country top five, the first real hit of his career, and earned him a place on a far bigger radio show the following year.
Q 24For which fellow Opry star is Hank Williams said to have written 'Hey, Good Lookin'' before keeping it himself?
Jimmy Dickens
Jimmy Dickens said Williams dashed it off in about twenty minutes while they were touring together, then recorded it himself a week later, joking that it was too good to give away.
Q 25Which patent medicine sponsored the 1951 caravan tour on which Hank Williams shared the bill with Bob Hope?
Hadacol
Hadacol was sold as a vitamin tonic, but its real draw was that it was 12 percent alcohol; the star-packed caravan is remembered as the last of the great medicine shows.
Q 26On which programme did Hank Williams make his first television appearance, in November 1951?
The Perry Como Show
The Perry Como Show had him sing 'Hey, Good Lookin''; a week later the host opened in a cowboy hat, singing the same song with an apology to Williams.
Q 27Which country legend told the young Hank Williams he had a million-dollar gift but 'a ten-cent brain'?
Roy Acuff
Roy Acuff was the idol Williams had copied as a young singer; the scolding did not end the friendship, and Acuff sang 'I Saw the Light' at his funeral.
Q 28Which Hank Williams hit borrowed the melody of the older song "Grand Texas"?
Jambalaya (On the Bayou)
Jambalaya (On the Bayou) kept only the tune of the Cajun standard; with new English words it became one of the best-selling records of 1952.
Q 29By which nickname is Hank Williams widely known?
The Hillbilly Shakespeare
The Hillbilly Shakespeare earned the name for lyrics that said the deepest things in the plainest words; Ken Burns used it as an episode title in his Country Music series.
Q 30Who gave Hank Williams the title "I Saw the Light" with a remark about an airport beacon?
His mother
His mother, Lilly, was driving the band home to Montgomery in January 1947 and woke her sleeping son to say they were nearly there: 'I just saw the light.'