Hank
Snow

Undeniably the most successful country music star to come out of Canada during the industry’s formative years, Clarence Eugene “Hank” Snow also emerged as one of the most distinctive stylists, one of the best songwriters, one of the most prolific recording artists, one of the finest guitarists, and one of the most masterful businessmen in the modern industry.

Through his career, he never turned his back on the classic Jimmie Rodgers style that first made him famous, but he has also experimented with Latin rhythms, jazz, blues, Hawaiian styles, recitations, the mambo, and gospel songs.

A Prolific Recording Artist

Snow made approximately 840 commercial recordings between l936 and l985 that make one of the largest discographies in the music business. They include folksongs of his Canadian boyhood, Rodgers-style songs, hobo and railroad songs, cowboy songs, pop standards, and some of the best efforts of Nashville’s songwriters. Snow continually delved back into his early repertoire to resurrect old songs for new audiences. Repertoire was a living thing to him, and his sense of tradition was as sharp and keen as any folksinger’s. His was a commercially valid catalog: From 1949 to 1980, eighty-five of his singles reached Billboard’s charts. Unsurprisingly, Snow was elected to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1978 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1979.

A Difficult Beginning

Hank Snow endured a slow, agonizing road to Nashville which began far above the northeast boundaries of Maine in the windswept village of Brooklyn, Nova Scotia. One of four children, his life became difficult when he was only eight, and his parents divorced. That event plunged him into a series of misadventures that resembled something out of a Dickens novel: He was sent to live with his paternal grandparents, but he routinely ran away and made his way back to his mother. When she remarried, Snow found himself dealing with a violent stepfather. “I was treated by him . . . like a dog,” Snow recalled. “I took many beatings from him and still carry scars across my body that were left by his ham-like hands.” To escape this abuse, the teenage Snow worked on a fishing trawler in the wild North Atlantic, where he entertained the crew by singing and playing the harmonica. At home, his mother let him listen to Victrola records – first by Vernon Dalhart, then by the new singer Jimmie Rodgers.

Snow began singing on CHNS in Halifax in 1933, and met and married a local Dutch Irish girl, Minnie Blanch Aalders. The young couple soon found a radio job sponsored by Crazy Water Crystals. Snow began billing himself Hank the Yodeling Ranger after learning that Jimmie Rodgers was made an honorary Texas Ranger.

In October 1936, Snow traveled to Montreal to make his first records for RCA imprint Canadian Bluebird.  “Lonesome Blue Yodel” and “Prisoned Cowboy” began a series of releases, including hits such as “Blue Velvet Band,” “Galveston Rose,” and “My Blue River Rose.” Snow made around ninety recordings for Canadian Bluebird between 1936 and l949, but only a handful were released in the United States.

After a couple of unproductive stays in Hollywood and West Virginia, Snow finally cracked the American market in l948. An expert rider, he often toured with a trick riding show featuring his horse Pawnee. He was a modest success in Dallas on the Big D Jamboree and it was on that show that Snow met Ernest Tubb, a fellow admirer of Rodgers. Tubb liked Snow’s work very much and began to advocate for him with the Grand Ole Opry. The Opry finally relented and invited Snow to join in 1950. He was introduced by Hank Williams.

Moving On to Better Times

For a time, Snow was unable to score a hit and it seemed his stay wouldn’t last long. Then, his first RCA Victor American release, “I’m Moving On,” a song Snow’s producer didn’t even want to record, rode the charts for forty-four weeks in 1950 and 1951. That smash was followed by two more #1s that were his career songs: “The Golden Rocket” (1950) and “Rhumba Boogie” (1951). For the next five years he averaged two or three Top Ten hits a year, including “I Don’t Hurt Anymore” (1954), “The Gold Rush Is Over” (1952), “A Fool Such as I” (1952), “Yellow Roses” (1955), and “Conscience, I’m Guilty” (1956). After “I’ve Been Everywhere” (1962) and “Ninety Miles an Hour (Down a Dead End Street)” (1963), he did not crack the Top Five again until 1974, when “Hello Love” topped the charts.

A Visionary Artist

In addition to recording distinctive hits, Snow became one of the first country singers to see the LP as the fundamental creative unit for recording artists and made some of the first concept albums. He also put his considerable guitar skills to use (his inspiration had been the Farr brothers from the Sons of the Pioneers) to do a series of duets with Chet Atkins.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Snow helped resist rock and pop’s influence on traditional country music. He traveled widely, including to Vietnam, and became a fixture on the Opry. In 1977, he recorded his 104th LP for RCA Victor, Still Moving On, fitting for an artist who brought a new depth to the concept of longevity. Hank Snow died in 1999.

– Charles Wolfe

– Adapted from the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum’s Encyclopedia of Country Music, published by Oxford University Press.