On New Year’s Eve, 1952, Hank Williams was scheduled to appear for a show at the Municipal Auditorium in Charleston, West Virginia. Due to a massive snowstorm that was blanketing Appalachia at the time, he was unable to fly from Nashville, so he hired a local college student to drive him to his next gig, in Canton, Ohio, on January 1, 1953.
The two arrived in Knoxville and checked into the Andrew Johnson Hotel, where a doctor was summoned for the country star, who had been taking pain killers for some serious back pain and drinking as the two made their way across an icy Tennessee.
The doctor gave Williams two shots of vitamin B12 and a quarter grain of morphine, for his pain.
The two men checked out of the hotel that night and started on their way to Canton, stopping around midnight at the Burger Bar in Bristol, Virginia, for a bite to eat. Hank declined any food, those being the last words he ever spoke.
They continued on into West Virginia, stopping at Oak Hill for gas. It was there that Hank Williams was discovered to have died somewhere on the road between Bristol and that gas station.
His funeral was held on January 4, 1953, at the Montgomery Auditorium in Montgomery, Alabama, with his silver casket placed on the stage, which was covered with flowers. It’s estimated that between 15,000 and 20,000 people walked by his casket to pay their respects.
The last single he released before he died was “I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive.”
