Hank Williams Jr. had been living in Alabama for about a year at the time of his accident up in Montana so I was hanging out in the Muscle Shoals area. I was living with my brother-in-law (Will Roberts) and a good friend (Dale Jackson) in a small cabin on the Tennessee River; the winter before had been one of the coldest places on earth. We had one fireplace for heat, but without a flue in the chimney, all of the heat seemed to go straight up and out.

We had to shower in almost frozen water because there was no water heater. We survived on a diet of bacon and Dr. Peppers, those were the strongest Dr. Peppers I have ever drunk, and they must have used some kind of super carbonated water. It was a winter I will never forget. We even wrote a song about how cold and heartless that old river seemed to be in the winter time, it seemed like your life was in danger if you got anywhere close to that river, it was very unforgiving.

During the summer of that same year Hank's band had done a few sessions of our own at the "Music Mill" recording studios in Muscle Shoals under the name of "Star Country String Band". The band at that time was (Junior Lowe - Lead guitar / Ronnie Oldham - Piano / Larry Roberson - Drums / Ron Knuth - Fiddle / David Zettner - Steel guitar / myself on bass guitar).

We had recorded a Johnny and Jack song called Ashes of Love, (Johnny and Jack were a country duet with hits starting back in the 1950's, Jack Anglin had been killed in a car wreck on the way to Patsy Cline's funeral, Johnny Wright was and still is married to female country singing legend "Kitty Wells") and we also recorded a few original songs by a good friend of ours named Atwood Allen. Atwood had worked with people like Bob Dylan and had many of his songs recorded by some very successful artists.   Read on...