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There was a time—and these were great and glorious days—when country music teemed with Hanks.  Consider the following dialogue from Charles Portis’ 1966 novel Norwood:

    “I’m trying to get into show business myself.  Hillbilly music.  You probably don’t like it.”
    “On the contrary, I do.  Some of it.  Hank what’s his name--?”
    “Hank Williams?”
    “No.”
    “Hank Thompson?”
   
    “No.”
    “Hank Locklin?”
    “No.”
    “Hank Snow?”

Other Hanks would follow: guitarist Garland and songwriter Cochran and—later—descended from the honky-tonk’s preeminent and most essential Hank (Williams), Hanks Jr. and III.  Donning a hat and boots and moving, himself, to the honky-tonks, ‘70s rocker Leon Russell would take up the alias Hank Wilson, branding himself whenever he bore the new name as unmistakably country.

Occupying a unique space in this pantheon of Hanks was a jazz-fueled stringband swinger—a son of Birmingham and a slick bandleader, creator of what one song title dubbed “Hillbilly Be-Bop” and another called “Cowboy Swing.”  His name, this Hank, was Penny.

He was born Herbert Clayton Penny and re-christened at the start of his career, playing with “Happy” Hal Burns and the Tune Wranglers over Birmingham radio station WAPI.  “I worked hard trying to please Hal,” Penny later recalled, “trying to please the audience and trying to please myself.  I worked on the radio show for six months before Hal ever called my name.  And finally he started calling me ‘Hanky-dank.’”  From there it was whittled to Hank, and the hero of our story was born.

Though his career would ultimately take him across the country—besides Birmingham, there were stints in New Orleans, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, and more—Hank Penny made his name first as the leading southeastern apostle of the Texas swing style.  The sound, which would come to be known more generally as “Western Swing” (a label Penny resisted), was born in the 1930s, most notably through the work of two major groups, Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys, and Milton Brown’s Musical Brownies (Wills’ and Brownie’s careers were both launched during early stints with the seminal radio act, the Light Crust Dough Boys).  The music was a rich amalgam of seemingly disparate sources, a melting pot of American sound that merged Big-Band-inspired jazz with so-called “hillbilly” repertoires and instrumentation, incorporating also elements of polka, Mexican border music, and blues.  A product first and foremost of the Texas dance-hall, it was lively and loud, pioneering the use of amplified electric instruments and encouraging a culture of instrumental, improvisational virtuosity.  It defied the stereotypes of “hillbilly” music (as country was known in that era), offering instead a slick and modern, uptown sound that moved beyond the barroom shuffle of, say, your typical country Hank.

Among fans of the music, Hank Penny is remembered as one of the greats, even if he never reached the success of Wills or Brown or of Spade Cooley, the self-proclaimed “King of Western Swing,” with whom Penny at times performed.  Penny did score a handful of hits—“Steel Guitar Stomp,” “Let Me Ride In Your Little Red Wagon,” “Bloodshot Eyes,” “Get Yourself a Redhead”—and was among the most consistent country swingers of the ‘40s and ‘50s.  He played with many of the era’s biggest stars and finest musicians, fostering the early careers of a few notables, and was one of the first and most successful performers to bring “Western Swing” out of its native West.  He was strong-willed and It defied the stereotypes of “hillbilly” music (as country was known in that era), offering instead a slick and modern, uptown sound that moved beyond the barroom shuffle of, say, your typical country Hank.stuck to his guns in the face of contrary producers and bosses; he was a sharp-witted songwriter and a skilled comedian; he was handsome and hip and left behind a string of wives; and on his records, his most lasting testament, he was sheer, swinging fun.


Eugene and William Penny, Hank’s grandfather and great uncle respectively, had migrated south from New York to Alabama in the 1870s.  “The story goes that they followed the railroad tracks down to Alabama,” says actress Sydney Penny, Hank’s daughter.  “This could be true or metaphorical since in the 1870s the new spur to southern Alabama offered employment opportunity.”  The two brothers married sisters, Annie and Elizabeth Pitts; Eugene and Annie had four children; the eldest, William Columbus Penny, grew to marry Inez Azalea (pronounced “Az-a-lee”) Gregory; and this union produced in turn ten children.  The youngest of these was Herbert Clayton who in time would be Hank.  He was born in Ensley in September 1918.

Hank’s father worked in the coal mines but, in the months before the boy’s birth, fell victim to a near-fatal mining explosion.  Three days after the explosion William Penny was rescued with a piece of slate embedded in his head (it would never come out), and he never performed physical labor again.  Instead, he turned inward, developing a fascination with the human mind: he studied poetry and hypnotism, and dabbled as an inventor.  (One invention aimed to increase productivity on a poultry farm: hens would be separated into separate roosts, each laying her eggs behind closed doors.  When an egg emerged, the private door swung open, alerting the farmer to which hens were doing their job.)  William Penny possessed also a dark and fiery religious zeal which frightened the young Herbert, who was nonetheless drawn to what he considered his father’s genius.  According to Sydney Penny, William “would often quiz young Hank on what he had in his pockets, to test his memory.  For the rest of his life, Hank was always able to give a complete inventory of what he carried on his person.” 

After his accident, William had also taken up the guitar, helping spark for his son an early interest in music.  As he reached his teens, Herbert gained his first experience as a comedian, performing comedy with his brother-in-law’s band, the Straener Brothers.  Penny’s penchant for the comedy routine remained a constant throughout his career, and he was long in demand as an emcee; moreover, his characteristic sense of humor would be embedded in his many recordings (consider, for example, his “Bloodshot Eyes” or “Taxes, Taxes”).  

In the early 1930s, the teenaged Penny was hanging around Birmingham radio stations, learning from the local musicians and angling for a chance to get on the air.  When he decided to audition for a spot with Happy Hal Burns, his mother pitched in to buy him an Epiphone guitar from E.E. Forbes’ music store.  Late in life Penny composed a memoir, unpublished to date, in which he explained his first audition: “I took my new ‘ax,’” he wrote, “and headed to the WAPI studios” on First Avenue North. 

I sat nervously through the broadcast.  Afterwards I sauntered over to where “Happy” Hal was busy putting his guitar away.  I ventured a very weak 'Hello.'  Hal looked over at me and his sparkling personality completely overwhelmed me.  I managed to say, "You don’t need a guitar player, do you?"
   
He smiled and said, "No, but I could use a good banjo player.  Can you play banjo?"

Penny couldn’t, so he lied.  Yes, he said, sure; he played the banjo.  Burns told him to come back the next day, with his banjo, and audition.
   
“Back to the music store I went,” Penny recalled, “and I traded them my beautiful, sharp-looking Epiphone guitar that I had bought only hours earlier for a … a… banjo??!  Yes, a banjo!”  He would have to fake his way through the audition.  The next day he tuned the instrument like the first four strings of a guitar and strummed his way effectively enough through a couple of numbers to get the job.  He was on the air.

Never mind that he didn’t really know how to play the banjo.  Right away Penny took up lessons with Bill Haid, a local, and inventive, tenor banjo player.  “On a show,” Penny later remembered of Haid, “he would play a slow feature number and [on] the second chorus he would use a fiddle bow to play the banjo with, instead of a pick.”  The bowed banjo sounded like an organ, Penny remembered, “and it was beautiful.”

The gig with the Tune Wranglers gave Penny the opportunity to do some more comedy, and to soak in the professionalism and showmanship of his mentor, Happy Hal.  For decades, Hal Burns reigned as the cowboy-suited emcee of Birmingham radio and, later, television.  He had starred in Hollywood cowboy pictures at the start of the 30s; a mentor to local musicians, he helped jumpstart the careers of players like Penny, and was known well beyond Alabama as a songwriter, showman, and country music promoter.  For all of his life, Penny considered Burns a kind of father figure.  “Whatever I may be, or hope to be, in show business,” he would recall, “I owe to ‘Happy’ Hal Burns.  I think of the many nights that I have stood on the stage with Hal.  He was my straight man.  Behind his hand or during laughter he would give me stage direction: ‘Don’t move.  Stand still.  Hold it!  Let ‘em laugh!’  He had an uncanny control over the audience.  And he could manipulate them!”
   
Penny joined the Tune Wranglers at the heart of the Depression, and work was scarce.  When he wasn’t playing his gig with Burns, he continued studying under other local musicians and making the “Whatever I may be, or hope to be, in show business,” he would recall, “I owe to ‘Happy’ Hal Burns.  rounds at all the radio stations.  “Learning to play a guitar,” he wrote in his memoir, “was a good investment for me at that time….  Most every day was just like the last day.  Just hang out at one of the radio stations.  Maybe there would be a cancellation and we would get to do a show.  There would be no money, but at least we would have the opportunity to hone our skills.”  Penny cited local musicians Earl Drake, Ted Brooks, and Julian Atkins as early models, as well as a fiddler named Arner Hermanson.  “That was his name,” Penny adds of Hermanson, “when he played first violin for the Birmingham Civic Symphony; but when he worked with the various country groups his name would be ‘Gap’ Johnson.  Boy, how I loved sitting with him and playing all of the old hornpipes, schottisches and polkas!  This we did just for fun.  It was a tremendous learning process for me.”
   
In 1936 Penny relocated, briefly, to New Orleans, where his music underwent a significant transformation: it was here that he fell for the Texas sound, which he would bring, only a few months later, back to Birmingham and on which, elsewhere, he would build his reputation.  By the time his New Orleans stay was up, he had evolved from apprentice to bandleader, and from his very beginnings in that role, he exhibited what would be a lifelong tendency to seek out and surround himself with the strongest possible talent. 
   
Penny’s first recruit—and, off-and-on, a longtime collaborator—was steel guitar player Noel Boggs, whose prowess on that instrument would soon become legendary.  Driving from Birmingham to New Orleans Penny tuned into some great fiddling over New Orleans station WWL; he drove to the station and met the fiddler, Sheldon Bennett, a Port Arthur, Texas, musician who Penny convinced to move to Birmingham.  Through Bennett Penny met Louis Dumont, a tenor banjo player: “Now,” Penny wrote in his memoir, “my plan started falling into place.”  Penny went back to Birmingham, “with great plans swirling in my imagination”; the bandmates—Boggs, Bennett, and Dumont—were to meet him there a few weeks later.  Mentor and friend Hal Burns lent his enthusiasm to the project, predicting great success.
  
It is worth quoting Penny’s memoir at some length:

Here, I had better explain my thinking on having this style group on the air in Alabama.  In Oklahoma there were the Hi-Fliers in Oklahoma City; Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, in Tulsa.  Louisiana had The Shelton Brothers, The Sunshine Boys and Jimmie Davis and his Group.  Texas had a good group in most any good-sized town.  There were Bill Boyd and his Cowboy Ramblers, The Lightcrust Doughboys, W. Lee O’Daniel and his Hillbilly Boys, Milton Brown and his Brownies, The Sons of the West, The Modern Mountaineers, just to name a few.


All these bands played virtually the same style of music.  It was N-O-T Country. It was definitely N-O-T Hillbilly.  In those days, a group like the aforementioned was referred to as a “Texas Fiddle Band”.  Sometimes the record company would bill this type band as a “Hot String Band”.  This was to give this style of music a distinction.  These groups performed a great deal like the “Pop” bands of the day, ie: there would be an introduction by the band, then the singer would come in and sing the melody.  After the singer, one of the musicians would “take off”: improvise on the melody.  You would probably never hear the melody again until the singer came back in and reprised the song.

I never started out to form this kind of band, but after hearing The Brownies, The Playboys and The Lightcrust Doughboys, the die was cast.  I found complete musical satisfaction with this kind of presentation.  I could not see anything but repetition in playing the melody over and over.  What would be the point in having great musicians like Bob Dunn, Cecil Brower, Cliff Bruner and their ilk, if you were just going to play the melody?  Ludicrous!   I am proud to say any band that I fronted always had its share of the finest musicians available.  What the hell?  If I had wanted the melody hacked to death and overworked, I could have taught a chimpanzee to do the job!

I had no desire to play Hillbilly music.  I wanted my group to swing.  I wanted good musicians, and I wanted them to play to the full extent of their ability.  I always told my musicians that I would be the weakest musician in our unit.  I reminded them that I would be the really commercial performer and they should complement that with being as good as they possibly could be.


Penny’s thoughts on music labels are instructive here.  He goes on to describe his dissatisfaction with the “Western Swing” term: “Somewhere along the line someone described these kinds of groups as ‘Western Swing.’  What a misnomer!  We, who played that kind of music, never heard of the phrase ‘Western Swing’ in those days.”  “The phrase,” he wrote, “belongs soley to Spade Cooley,” who coined the term in naming himself “King of Western Swing.”  As far as Penny and others were concerned the label fit Cooley’s sound perfectly, but the term defined only Cooley’s thing.  A broader, and better, term was the “Texas fiddle band.” 

“No matter how hard we tried to prove our point,” Penny’s memoir complains, “some writer, maybe thirty years old, would do a story and hang the phrase ‘Western Swing’ anywhere they pleased. "...I don’t think anyone in the Southeast ever knew what we were trying to do.”  ‘Hey, they’re playing fiddles and guitars, ain’t they?  Hell, man, that’s Western Swing!’  Bullshit.  They would write these things never caring if he or she was warping musical history a bit.  So, a little warp there and the first thing you know, all the facts are gone and we are living a fantasy.”  The music of Penny and his compatriots owed more to the jazz and pop traditions of the day; Penny’s greatest instrumental influence, after all, was jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.  Sydney Penny says of her father: “I remember him, even as an older man, listening to [Reinhardt’s] music to learn new chords, new variations.”
   
Whatever it was called, the music had been the unique property of the Western states, and Penny, having caught its fever, sought to stake a claim for it back East.  “I thought we would do fine in Birmingham because we were different,” he wrote, but confesses: “How wrong I was!  Alabama was and is, strictly Grand Ol’ Opry territory.  I don’t think anyone in the Southeast ever knew what we were trying to do.”
   
Penny and his band—he named them the Radio Cowboys—played hard but struggled to pay the bills.  Boggs had opted for a high-paying gig in Oklahoma City (he and Penny would reunite in later contexts), and Penny enlisted in his place Sammy Forsmark, who played steel in a Hawaiian-style group over WAPI.  A local singer and guitarist, Julian Akins, added his bass to the group.  “Everything,” Penny recalled, “seemed to be coming together as I had hoped it would.”
   
Radio station WKBC was willing to give the Cowboys howevermuch airtime they wanted, and Penny managed, periodically, to bring some big out-of-town guests to the show.  “Once Tom Mix dropped by,” Penny says, remembering the iconic screen cowboy: “I was fascinated by the jingle of his spurs.”
   
Despite this activity, the Radio Cowboys struggled to build a large enough following to make a living, and found themselves playing a lunch-rush restaurant gig in exchange for a free meal apiece.  Hank received offers from other groups out West, but he was determined to make his own group a success.  Ultimately this would mean leaving Birmingham.  “If you just want to ‘live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to Man,’ then Birmingham is the place,” Penny wrote.  But “there was just no way to make a living there!” 
   
Birmingham and its music community had served as Penny’s training ground, but he seemed to have squeezed from the city all it had to offer him professionally, and his aspirations were larger.  He would build his career in other places, but not before leaving an impact on younger local performers.  Not long ago, Penny had sat admiringly at the feet of the more talented, older players; as he refined his own performance, he gained followers of his own.  Birmingham musician Hardrock Gunter, whose 1950s recordings would foreshadow the sound and ethos of rockabilly, was a diehard Penny disciple, emulating Hank’s comedy and stage manner as much as his music.  “I would walk like him,” Gunter recalled, “tried to talk like him, I listened to everything he did, I told the same stories he told, and did everything.”
   
After Birmingham, Penny’s career was nomadic and wide-ranging in its activities.  Leaving the Magic City, the Cowboys followed an opportunity at a Chattanooga radio station, where they could earn fifteen dollars a week apiece, a substantial pay raise from their Birmingham work.  From Chattanooga they relocated to Atlanta and a still more prestigious gig on station WSB’s “Crossroad Follies.”  They cut their first records.  By 1942 Penny was fronting a group called the Plantation Boys on the “Boone County Jamboree” at Cincinnati station WLW, working alongside country acts Grampa Jones, Merle Travis, and the Delmore Brothers, and even backing pop sensation Doris Day.  In Cincinnati he signed a contract with Syd Nathan of King Records, initiating a rocky relationship but a solid run of records.  In 1945, he moved to Hollywood, where he continued to record while also developing his comedy career; for Spade Cooley’s televised variety show he unveiled the persona of “that plain ol’ country boy” from Remlap, Alabama, a character his act would incorporate for many years.  He worked as a dee-jay, hosting his “Penny Serenade” radio show daily.  In 1946, he scored his first and second hits, “Steel Guitar Rag” and “Get Yourself a Redhead.”  He took bit parts in Western movies and, with a business partner, opened a couple of nightclubs, including the celebrated Palomino Club, which served up swinging hot music alongside black-eyed peas and cornbread.  In the 1950s he took up for several years in Las Vegas.  After some less-than-productive years in Nashville and Wichita, he retired to California where he died, of a heart attack, in 1992.

Today Penny is often celebrated for his refusal to yield to or compromise with his alleged superiors, an obstinance which may have cost him some career opportunities but may also have kept him his artistic integrity; whatever the prize, Penny would not play Faust.  Once the Grand Ole Opry offered Penny a spot—the most prestigious gig, in those days, in the field—but offered it with one provision: that Noel Boggs, keeping with the Opry’s acoustic policy, trade his electric steel for a dobro.  Penny turned the offer down, choosing instead to stick it out where he was, with Boggs’ steel intact.  On another occasion, Penny’s group worked as house band at the Venice Pier Ballroom in Santa Monica; his Ballroom boss, Foreman Phillips, frustrated by the band’s jazz-infused improv, put signs up in the group’s dressing room, demanding “WHERE’S THE MELODY?”  Finally Foreman insisted Penny fire three of his backing musicians—Boggs again, fiddler Harold Hensley, and guitarist Jimmy Wyble.  Instead, Penny offered his own resignation.  Penny clashed often, too, with King Records head Syd Nathan.  A blowout erupted between Nathan and Penny during the recording of the instrumental “Cowtown Boogie”; before release, Nathan re-titled the record, fittingly, “Penny Blows His Top.”   
   
Despite his reputation as a man with a temper, what comes through in the records is Penny’s smooth charisma and good humor.  One of Penny’s best-known songs was 1950’s “Bloodshot Eyes,” which protests to a wild-living lover gone woefully astray, “Don’t roll them bloodshot eyes at me.”  “Your eyes look like two cherries in a glass of buttermilk,” Penny complains, adding in another verse: “Your eyes look like a road-map, I’m scared to smell your breath / You’d better shut those peepers ‘fore you bleed yourself to death.”  Penny took the song to #4 on the country charts, the same spot occupied earlier by both “Steel Guitar Stomp” and “Get Yourself a Redhead”; that #4 slot would be his favorite, and highest, stop in the charts.  “Bloodshot Eyes” crossed over into R&B, proving a hit in the same year for jump blues legend Wynonie Harris, another artist on the King label.  (It would be covered in time by many others: Hardrock Gunter, still under his idol’s spell, cut a good version in 1958, and Pat Benetar would rock it out in 1991.)  On the original Penny is surrounded as usual by a crack team of musicians, and he presides over the proceedings with characteristic relish and cool.
   
Seldom heard today, Hank Penny’s music is worth a listening; worth, in fact, lots of listenings.  Years later, these records still can swing.

Notes: Excerpts from Hank Penny’s unpublished memoirs are available through the generosity of Sydney Penny and the Penny family.  Ms. Penny is currently preparing her father’s manuscript for publication and has recently launched a website, www.hankpenny.net.  Quotes from Ms. Penny are from her correspondence with the author, 2009.  Her contribution of resources and background were invaluable to this article.

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