I dedicate my song today to my Facebook contact, Jean Pollard from Morley in West Yorkshire. Thank you for being my Facebook friend, Jean. Have a nice day. Bill x
My song today is ‘Cold, Cold Heart’. This blues ballad was sung and recorded by Hank Williams. It is in the classic honky-tonk style. It was also an entry in the ‘Great American Songbook: Hank Williams’ version.
‘The Great American Songbook’, also known as ‘American Standards’, is the canon of the most important and influential American popular songs and jazz standards from the early 20th century. Although several collections of music have been published under the title, it does not refer to any actual book or a specific list of songs, but to a loosely defined set including the most popular and enduring songs from the 1920s to the 1950s that were created for Broadway theatre, musical theatre, and Hollywood musical films. They have been recorded and performed by a large number and a wide range of singers, instrumental bands, and jazz musicians. The Great American Songbook comprises standards by George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Johnny, and Richard Rogers, among others. Although the songs have never gone out of style among traditional and jazz singers and musicians, a renewed popular interest in the Great American Songbook beginning in the 1970s has led a growing number of rock and pop singers to take an interest and issue recordings of them.
Hank Williams adapted the melody for the song from T. Texas Tyler’s 1945 recording of ‘You'll Still Be in My Heart,’ which was written by Ted West in 1943. Despite the evidence pointing to the lyrics being written by Paul Gilley, in the Williams episode of ‘American Masters’, country music historian Colin Escott states that Williams was moved to write the song after visiting his wife Audrey in the hospital, who was suffering from an infection brought on by an abortion she had carried out at their home unbeknownst to Hank. Escott also speculates that Audrey, who carried on extramarital affairs as Hank also did on the road, may have suspected the baby was not her husband's. Florida bandleader Pappy Neil McCormick claims to have witnessed the encounter:
According to McCormick, Hank went to the hospital and bent down to kiss Audrey, but she wouldn't let him. “You, sorry son of a bitch,” she is supposed to have said, “it was you that caused me to suffer like this.” Hank went home and told the children's governess, Miss Ragland, that Audrey had a 'cold, cold heart,' and then, as so often in the past, realised the bitterness in his heart held commercial promise.
The first draft of the song is dated November 23, 1950, and was recorded with an unknown band on May 5, 1951. Like his earlier masterpiece ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’, it was released as the B-SIDE (MGM-10904B) to ‘Dear John’ (MGM-10904A), since it was an unwritten rule in the country music industry that the faster numbers sold best. ‘Dear John peaked at Number 8 after only a brief four-week run on Billboard magazine's country music charts, but ‘Cold, Cold Heart’ proved to be a favourite of disc jockeys and jukebox listeners, whose enthusiasm for the song catapulted it to Number 1 on the country music charts.
The song would also become a pop hit for Tony Bennett, paving the way for country songs to make inroads into the lucrative pop market.
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I only recently came across this song again after having heard it originally when I lived in Canada for a couple of years and became a lifelong follower of country and western songs. The title of this song suggests a degree of deliberateness caused in the hurting of another following a romantic relationship that had once existed between the couple.
I was brought up always believing that if one gave one’s heart to another, it stayed with them until it became colder with an absence of affection. My mother often told me, “Billy while your heart stays warm and compassionate it will always beat inside you, and it will only stop living when it gets ice cold.” I realised in later years that this was mum’s way of telling me that life is eternal for the warm-hearted and compassionate among us.
Of the many bad or dubious things, I have done in my life, I have never inflicted hurt upon any girl or woman with whom I was romantically involved with; intentionally. Although I fell in love between the ages of 16 and 26 years with the regularity of a dog getting acquainted with every passing a lamppost, I hadn’t the slightest intention of ever having a serious relationship with the female concerned. I never lied to any of them about my intention to remain a bachelor until my late twenties, yet I was always willing to profit from the physical benefits of any relationship I was in whenever the female was as free-spirited as I was.
The trouble was, you see, I loved the idea of ‘falling in love’ but refrained and instantly withdrew from the inevitable consequences of ‘being in love’ once the prospect popped its head above the parapet. I had always planned to travel at the age of 21 years of age when I came into a bit of money that I’d been awarded from a traffic accident I incurred at the age of 11 years when a wagon ran over me and nearly killed me. Canada was the country I wanted to travel around, as well as seeing parts of the United States of America, and however much I loved having a beautiful looking girl on my arm or a stunning young woman in my bed, I had no intention of any romance coming between me and the dream I’d held since boyhood. I was determined to see and experience as much of life as I could before donning myself with the domesticity of married life and raising a family of my own.
I can honestly say that I treated every young woman I ever courted briefly with the utmost of courtesy and respect. I never took advantage of any of them to the best of my recollection, and I never deceived them to into thinking I was a marriageable prospect in order to gain my wicked way. If we ever became ‘the closest of friends’, it was because we each were happy with that type of emotionally non-committal relationship. I genuinely told myself this at the time; although in retrospect, perhaps this is rarely the case. I now hold the view, that however little each party in the courtship considers themselves to be emotionally uncommitted in the beginning, there comes a point in the relationship when one of the two people concerned begins to get more serious and starts to become more emotionally involved. Without knowing it, they may even find themselves moving the emotional goalposts, in order to justify the goals scored during the match.
In my late teens, I loved to sing and dance, and having fun alongside any young woman who also wanted the same as I did out of their life, was the only long-term goal I wanted from my romantic forays in the dancehalls of the fifties and the night time scene of the more liberating sixties.
It would not be until after I joined the Probation Service in my thirties that I came across too many broken hearts; too many people for whom love had first lifted them to cloud nine before bringing the person crashing back down to earth with the hardest of landings.
While everyone responds differently to similar situations, there is a certain degree of commonality displayed by people who have been bitterly let down, betrayed, dumped unceremoniously or who have been cheated on by the one person they loved and gave their heart to. They brought more to the marriage altar than the hen’s contribution brings to the breakfast table. Their commitment was as different as the contribution which both hen and pig make to the breakfast table; the hen is partially committed, but as for the bacon contributor goes, the pig remains totally committed!
The most common response is to feel angry with the person who initially let you down and broke your heart. The expression of one’s anger in this situation is both natural and can be even productively healthy. It can, however, also be the most destructive of emotions when directed in an unhealthy direction.
I have met people who told me that it was only their hatred of and anger with another which kept them going from day to day, whereas others experiencing similar situations have found themselves so consumed by hatred and the thoughts of revenge, that they were simply unable to move one step forward with their life without taking three steps backward. I have seen people quickly enter another marriage or a serious relationship on the rebound, and break up as quickly, before immediately entering another relationship that was also doomed to fail. They did not realise that until they could mentally and emotionally reconcile their initial break up, that they would carry their internal failures from their past relationship into their new relationship, and until they came to terms with the initial breakup that all future relationships were destined to fail.
Keeping one’s anger inside oneself is always a mistake. If possible, it is better to be rid of anger through any therapeutic or healthy method available to you. The best and safest way of getting one’s anger out is through talking and talking with trusted others about how you feel. If, however, you don’t find it easy to talk or express your angry feelings to others (and take no other course of therapeutic action) you will lose complete control of your situation. Angry people who cannot talk, often engage in physically energetic sport like rugby, football, boxing, tennis, running, etc in order to dissipate their anger levels.
If you will not/cannot do what a healthy mind and body need to do to remove your unhealthy anger levels from your body, your mind and body will do it for you against your wishes. Your unconscious mind and body will find its own way of expressing your anger for you. Anger is like a battery that leaks acid right out of a broken heart that cannot heal its break. Whereas the acid initially represented the battery’s life force, in its destructive wake, instead of providing the body with the correct spark it needs, it corrodes everything it touches.
I cannot count the number of women and men who remain haunted for years and years after a hurtful relationship break up. These are often the men and women who compensate their sadness in the bottle and stay up every night into the early morning hours listening to ‘their favourite songs’ and surviving on bitter regrets, a mountain of caffeine, copious cigarettes, and a cold, cold, heart. I have known people who were dumped and sought their revenge by ‘pretending to be happier than they could ever be’ with the new partner in their life. These are the people who laugh out the loudest in a company of friends to make their ex feel uncomfortable about ‘their newfound happiness’, while inwardly they cry over ‘what might have been’ or ‘what is’.
I once remember comforting a mate whose wife had left him for another man. He was literally heartbroken and utterly surprised as he hadn’t seen their separation and his wife’s sudden desertion coming down the tracks at him. He had always thought their relationship to have been a solid one and he’d never once cheated on her, though he’d had plenty of opportunities to have done so, had he chosen. The man’s wife subsequently divorced him, and because they shared an overlapping circle of friends with whom each continued to socialise, they occasionally found themselves in each other’s social company at future events, like the marriages and birthday parties of mutual friends.
Initially, my friend seemed to accept that the separation between himself and his wife was for the best in the long term, and although he tried to be happy for her having found someone else to love, he once told me, “Bill, I try to be happy that she is now happier than she was with me, but what I cannot seem to get past, what I can never forgive her for, is her ease of getting on with her life. She is too cold and has never once shed a tear of regret or expressed a feeling of remorse for the wrong she did me”.
My best advice I can ever give to anyone whose heart has been broken and has never mended is “Do not abandon all future desire to be happy”. Do not destroy any future hope of romance by immediately dousing the flames of passion whom another ignites in you by showing them a cold heart. Never stop dreaming or stop believing that dreams can come through, whatever your age.
While I have loved more than once in my life, the best love of my life has been Sheila, who is also my last love. We met at a time in life when I wasn’t thinking of ever finding love again. Indeed, I can honestly say that I wasn’t looking for it. Sheila was 14 years younger than me (and looking another 14 years younger than her actual age). She was far more beautiful than any other woman I have ever known or should reasonably expect as a 68-years-old man. We met in Haworth in December 2010 and were married on my 70th birthday in December 2012. I have never been happier in my life or have felt so loved by wife, family, and friends.
I have known all manner of hearts in my life to press but have never been given one so pure, so warm and so loving as the heart of my beautiful wife, Sheila. I love you, lass x
Love and peace Bill xxx
My song today is ‘Cold, Cold Heart’. This blues ballad was sung and recorded by Hank Williams. It is in the classic honky-tonk style. It was also an entry in the ‘Great American Songbook: Hank Williams’ version.
‘The Great American Songbook’, also known as ‘American Standards’, is the canon of the most important and influential American popular songs and jazz standards from the early 20th century. Although several collections of music have been published under the title, it does not refer to any actual book or a specific list of songs, but to a loosely defined set including the most popular and enduring songs from the 1920s to the 1950s that were created for Broadway theatre, musical theatre, and Hollywood musical films. They have been recorded and performed by a large number and a wide range of singers, instrumental bands, and jazz musicians. The Great American Songbook comprises standards by George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Johnny, and Richard Rogers, among others. Although the songs have never gone out of style among traditional and jazz singers and musicians, a renewed popular interest in the Great American Songbook beginning in the 1970s has led a growing number of rock and pop singers to take an interest and issue recordings of them.
Hank Williams adapted the melody for the song from T. Texas Tyler’s 1945 recording of ‘You'll Still Be in My Heart,’ which was written by Ted West in 1943. Despite the evidence pointing to the lyrics being written by Paul Gilley, in the Williams episode of ‘American Masters’, country music historian Colin Escott states that Williams was moved to write the song after visiting his wife Audrey in the hospital, who was suffering from an infection brought on by an abortion she had carried out at their home unbeknownst to Hank. Escott also speculates that Audrey, who carried on extramarital affairs as Hank also did on the road, may have suspected the baby was not her husband's. Florida bandleader Pappy Neil McCormick claims to have witnessed the encounter:
According to McCormick, Hank went to the hospital and bent down to kiss Audrey, but she wouldn't let him. “You, sorry son of a bitch,” she is supposed to have said, “it was you that caused me to suffer like this.” Hank went home and told the children's governess, Miss Ragland, that Audrey had a 'cold, cold heart,' and then, as so often in the past, realised the bitterness in his heart held commercial promise.
The first draft of the song is dated November 23, 1950, and was recorded with an unknown band on May 5, 1951. Like his earlier masterpiece ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’, it was released as the B-SIDE (MGM-10904B) to ‘Dear John’ (MGM-10904A), since it was an unwritten rule in the country music industry that the faster numbers sold best. ‘Dear John peaked at Number 8 after only a brief four-week run on Billboard magazine's country music charts, but ‘Cold, Cold Heart’ proved to be a favourite of disc jockeys and jukebox listeners, whose enthusiasm for the song catapulted it to Number 1 on the country music charts.
The song would also become a pop hit for Tony Bennett, paving the way for country songs to make inroads into the lucrative pop market.
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I only recently came across this song again after having heard it originally when I lived in Canada for a couple of years and became a lifelong follower of country and western songs. The title of this song suggests a degree of deliberateness caused in the hurting of another following a romantic relationship that had once existed between the couple.
I was brought up always believing that if one gave one’s heart to another, it stayed with them until it became colder with an absence of affection. My mother often told me, “Billy while your heart stays warm and compassionate it will always beat inside you, and it will only stop living when it gets ice cold.” I realised in later years that this was mum’s way of telling me that life is eternal for the warm-hearted and compassionate among us.
Of the many bad or dubious things, I have done in my life, I have never inflicted hurt upon any girl or woman with whom I was romantically involved with; intentionally. Although I fell in love between the ages of 16 and 26 years with the regularity of a dog getting acquainted with every passing a lamppost, I hadn’t the slightest intention of ever having a serious relationship with the female concerned. I never lied to any of them about my intention to remain a bachelor until my late twenties, yet I was always willing to profit from the physical benefits of any relationship I was in whenever the female was as free-spirited as I was.
The trouble was, you see, I loved the idea of ‘falling in love’ but refrained and instantly withdrew from the inevitable consequences of ‘being in love’ once the prospect popped its head above the parapet. I had always planned to travel at the age of 21 years of age when I came into a bit of money that I’d been awarded from a traffic accident I incurred at the age of 11 years when a wagon ran over me and nearly killed me. Canada was the country I wanted to travel around, as well as seeing parts of the United States of America, and however much I loved having a beautiful looking girl on my arm or a stunning young woman in my bed, I had no intention of any romance coming between me and the dream I’d held since boyhood. I was determined to see and experience as much of life as I could before donning myself with the domesticity of married life and raising a family of my own.
I can honestly say that I treated every young woman I ever courted briefly with the utmost of courtesy and respect. I never took advantage of any of them to the best of my recollection, and I never deceived them to into thinking I was a marriageable prospect in order to gain my wicked way. If we ever became ‘the closest of friends’, it was because we each were happy with that type of emotionally non-committal relationship. I genuinely told myself this at the time; although in retrospect, perhaps this is rarely the case. I now hold the view, that however little each party in the courtship considers themselves to be emotionally uncommitted in the beginning, there comes a point in the relationship when one of the two people concerned begins to get more serious and starts to become more emotionally involved. Without knowing it, they may even find themselves moving the emotional goalposts, in order to justify the goals scored during the match.
In my late teens, I loved to sing and dance, and having fun alongside any young woman who also wanted the same as I did out of their life, was the only long-term goal I wanted from my romantic forays in the dancehalls of the fifties and the night time scene of the more liberating sixties.
It would not be until after I joined the Probation Service in my thirties that I came across too many broken hearts; too many people for whom love had first lifted them to cloud nine before bringing the person crashing back down to earth with the hardest of landings.
While everyone responds differently to similar situations, there is a certain degree of commonality displayed by people who have been bitterly let down, betrayed, dumped unceremoniously or who have been cheated on by the one person they loved and gave their heart to. They brought more to the marriage altar than the hen’s contribution brings to the breakfast table. Their commitment was as different as the contribution which both hen and pig make to the breakfast table; the hen is partially committed, but as for the bacon contributor goes, the pig remains totally committed!
The most common response is to feel angry with the person who initially let you down and broke your heart. The expression of one’s anger in this situation is both natural and can be even productively healthy. It can, however, also be the most destructive of emotions when directed in an unhealthy direction.
I have met people who told me that it was only their hatred of and anger with another which kept them going from day to day, whereas others experiencing similar situations have found themselves so consumed by hatred and the thoughts of revenge, that they were simply unable to move one step forward with their life without taking three steps backward. I have seen people quickly enter another marriage or a serious relationship on the rebound, and break up as quickly, before immediately entering another relationship that was also doomed to fail. They did not realise that until they could mentally and emotionally reconcile their initial break up, that they would carry their internal failures from their past relationship into their new relationship, and until they came to terms with the initial breakup that all future relationships were destined to fail.
Keeping one’s anger inside oneself is always a mistake. If possible, it is better to be rid of anger through any therapeutic or healthy method available to you. The best and safest way of getting one’s anger out is through talking and talking with trusted others about how you feel. If, however, you don’t find it easy to talk or express your angry feelings to others (and take no other course of therapeutic action) you will lose complete control of your situation. Angry people who cannot talk, often engage in physically energetic sport like rugby, football, boxing, tennis, running, etc in order to dissipate their anger levels.
If you will not/cannot do what a healthy mind and body need to do to remove your unhealthy anger levels from your body, your mind and body will do it for you against your wishes. Your unconscious mind and body will find its own way of expressing your anger for you. Anger is like a battery that leaks acid right out of a broken heart that cannot heal its break. Whereas the acid initially represented the battery’s life force, in its destructive wake, instead of providing the body with the correct spark it needs, it corrodes everything it touches.
I cannot count the number of women and men who remain haunted for years and years after a hurtful relationship break up. These are often the men and women who compensate their sadness in the bottle and stay up every night into the early morning hours listening to ‘their favourite songs’ and surviving on bitter regrets, a mountain of caffeine, copious cigarettes, and a cold, cold, heart. I have known people who were dumped and sought their revenge by ‘pretending to be happier than they could ever be’ with the new partner in their life. These are the people who laugh out the loudest in a company of friends to make their ex feel uncomfortable about ‘their newfound happiness’, while inwardly they cry over ‘what might have been’ or ‘what is’.
I once remember comforting a mate whose wife had left him for another man. He was literally heartbroken and utterly surprised as he hadn’t seen their separation and his wife’s sudden desertion coming down the tracks at him. He had always thought their relationship to have been a solid one and he’d never once cheated on her, though he’d had plenty of opportunities to have done so, had he chosen. The man’s wife subsequently divorced him, and because they shared an overlapping circle of friends with whom each continued to socialise, they occasionally found themselves in each other’s social company at future events, like the marriages and birthday parties of mutual friends.
Initially, my friend seemed to accept that the separation between himself and his wife was for the best in the long term, and although he tried to be happy for her having found someone else to love, he once told me, “Bill, I try to be happy that she is now happier than she was with me, but what I cannot seem to get past, what I can never forgive her for, is her ease of getting on with her life. She is too cold and has never once shed a tear of regret or expressed a feeling of remorse for the wrong she did me”.
My best advice I can ever give to anyone whose heart has been broken and has never mended is “Do not abandon all future desire to be happy”. Do not destroy any future hope of romance by immediately dousing the flames of passion whom another ignites in you by showing them a cold heart. Never stop dreaming or stop believing that dreams can come through, whatever your age.
While I have loved more than once in my life, the best love of my life has been Sheila, who is also my last love. We met at a time in life when I wasn’t thinking of ever finding love again. Indeed, I can honestly say that I wasn’t looking for it. Sheila was 14 years younger than me (and looking another 14 years younger than her actual age). She was far more beautiful than any other woman I have ever known or should reasonably expect as a 68-years-old man. We met in Haworth in December 2010 and were married on my 70th birthday in December 2012. I have never been happier in my life or have felt so loved by wife, family, and friends.
I have known all manner of hearts in my life to press but have never been given one so pure, so warm and so loving as the heart of my beautiful wife, Sheila. I love you, lass x
Love and peace Bill xxx
