One of the things I was particularly impressed with in Ken Burns' PBS Country Music doc was the interview of Hank Williams friend E. Jimmy Key, the guy with the whole "death eating a cracker" quip. Key was instrumental in the documentary in explaining Williams' rise in the music world as well as shedding light on his deterioration near the end.
One thing not mentioned though is that it was Key's connections to politics that led him to become friends with Hank in the first place. Key, who was a member of Alabama governor Big Jim Folsom's campaign band the Strawberry Pickers, met Williams at Montgomery radio station WSFA through Folsom. Folsom, a gregarious towering 6'8" politician, had a habit of passing around a wood mop bucket as a means of collecting funds and emphasizing his efforts to "clean out the capitol." Apparently, Folsom cultivated an acquaintance with Williams, who, to all appearances, became something of a Folsom supporter. Williams in fact had sung with the Strawberry Pickers in 1946 at a campaign rally in Evergreen, Alabama, at which Keys' older brothers, also members of the Pickers, were present (E. Jimmy who used the E. to distinguish from a older brother Jim was still in the service at that point).
After Jimmy and Hank became fast friends, Hank occasionally got him to substitute for sick band members for his live local appearances and Jimmy tried to spend every Saturday night he was not campaigning for Folsom watching Hank and his band play at Smitty's night spot in Montgomery. After Folsom was elected, in 1948, the Strawberry Pickers and "Hank Williams and Gang" even headlined a local concert and square dance together at which Folsom made a show of cutting it up on the dance floor.
One take home from all of this was Big Jim Folsom's racial politics. No saint by any measure, Folsom at least sought to change apportionment in the highly segregated state in way that would have gradually given African Americans more power. Indeed, once elected governor, Folsom would surprise everyone with a Christmas 1949 radio address: “As long as Negroes are held down by deprivation and lack of opportunity, the other poor people will be held down alongside them,” he said. “Let’s start talking fellowship and brotherly love and doing-unto others and let’s do more than talk about it—let’s start living it."
Sources: Montgomery Advertiser; Jamelle Folsom. E. Jimmy Key, and Roy Baham, The Strawberry Pickers: Big Jim Folsom's 1946 Campaign for Governor: The Music, Politics, and People (2000)
Profile of E. Jimmy Key: https://www.pbs.org/ke…/country-music/e-jimmy-key-biography/
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