Hank Williams III

Born Shelton Hank Williams, the singer-songwriter adopted the moniker Hank III (or Hank3) when he started playing country, telling his punk music peers, “If I’m gonna do [it], I’m gonna milk it.” ∙ Williams said he’d avoided his family’s country music legacy until finding out that he had a son and owed years of child support—so he hit the Branson, Missouri, concert circuit to pay off the debt. ∙ Hank 3’s recording debut, Three Hanks: Men with Broken Hearts, featured the voices of three generations of Williamses singing Hank Sr.’s tunes. ∙ He cut a version of his legendary grandfather’s “I’m a Long Gone Daddy” for the 2001 Grammy Award-winning Hank Williams tribute album, Timeless. ∙ Beginning in 2002, he played bass in the heavy metal supergroup Superjoint Ritual, cofounded by Pantera vocalist Phil Anselmo and Eyehategod guitarist Jimmy Bower. ∙ True to his outlaw heritage, in 2006 he released Straight to Hell, the first-ever country album with a parental advisory sticker (although a clean version was also produced). ∙ In 2011, he launched his label Hank3 by releasing four albums in three different genres—hellbilly, doom rock, and “cattle core”—all on the same day.