The Saga of Hank Williams' Notebook

Widely considered to be one of America's greatest songwriters and the "father of modern country music," the legendary Hank Williams penned such notable songs as "Cold, Cold Heart" and "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." Although Hank's brief but reckless recording career (1947-1952) was more rock & roll than country in spirit, plagued as it was by excesses of drugs and alcohol and various romantic problems, his music continues to influence country, rock and folk artists almost 55 years after his premature death at the age of 29 on New Year's Day 1953.

Ol' Hank has been back in the news again, not for any old recently discovered antics, but rather for the controversy surrounding one of his old songwriting notebooks. Well-known among country music historians, the notebook includes rough outlines and lyrics for seventeen unpublished songs that were never recorded by Williams, as well as various comments and thoughts by the songwriter, written down between May 1947 and 1949.

The notebook came into the possession of Nashville, Tennessee collectors Stephen Shutts and Robert Reynolds during the summer of 2006 when Shutts bought a box of music memorabilia after being contacted by a Nashville area couple. The two men run the Honky Tonk Hall Of Fame, a traveling roadshow of musical history that features some 1,700+ items, including a vintage pair of Elvis Presley's underwear, dated from 1970. Reynolds is also well-known to music fans as bass guitarist for the Mavericks, a popular early-90s country-rock band that recorded several albums.

When the Chicago Sun-Times ran an article on the two collectors detailing how the pair had come to possess the historic notebook, executives at Sony/ATV Music Publishing took notice. This is when the proverbial poop hit the rotating cooling device. Sony/ATV CEO and President Troy Tomlinson declared the notebook had been stolen and the company filed a stolen-property report on it and other items with Nashville's Metro Police Department on September 20, 2006. After a brief investigation (and several national news stories), arrest warrants were issued for Shutts and Francine Boykin, a former janitor at Sony/ATV's "Music Row" offices, in late-October.

The plot thickened, as they say, when testimony in the criminal trial concerning the allegedly-purloined notebook brought the true facts to light. Boykin's husband, Ronald, who managed the Sony/ATV cleaning crew, testified that several boxes of miscellaneous items had been stored in the company's break room, and that he had asked a Sony/ATV executive to mark which boxes were to be thrown away. The Tennessean newspaper reported that Boykin testified that "instead of me throwing them away, I took some of them home with me." During the same trial, Sony/ATV's Tomlinson testified that the company had no idea what they were throwing away and had no inventory of the items taken.

After saving the historical artifacts from the dumpster, the Boykins subsequently sold a box for $1,500 to Shutts. Aside from the Williams notebook, valued to be worth as much as $250,000, the box included memorabilia from Roy Orbison, Conway Twitty and the recently-deceased Buck Owens. After hearing testimony from both sides, Nashville General Sessions Judge Michael F. Mondelli dismissed theft charges against the defendants on Thursday, March 15, 2007, saying that there was not enough evidence to support the charges against Boykin and Shutts. After the trial, Shutts told The Tennessean, "this is a classic case of corporate America using highly paid, loudmouth attorneys to bully people around."

This isn't the first time that an important piece of American music history has been rescued from the trash, nor is it the first time that Hank has found himself in such a situation. In September 2006, the Tennessee Supreme Court settled a case involving a group of acetate recordings made of Hank Williams performing for a 1950s-era radio program sponsored by Mother's Best Flour and broadcast by Nashville's powerful WSM-AM radio station. A WSM staff photographer grabbed the recordings from a box of junk that was on its way to the dumpster, and when he attempted to release the recordings, Hank's children brought suit. The court found that ownership of the recordings belonged to Hank's heirs, who have announced that they will release the music commercially.

The saga of Hank Williams' notebook isn't over yet, though. In a separate civil action, a Sumner County, Tennessee judge will decide who really owns the wandering notebook - Sony/ATV or Shutts and Reynolds. Regardless of who wins that court case, the media roller-coaster ride has proven beneficial for Shutts and Reynolds, who have signed with the William Morris Agency to produce a television show about collecting music memorabilia.