I’ve been at odds with the mindset of those particular Pulitzer Prize selectors who toil in the collective genre of “Letters, Dramas, and Music” for quite a spell. It goes back to their annual snub of Duke Ellington during his lifetime which ended, to put things in a linear context, a few months prior to Nixon’s most welcome departure from the White House.
In that Duke had been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 11 Grammy Awards and a dozen honorary degrees, the fact that the Pulitzer Prize crowd never once deemed him worthy of a nod in their music category gave those who had always considered him America’s greatest composer extreme pause.
They had a fall guy, of course. They were only following policy, they would say. To be considered, musical compositions could not include the least bit of room for improvisation which, of course, would preclude, by definition, all jazz.
Ellington, reacting with his usual grace, took the artistic rebukes in stride: “Fate is being kind to me,” he said. “Fate doesn’t want me to be famous too young.”
This is not to say, however, that the academic types who bestow Pulitzer honors from the ivory towers of Columbia University haven’t, over the years, attempted to get back in my good graces on this very same issue. In 1997 Wynton Marsalis became an honoree for his jazz composition “Blood on the Fields,” which, indeed, left room for artistic improvisation. “Sound Grammar” by Ornette Coleman followed in 2007.
And they did give Duke a posthumous “special citation” during his centennial year of 1999 for “his musical genius, which evoked aesthetically the principles of democracy through the medium of jazz and thus made an indelible contribution to art and culture.”
Over the years, this bunch has continually sent me crumbs in the form of these “special citations.” Mind you, I have returned none to sender, but they have yet to get me fully back on board. Scott Joplin, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and, a couple of years back, my main man Bob Dylan, have been recipients.
And, although these all gave my overall shtick an aesthetic sense of validation, none caught me quite as much by surprise and brought my eclectic shipmates as much joy as last week’s announcement from the Pulitzer website that Hank Williams had received a posthumous special citation.
In their usually understated fashion, they explained their selection of Williams as being for “his craftsmanship as a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life.” That’s a lot of words just to say “poet.”
Of course it is much late in the coming, but, how utterly cool it came at all. How inclusive! How perceptive! How satisfying! And how coincidental that this announcement would arrive during the same week that the “New Harmonies” exhibit celebrating American roots music had its opening at the Park City Museum.
As John Prine exclaimed on our way into the Egyptian Theatre with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott when we heard Hank’s music being played over the P.A. to welcome the concert goers for this stop on their 1970s tour: “Hank says it all!”
Willie Nelson was equally succinct when he referred to the quintessentially Hank Williams lyrics of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” as “pure American literature!” Exhibit A: “Hear that lonesome whippoorwill/He sounds too blue to fly/The midnight train is whining low/I’m so lonesome I could cry.”
Hank, of course, was never averse to a night on the town, as in “Hey, hey, good lookin’/Whatcha got cookin’?/How’s about cookin’ somethin’ up with me?” Or “Well I left my home down on the rural route/I told my paw I’m goin’ steppin’ out/and get the Honky Tonk blues/ yeah, I’ve got those Honky Tonk blues.”
Hank would go on to die before he reached 30 in the back seat of a Cadillac on his way to a gig in Canton, Ohio, early on New Years Day 1953. His music and his myth would live on, however, and the country and the culture are far, far richer for it. And, it would seem, even the stodgiest of minds have become open to that fact.
In this quarter, it heralds a new way of thinking among the Pulitzer board about the American musical canon as a whole. Not that I never expect to sense condescension raising its head among the cultural elite whenever they gather to deliberate future Pulitzer Prize music award winners. But I do sense that things are looking up!
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and a free-lance writer with a background in commercial and community radio, among other pursuits. He has been a columnist and feature writer for various Park City publications going back to 1973.