Hank Williams Museum

Two blocks off Court Square, this small downtown museum houses one of the largest collections of Hank Williams memorabilia in the country: stage suits by Nudie Cohn, handwritten lyrics, the boots, the hats, the guitars — and the death car itself, kept exactly as it was the morning it pulled over in West Virginia.

The displays are old-school glass-case-and-typed-card, but the artefacts carry the visit. Allow an hour. Williams himself is buried at Oakwood Cemetery Annex, a short drive north, alongside his second wife Billie Jean.

things to do museum music
A story
The 1952 powder-blue Cadillac convertible in the museum's centre is the car in which Williams was found dead in the back seat on New Year's Day 1953, aged 29, on a drive between shows in Knoxville and Canton, Ohio. His teenage driver pulled over in Oak Hill, West Virginia, and found him gone.