Big Bill Lister Interview
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Texas-born Big Bill Lister was a singer, songwriter, guitarist, Capitol recording artist, and close associate of Hank Williams, with whom he toured and performed. In 1951, Williams wrote three songs for Lister to record: “Countryfied,” “The Little House We Built (Over the Hill)” (co-written with steel guitarist Don Helms), and “There’s a Tear in My Beer.” In the 1980s, Lister rediscovered Hank’s original demo of the latter tune in his attic; he gave the disc to Hank Williams, Jr., whose subsequent release of the tune — updated as a father-son “duet,” with new vocals and instrumentals dubbed over the original — became a #1 hit in 1988. In 2004, Lister released a tribute album, Remembering … Hank Williams, a live set of Hank covers interspersed with personal stories about his old friend. Lister’s early records are collected on the 1999 Bear Family compilation, There’s a Tear in My Beer.
This interview was conducted over the phone by Darwin Lee Hill, host of Darwin Lee’s Real Hillbilly Music Show, which broadcast from 1995 to 2015 on WHVW, 950 AM, in Poughkeepsie, New York. The Southern Music Research Center is currently working in collaboration with Hill to digitize and make accessible, through this archive, dozens of additional interviews with classic country music pioneers. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Hank Williams (September 17, 1923 - January 1, 1952), we are making available now Hill’s interviews with several of Williams’s original band members. The complete Darwin Lee Hill Collection will ultimately include roughly one hundred interviews, as well as full episodes of Hill’s weekly radio show and additional materials from Hill’s personal collection of rare recordings and ephemera.