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It was dark by 6:08, when Charles Carr and Hank Williams checked into the Andrew Johnson Hotel.

The 17-story Andrew Johnson was the tallest building in East Tennessee. It was almost 25 years old, and its marble floors and ornate balustrades spoke of an earlier, swankier era, but it was still considered Knoxville's finest hotel. Its 350 rooms all had private bathrooms. The AJ catered to Smokies tourists in those days, before there were many hotel rooms closer to the mountains, but in 1952, many Knoxvillians who could afford it came downtown to have a steak in elegant surroundings, accompanied by an organist playing popular songs and stylish classics.

Though its ballroom was sometimes a place to hear big horn-based jazz bands, whether the proprietors liked it or not the hotel had also developed a genuine country-music heritage. In 1935, the AJ's top floor had been home to Lowell Blanchard's WNOX studios. One of Blanchard's most promising young stars who played up there was a redheaded Knoxvillian named Roy Acuff. By the time he made it to the Opry, Acuff was the idol of a thousand poor white kids in Alabama, including Hank Williams, who would imitate, and improve on, Acuff's high-lonesome croon. (Acuff knew Williams, but, disgusted by his drug abuse, was said not to be a great admirer.)

The Andrew Johnson also had some connections to the fates of celebrated people. Amelia Earhart had stayed there in 1936, the year before her disappearance; while in the hotel, she told a newspaper reporter that she didn't really expect to see old age. In 1943, the great Russian composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff stayed there after performing at the University of Tennessee's Alumni Hall. Meant to be just one stop in his American tour, it turned out to be the final performance of his long career. In pain from undiagnosed cancer, he canceled the rest of his tour and died about three months later.

The desk clerk on duty on the night of December 31, 1952, was named Dan McCrary. He thought the teenage chauffeur who approached his counter seemed nervous. He didn't see Williams, but was aware that Carr's boss needed porters to help him to his room. Carr told McCrary that they intended to spend the night.

By some second-hand accounts, Hank Williams had stayed there before. Years later, porters would boast that he had holed up in the AJ for days at a time, tipping them as they kept him supplied with booze, drugs, and girls. And there are, inevitably, stories that he purchased moonshine from a Knoxville supplier that night.

Carr ordered a couple of steak dinners from the dining room. The teenager ate his steak; Williams picked at his but didn't finish it. According to reports released in the days to come, Williams began hiccupping and went into convulsions.

Sometime during the night, Dr. Paul H. Cardwell arrived. A clean-cut man in his 50s, Cardwell had a modest doctor's office about three blocks away, on Cumberland Avenue, in a building called the George Apartments, where he also lived. How and why he was called, and whether Williams' Alabama physician/supplier had anything to do with it, is one of the many questions of that night. It's not clear whether Dr. Cardwell knew who Williams was; he might have been the handiest doctor who was still downtown on New Year's Eve.

Cardwell later described Williams as "very drunk," and that there were some pills visible in the room. But he gave him two injections, of vitamin B-12 and morphine. By some stories, he gave Williams the morphine accidentally, but he told investigators in the days afterward that the morphine was called for to control Williams' convulsions. It may not have been the only intravenous morphine Hank Williams got in Knoxville that day.

Among the many accounts of Williams' last hours in Knoxville was one related in Escott's book: that, perhaps earlier, he had made his way to St. Mary's Hospital to see his "usual" doctor and had also gotten a shot of morphine from him.

In any case, after Dr. Cardwell's injections, Williams lay down in his hotel bed, fell asleep, and later rolled off the bed onto the floor.

Either Williams or Carr changed their plans, and decided not to spend the whole night in the hotel, probably to be doubly sure to get Hank to the still-scheduled Canton show, over 400 miles away, in plenty of time. Carr checked him out at 10:45. By all accounts, he was not conscious; the only signs of life Hank Williams showed were two "coughing sounds." For the next 50 years, doctors, detectives, and biographers would speculate about whether those two sounds could have been made by a dead man.

Porters unnamed in the available sources loaded Hank Williams into the back of the blue Cadillac. Carr likely drove north on Gay Street, which was quiet at that hour except for some boys milling around on the sidewalks with firecrackers in their pockets, waiting for midnight. He likely drove by the Tennessee Theatre, which was then opening its doors for an 11:15 showing of a Broderick Crawford movie called Stop, You're Killing Me.

Carr drove him out of town, probably via Magnolia Avenue, which would have taken them right past Archie Campbell's country/comedy show at Chilhowee Park. That New Year's Eve, Ken Jarnigan worked at Troutman's 24-Hour Esso station on Magnolia at Winona. He said he was used to seeing celebrities in his station, especially pro wrestlers on their way to Chilhowee Park. He reports that even singer Ferlin Husky stopped in once.

He says that sometime before 11 p.m. that night, a Cadillac pulled in. As Jarnigan pumped the gas, the man in the back seat concerned him. "He was dressed up in dress clothes, white shirt, no tie. He was foaming at the mouth. I told that young man, 'He looks like he's dead.'"

"The guy said, 'Don't worry about him. He's drunk and passed out.'"

The travelers continued on to U.S. Highway 11W. Though it seems roundabout today, 11W was probably the best route to eastern Ohio. But the curvy, narrow road was developing a reputation as "Bloody 11W." Most accounts imply Carr didn't stop until he got to Blaine, in Grainger County. However, one lady who spoke to us says her husband, who used to operate a drive-in short-order and beer store on 11W–Old Rutledge Pike–in the Three Points area of northeast Knox County, says the car stopped there. She'd rather we not use her name. Her husband, a former zinc miner, died some years ago. He ran the drive-in in the early '50s, and said he had usually closed by 10 or so, but happened to be open unusually late one night–maybe because of the holiday. She says that her husband used to say it wasn't just one car, but two, that pulled up. He assumed that they were musicians. He had said that at least two men got out and had something to eat. Her husband was aware that Hank Williams was in the back seat and went out in hopes of meeting him. But he was asleep in the back seat, and the men who had gotten out of the car implied that he was drunk.

By 11:45, Carr had left Knox County, driving on 11W near Blaine. Passing a car, he pulled into the oncoming lane and narrowly missed a vehicle coming toward him. Unfortunately for Carr, the driver of the car was an on-duty state trooper. Corporal Swann Kitts turned around and approached the Cadillac. "I noticed Williams and asked Carr if he could be dead, as he was pale and blue-looking," Kitts recalled. "But he said Williams had drank six bottles of beer and a doctor had given him two injections to help him sleep."

Kitts had Carr follow him to Rutledge. As Williams remained in the Cadillac, Carr met the Justice of the Peace and paid his $25 fine. One of several mysteries about the trip is the presence, noted by Kitts, of an unnamed soldier with Carr at the Rutledge stop. Our anonymous source from the drive-in says she thinks she remembers something about the chauffeur having picked up a hitchhiker, a "serviceman."

Then Carr drove over 200 miles northeast, through the night. He passed through Bristol, the site of the major recordings of the Carter Family and Jimmy Rodgers, 25 years earlier, which had helped make country music a national phenomenon. The yodeling Rodgers, in particular, had been an inspiration to Hank Williams. At a local taxi company, Carr picked up a second driver, one Donald Surface. Before his own death, Surface reportedly claimed that Williams was walking around in Bristol; Carr claimed that he had talked to Williams there, but not that he was walking around. Surface got off somewhere in West Virginia; even the detail of where is controversial.

As dawn approached, Carr, with or without Surface, began to worry about the silence in the back seat. Arriving in Oak Hill, W.Va., a small town of 3,500 southeast of Charleston, he finally pulled over at either a drive-in movie theater or a Pure Oil station (a discrepancy between the original police report and Carr's later memories) at about 5:30 a.m. He found that his boss was cold to the touch, unresponsive and, in fact, already stiff. When he pushed Williams' hand, it sprang back. He sped to the local hospital, six miles away, where Hank Williams was pronounced dead on arrival. Apparently, all the doctors on duty to examine a body on that holiday morning were foreign-born. An Italian intern named Nunnari estimated at 7 a.m. that he might have been dead for six hours. The state lab in Charleston found alcohol in his blood but apparently did not test for other drugs. A Russian physician who spoke little English performed the autopsy. He described the cause of death as an "insufficiency" in the heart's right ventricle. He also added one final twist to the mystery: he observed that, sometime not too long ago, somebody had beaten Williams up.

Next: A Final Note

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