All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over: Great Tailgating Songs

If Heaven Ain't A Lot Like Dixie

Though he began his career in the shadow of his legendary father, Hank Williams Jr. emerged as a formidable Country singer-songwriter in his own right with 1960s hits such as “It’s All Over But The Crying” and “Cajun Baby.” But things changed with the 1979 release of “Family Tradition,” where he broke the Nashville mainstream by adopting a rebel image and writing/recording in a style incorporating his Blues and Southern Rock influences. The results were staggering as 42 Top-10 hits followed, two CMA Entertainer of the Year honors, three ACM Entertainer of the Year honors, multiple Grammy nominations and a Grammy award for “There’s a Tear in My Beer”, a duet with his father using electronic merging technology.  As groundbreaking as Hank Williams Jr. became, it wasn’t just his performance that people took note about, but rather his songwriting that became so notable. The driven musician penned hit songs year after year scoring 20 BMI Awards. One of the arguably most-heard Country song of modern times, the four-time Emmy award-winning “Are You Ready For Some Football?,” which was heard nationally as the theme song of ABC and ESPN’s Monday Night Football telecasts, was aired for 21 years.   As the accolades kept coming, Williams sold over 55 million albums, achieving gold, platinum, and multi-platinum status along with 13 of those albums hitting the no. 1 spot on the Billboard chart. In 2008, Williams was honored with the BMI Icon award at the 56th annual BMI Country Awards, joining an elite group of past honorees including Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and Dolly Parton. Today, Hank Williams Jr. writing and recording new material for his first album on Nash Icon Records slatted to be released in 2016.