Hank Williams: Cool Water

SONG Cool Water

WRITTEN BY Bob Nolan

PERFORMED BY Hank Williams

APPEARS ON Hank Williams: The Unreleased Recordings (2009)

Hank Williams knew a terrible secret, and he revealed it in his songs and performances. He knew that humans have a core of fear where love is a fleeting and treacherous thing, where redemption lies in death, and where loneliness and isolation is the human fate. His performance of "Cool Water," Bob Nolan's campfire classic about a man and a mirage,, fearlessly explores this core, leading us on the harrowing journey that ultimately claimed Williams' life.

Accompanied only by an acoustic guitar, a fiddle, and the occasional whisper of a pedal steel guitar, Hank’s deliberate phrasing summons a paradoxical sense of inevitability. It’s a bravura performance, arguably Williams’ finest vocal. That a simple ballad like "Cool Water" can evoke this illuminates the mysterious alchemy that occurs when a great artist perceives something in a song that no one else -- not even the song's writer -- senses.

For Williams turns “Cool Water” into a Conradian odyssey, a tale of a parched soul pleading for deliverance only to find that redemption is a mirage. Through this performance, Williams reveals his ultimate fear: That the journey is not the reward, but just another part of the horror. So, while he expresses faith that "He'll hear our prayer and show us where there's water," it's not entirely clear that he believes what he's saying. Williams drives this point home in the final verse, where he discloses that what he really desires is release from the "quest for water." His fear -- and ours -- is that there is no water, merely an endless spiritual search that leads only to disillusion. Better, he thinks, to be released from the search than to discover that it is all a mirage.

LYRICS

All day I face the barren waste without a taste of water

Cool water

Old Dan and I with throats burned dry and souls that cry for water

Cool water

The nights are cool and I'm a fool, each star's a pool of water

Cool water

But with the dawn I'll wake and yawn and carry on to water

Cool water

Keep a-movin' Dan

Don't you listen to him Dan

He's a devil not a man

And he spreads the burning sand with water

Dan can't you see

That big green tree

Where the water's runnin' free

And it's waiting there for me and you

Cool water

The shadows sway and seem to say tonight we pray for water

Cool water

And way up there He'll hear our prayer and show us where there's water

Cool water

Dan's feet are sore, he yearning for just one thing more than water

Cool water

Like me, I guess, he'd like to rest where there's no quest for water

Cool water

Here's a link to a video of Hank's brilliant performance of "Cool Water." It's blurry and the synching is off, but his desperation comes through anyway. It's that powerful a performance.