Just before sunrise on a New Year’s Day over 50 years ago, a baby-blue Cadillac roared up to the Oak Hill, West Virginia hospital in the cold Appalachian darkness. The 17-year-old driver was scared. The 29-year-old passenger was dead.

At the wheel, Charles Carr, a college freshman. In the back, Hank Williams, a cowboy singer.

It was the final drive for the legend, but his music would become part of pop culture forever.

A few years back McLean came across a news story about the passing of Carr the man who drove Williams from Montgomery Alabama to Charleston West Virginia and then on to Canton Ohio for concert appearances. Due to bad weather, they got hung up in Knoxville causing them to miss the Charleston show but the promoter called demanding they make Canton on time. Hank was alive and looking sharp in his white cowboy boots, blue overcoat and white fedora when he climbed into the back of the Cadillac for the last time New Year’s Eve. Somewhere around Bristol Tennessee they stopped for gas and a quick stretch of the legs before Carr drove them on into the night. Stopping again at a service station in Oak Hill he found Williams unresponsive and made the last six miles to the Oak Hill hospital as fast as he could. But it was too late.

McLean found the story fascinating – not that Hank died in the back of a Cadillac on the way to a gig, the way we all want to go when it’s our time – but the tale of an unknown kid driving a man into the night and into eternity and thought there might be a song in it. He noodled away for a bit coming up with a couple of verses, a chorus or two and sent it off to Knechtel who loved the idea but hated the song. In no time at all Knechtel dashed off “Final Drive” a song not about Charles Carr but Hank William’s final drive. McLean immediately recognized the song had great potential even though he was thoroughly chagrined at Knechtel’s attitude – this was not the first time this had happened between McLean and Knechtel but that is a story for another time – and was disappointed that Charles Carr would remain in obscurity. However, he knew it would be the perfect song for country and western performer Slim Buck Two who coincidentally was signed to Knechtel and McLean’s record label.

(Editor’s note – McLean still has plans to tell the Charles Carr Story possibly as touring show using multimedia marionettes.) 

So here it is – “Final Drive” performed live off the floor at Thatville Sound by Slim Buck Two and the Buckboards – Tyler Beckett on fiddle and Larry Becker on steel with G.I.Holm at the console and produced by Knechtel and Mclean for That Show Productions.

Happy New Year.