The picture, taken in 1953, has a familiar look. There’s one like it in almost every family album. It’s a black-and-white snapshot in which an infant — knitted booties, clenched fists, bald head — lies on a pillow in someone’s yard. Looming across the grass are the long shadows of four or five unseen adults.
It’s a perfect metaphor for the life of Jett Williams.
That helpless baby girl, named Antha Belle Jett, was illegitimate. By the age of 3 she had been under the care of at least four sets of adults, and the state of Alabama. She had been given three completely different names.
It would be 37 years and many lengthy and complicated court battles before she earned the right to assume the name of her own choice.
In the process, Jett Williams had to prove that a shadowy array of adults, including some of the most revered figures in country music, had conspired during her infancy to keep her from inheriting the name or the wealth left behind by her father — Hank Williams Sr.
“This is a story not only about who you are, but what you are made of,” Jett says. “Dreams come to you in life and you can let them pass you by or you can stand and fight.”
That portentous photo is among those to be found in the newly published memoir, Ain’t Nothing As Sweet As My Baby: The Story of Hank Williams’ Lost Daughter (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $19.95), written with the help of Pamela Thomas.
The book comes only a few months after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June not to hear an appeal by Hank Williams Jr., Jett’s half brother whom she has never met and who has opposed her claims at every turn. A judge in Alabama ruled on Oct. 2, 1987, that Jett Williams is beyond doubt the natural daughter of Hank Williams, but it’s the new ruling that gives her a share of her father’s estate.
Published estimates place annual royalties at $1 million or more on the 150 or so songs written by Hank Williams Sr. before his death at age 29 in 1953. Jett is entitled to a share of royalties back to 1985, the year she began suing for her rights.
“It’s not just that I want the money,” Jett says. “But the injustice to my father and his expressed wishes, and how they used me when it benefited them to keep control of his song catalog. That’s why I fought.”
‘Nothing you can do’
Jett Williams grew up with adoptive parents in Mobile, Ala., with the name Cathy Deupree. It was an ordinary childhood, some good, some bad. The bad came from her mother’s alcoholism and aloofness, and the fact that her new parents were almost old enough to be her grandparents. The good came from strong friendships and her middle-class parents’ ability and willingness to see that she received a good education.
“My parents had some idea of who I was, but they didn’t have the full story,” Jett says.
It wasn’t until her 21st birthday, when she was due to inherit $2,000 from the estate of her grandmother, Lillian Williams Stone — Hank Williams’ mother — that the Deuprees told her who she might be related to.
“It was the worst of all possible worlds,” Jett says. “I was told I was a maybe, there was no way to prove anything and I might as well forget about it. You know, ‘Wouldn’t that be neat if you are Hank Williams’ daughter, but there’s nothing you can do.”‘
For the better part of the next decade, Jett pursued a normal life. She married, moved to Montgomery and went to work in the city’s parks and recreation department — making good on her degree in recreation from the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. She made several unsuccessful attempts to gain access to her adoption records, and she did succeed in tracking down her birth mother, Bobbie Webb Jett, who had moved to California and had seven additional children. Her mother had died in 1974.
“It’s very frustrating to have a whole file sitting there in front of you and it’s your whole life and you can’t have it,” Jett says. “I ran into dead end after dead end. If there was ever a time that I was bitter it was then. The worst was finding out my real mother was dead. You calculate her age and she’s not that old. I thought she would be the one to tell me everything.”
The search for the truth got under way in earnest in 1980, when Jett’s adoptive father, Wayne Deupree, called to say he would help if she wanted to find out who she really was. He had just seen Hank Williams Jr. on television, “bragging about how much money he got each year on the royalties from his father’s songs.” Deupree suspected that what little he had been told about his daughter’s situation in regard to her real father’s family and estate was untrue.
Jett continued to have little success until 1984, when she met D. Keith Adkinson. A Washington, D.C., lawyer and political activist, he had headed up a group called Democrats for Reagan in 1980. He had plenty of investigative experience and he had worked with show business figures, including actor David Soul.
Although Adkinson believed her story, he told her she had little chance of proving it. He began working with her anyway. Before long, their relationship became more than professional. Jett left her husband and, in 1986, she and Adkinson were married. “He said he’d love me no matter what,” Jett says. “We got married before I’d won anything. No matter what the world thought, he believed me and loved me.”
Soon, Adkinson had come up with a notarized agreement signed by Hank Williams and Bobbie Jett in 1952 when she was six months pregnant. He still won’t reveal how he obtained the crucial document. “Would you reveal your sources?” he demands.
The agreement stipulates that Hank would pay Bobbie’s medical bills and give her a ticket to California. She agreed to leave the child with his mother, who would have legal custody until the child was 2. Hank would take custody to age 5, after which he and Bobbie would share custody.
“When I saw that contract, I knew in my heart — short of him coming back and sitting in that chair — that Hank Williams was my daddy,” Jett says. “A signed contract is as sure as you can get.”
What’s more, the contract demonstrated that Williams acknowledged the child was his and that he intended to raise it himself. Adkinson and Jett slowly uncovered a paper trail of letters and other documents that showed — as the Alabama Supreme Court ruled — that Williams’ relatives, business agents and music publishers conspired to defraud the child and the court.
Here’s how it happened. Hank Williams died on New Year’s Day, 1953. Antha Belle Jett was born five days later. Lillian Stone took custody of the child and renamed her Catherine Yvonne Stone. When the grandmother died two years later, however, Hank’s sister, Irene Smith, soon gave the child to the state for adoption. She also sued the toddler over Lillian Stone’s estate.
In 1967, Roy Acuff and Wesley Rose, legendary country music figures and owners of the company that owned rights to Hank’s songs, engaged in a legal battle with Audrey Williams, Hank’s ex-wife and the mother of Hank Jr.
To keep control of the rights, Acuff and Rose argued successfully that the title to the songs was clouded by the existence of a daughter. In fact, Wayne Deupree was notified by the court that his daughter had an interest in the case, but he decided not to do anything, apparently thinking it best to shield Cathy/Jett.
“My feelings for Hank Sr. today are that I love him and I’m proud of him and I’m sure he would be proud of me for straightening this mess out,” Jett says.
According to Adkinson, Hank Jr., Roy Acuff and others fighting Jett have not said that she is not Hank Williams Sr.’s daughter. The Alabama Supreme Court ruling has never been appealed. What they are fighting is Jett’s right to a portion of the estate.
“When you’ve thought it over and tossed out everything else, the only thing left is music industry greed,” Adkinson says.
It has been reported that Hank Williams Jr. refuses to even say Jett’s name. Speculation is that he profoundly resents her encroachment on his father’s name, which he has had to himself all these years. But she says that despite the obstacles he has placed in her way, she would like to sit down and talk to him behind closed doors.
“It’s hard when you don’t know somebody,” she says. “My emotion is disappointment. I’d like him to explain his actions and inactions. I always think there’s hope in everything — although I wouldn’t bet money on it. But I’ve seen stranger things happen.”
In the meantime, Jett has embarked on a music career of her own. She has been performing for less than a year, but she has been well-received at clubs and state fairs. She mainly sings the familiar songs of Hank Williams Sr., with a few of her own sprinkled in. She doesn’t have a recording contract, and Adkinson speculates that Hank Jr., a wildly successful performer in his own right, is having “a chilling effect” on her chances in Nashville.
And yet her band includes Jerry Rivers, 62, and Don Helms, 63, who played with her father in the ’40s and ’50s. Her talent also has been endorsed by Owen Bradley, a celebrated producer and member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
“I write songs and sing, but I would never dare say that I inherited my father’s talent,” Jett says, holding up her pinky. “If I got what was right there, in his little finger, I’d be very fortunate. I know that right now people are coming to see and hear me because of who my father is. But I am confident I can compete professionally on the highest level.”
Adkinson says an accounting of the Hank Williams song catalog in the Alabama case can be completed as early as January. Jett could be banking her first royalties by then. The New York case, which has to do with licensing, will take longer. But victory is assured, there seems no way her claims can be denied.
“Even if I had lost, it would have been worth it,” Jett says. “One day you’re winning, one day you’re losing. But what I’d already won couldn’t be taken away. I found out my father wanted me, and I found the man I love.”
