The Tennessean from Nashville, Tennessee • A2

2A Thursday, October 5, 2006 THETENNESSEAN www.tennessean.com NATION FROM PAGE ONE WHAT THEY'RE SAYING ABOUT HANK WILLIAMS "These recordings show that he was the most charismatic entertainer who ever drew breath." Keith Adkinson, husband of Jett Williams and an attorney in the Mother's Best case "I think one of the best parts is when he was talking about 'Cold Cold Heart' and how that was his favorite song. It was important to be able to hear him say what he loved." Jett Williams, daughter of Hank Williams Sr. "When you hear him sing a song like 'On Top Of Old Smokey' it's no longer a kids' song, it's a blues song. He feels it and makes it his own." Alan Stoker, a curator at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum RYAN UNDERWOOD "What impressed me most about the material is Hank Williams' ability as a performer. That was something he made his very own.

Plus, I don't know any better way to experience Hank Williams than through live radio." John Rumble, senior historian, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum "He's very loose and very funny on those (WSM) shows. He's got a very dry wit and is self-deprecating. And the music, it's like a little catechism of music he loved his own songs as well as others." Colin Escott, award-winning biographer of Hank Williams "It's important for people to hear Hank Williams singing the popular hits of the day like 'Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain' and 'On Top of Old And then there are the hymns, standards like Til Fly Away' and 'When the Saints Go Marching Kira Florita, co-producer of a 10-CDset of Hank Williams material released in 1998 Hank: No original songs in material Smokey." The Tennessee Supreme Court last week let stand a January appeals court ruling that granted commercial rights to the recordings to the children of Hank Williams: singer Hank Williams Jr. and Jett Williams. That ended a complex, nearly nine-year court battle to prevent an altered, unauthorized release of the material in 1997.

Many who have heard the recordings say they portray Hank Williams in a casual, lighthearted way that helps dispel the lingering image of the country great as a mysterious and lonesome backwoods genius. Williams' career was cut tragically short at age 29 some 53 years ago. Kira Florita, executive director of Leadership Music and co-producer of a 10-CD Hank Williams box set released in 1998 by MercuryPolygram, said the Mother's Best material was originally slated to be included in the box set but was left out because of the lingering legal issues at the time. Bush's surveillance plan gets court victory CINCINNATI The Bush administration can continue its warrantless surveillance program while it appeals a judge's ruling that the program is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The president has said the program is needed in the war on terrorism; opponents argue it oversteps constitutional boundaries on free speech, privacy and executive powers.

Side air bags cut death toll WASHINGTON Driver deaths in side-impact collisions dropped by more than half in sport utility vehicles equipped with head-protecting side air bags, insurance industry research shows. Side air bags offering head protection could save the lives of about 2,000 drivers a year if every vehicle on the road had the equipment, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety estimated in a study released Thursday. Produce companies searched SAN JUAN BAUTISTA, Calif The FBI searched two produce companies Wednesday for evidence of a crime in the nationwide E. coli outbreak that killed one person and sickened at least 191 others. Agents from the FBI and the Food and Drug Administration used warrants to search a Natural Selection Foods LLC plant in San Juan Bautista and a Growers Express plant in Salinas to determine whether they followed food safety procedures.

Son wins Nobel like his dad STOCKHOLM, Sweden American Roger D. Kornberg, whose father won a Nobel Prize a half-century ago, was awarded the prize in chemistry Wednesday for his studies of how cells take information from genes to produce proteins. The work is important for medicine because disturbances in that process are involved in illnesses like cancer, heart disease and various kinds of inflammation. And learning more about the process is key to using stem cells to treat disease. 2 Marines plead not guilty CAMP PENDLETON, Calif Two Marines accused of kidnapping and murdering a civilian man in rural Iraq entered not guilty pleas in a military court Wednesday, and a judge barred lawyers from discussing the case with the media.

Pfc. John J. Jodka and Cpl. Marshall L. Magincalda are among seven Marines and one Navy corpsman charged with kidnapping and murdering 52-year-old Hashim Ibrahim Awad in April.

Both face up to life in prison if convicted. ASSOCIATED PRESS "Legacy owns the physical property of the acetate recordings," Jones suggested matter-of-factly in an interview, saying the company bought the actual master recordings from Butrum, though Jett Williams has them in her possession. But Leverett, reached this week by The Tennessean, said the physical recordings were never Butrum's to sell. Instead, he said, the pair cut a deal to share in any proceeds made from the recordings, potentially undercutting any further claims on the material by Legacy. "I haven't seen one red cent from any of this.

The only thing I've gotten out of this is heartache and grief," said Leverett, who rescued the recordings from atop one of his boss's trash cans one night around 1965. He figured they were fair game. He didn't anticipate all of the legal squabbles that resulted. "I wish I had never told anybody I had these," Leverett said this week. In a statement released after last week's Supreme Court action, Hank Williams Jr.

said, "I can't think of a better time for 'new' material by my dad to be released." But his publicist did not respond to requests for a follow-up interview for this story. Although he declined to discuss specifics, Adkinson said the Williams children had worked out an agreement about the material. To eventually get the recordings out to a larger audience than just a hard-core group of Hank Williams fans, Florita said, the project would need the marketing and distribution muscle of a major record label. The Mercury box set, which won two Grammy Awards and retails for $170, has sold just 18,200 units to date. Florita said it was impossible to estimate how much money the Mother's Best recordings might bring in, though Williams tends to sell between 400,000 and 600,000 albums per year overall.

While that's a significant number, she said, it paled in comparison with an artist like Elvis Presley, whose records sell about 8 million a year. Colin Escott, a music historian who wrote an award-winning 1995 biography of Hank Williams, said it would be pointless to have gone through all of this legal wrangling and not have the recordings released. "Not a month goes by that somebody doesn't ask me when we might hear them," he said. Maybe soon, he'll have a good answer. "These recordings are substantial.

No matter how you look at it, it will increase the Hank Williams catalog by at least 20 percent," Florita said. "For there to be that much of an artist's repertoire out there, JAE S. LEE THE TENNESSEAN Hank Williams' Mothers Best Flour recordings for WSM were the object of a lengthy lawsuit in which his children were awarded rights to the music. LEVERETT recordings. "Just to hear him laugh at himself, it really makes him more of a touchable Hank Williams." It also gives her and her husband, attorney Keith Adkinson, an opportunity to control the commercial release of the recordings in the aftermath of the lengthy court case.

"Our mission is to get this out to the widest possible audience," Adkinson said. "We've already had a number of calls about it as this thing progressed through the courts." Adkinson estimates that there are four or five albums' worth of songs never previously released by Hank Williams and about three or four more albums of Williams' singing old-time gospel hymns. There are no original, undiscovered Hank Williams-written songs, however. All of the songs were written by other people. The recordings themselves almost never saw the light of day.

Les Leverett, a retired staff photographer for WSM, rescued a stack of the Mother's Best acetate recordings from being thrown away in the mid- 1960s. He held on to them until the 1980s, when he shared them with Jerry Rivers, a member of the Drifting Cowboys, Hank Williams' band. Eventually, Hillous Butrum, also a member of the Drifting Cowboys (though he didn't play on the Mother's Best recordings), cut a deal with Leverett to get the material into commercial release. In 1997, Brentwood-based Legacy Entertainment Group prepared to release an "enhanced" version of the recordings that it had acquired from Butrum, who is now dead. Polygram, along with the heirs of Hank Williams, sued to prevent that release.

That was the genesis of the legal case that Hank Williams' family has won, giving the singer's heirs and not Legacy or Polygram intellectual property rights to the material. Despite that, Kenneth Jones, attorney for Legacy Entertainment, said there still could be legal roadblocks erected to prevent the Williams children from releasing the Mother's Best recordings to the public. that's huge. There's nothing comparable." "This material is enormously revealing in several ways," said John Rumble, senior historian for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. The recordings, Rumble said, show that Williams had a quick, sharp wit as well as a deep engagement with the WSM show's early-morning, mostly rural radio audience.

"They put the focus back on radio which is how most people experienced Hank when he was alive," he said. "He was really a master of the medium." For Jett Williams, whose identity as the singer's daughter was kept secret until a dramatic 1989 ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court set the facts straight, the recordings also have several important meanings. First, they have given her an opportunity to better know a father who died six days before she was born. "It's basically like spending a year with my dad," Williams said of the People in the news Blink-182, filed for divorce in August from Moakler, a former Correction In 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. The "On This Day in History" feature on Page 2A Tuesday contained inaccurate information.

The Tennessean regrets the error. beauty queen who was recently voted off "Dancing With the Stars." In September, Barker was apparently videotaped kiss Spelling, McDermott expecting first baby Tori Spelling and her husband, actor Dean McDermott, are expecting their first child together. The 33-year-old Spelling, daughter of the late producer Aaron Spelling, will give birth in the spring, Spelling's representative, Jill Fritzo, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. McDermott, 39, had roles in battery. Gyllenhaal has a girl It's a girl for Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard The couple welcomed Ramona into the world on Tuesday, according to Gyllenhaal's representative, Amanda Silverman.

In April, Silverman told the AP that Gyllenhaal, 28, and Sarsgaard, 35, were engaged and expecting a baby. ASSOCIATED PRESS the movies "Against the Ropes" and "Open Range." He has a 7-year-old son, Jack, and a 1-year-old daughter, Lola, from his first marriage. Celebrities collide Can Travis Barker really make women go this crazy? His estranged wife, ShannaMoak-ler, was involved in a nightclub fracas with Paris Hilton early Wednesday morning. Barker, the drummer for According to reports by police and publicists for both women: Hilton says Moakler walked up to her, "used the most vile of language" and punched her jaw. Moakler says she exchanged mere profanities with Hilton, at which point Hilton's ex-boyfriend Stavros Niarchos emerged from the entourage, bent Moakler's wrists, poured a drink on her and shoved her down some stairs.

Hilton, 25, and Moakler, 31, both filed police reports alleging MOAKLER ing Hilton. Then Hilton encountered Moakler at the Hyde club in Hollywood on Tuesday night. Today's birthdays Comedian Bernie Mac, 49. Actress Kate Winslet, at left, 31 ASSOCIATED PRESS Writer-producer-d irector Clive Barker, 54. Rock singer and famine-relief organizer Bob Geldof, 52.

The former president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, 70. Rock singer Brian Johnson (ACDC), 59. On this day in history Lottery results Tenn. Cash 3 Tenn. Cash 4 6-0-6-9 Midday 2-7-7-7 Evening Prize: Up to $5,000 8-0-2 Midday 3-0-9 Evening Prize: Up to $500 Lotto 5 No available Estimated jackpot: $425,000 Postmaster: Send address changes to The Tennessean, Customer Service 1100 Broadway, Nashville, TN 37203.

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Please call 615-259-8338 or 1 -800-828-4ADS. delivered the first televised White House address. 1986 American Eugene Hasenfus was captured by Sandinista soldiers after the weapons plane he was flying in was shot down over Nicaragua. 1988 Democrat Lloyd Bentsen lambasted Republican Dan Quayle during their vice-presidential debate, telling Quayle, "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." ASSOCIATED PRESS Today is Thursday, Oct. 5, the 278th day of 2006.

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