William Herbert York

Before his death, Lum had created two tapes, "My Life and Times with Hank Williams" and "Memories are Forever." He retired from the school board and lived quietly with his wife until his death in 2004. His biggest pleasure in life was playing with their grandbaby, Kirby Camille Lastrapes.

Lum York died in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on 8-15-2004 at age 85. He was buried in the cemetery, Green Oaks Memorial Park.

Lum played with George Morgan, Goldie Hill, Marty Robbins and other Nashville greats for several years. He returned to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and married Juanita (Nita) Kelly in 1954. (He was married before, for a brief time in the early 50s, to Aline Coates Gibson, also of Baton Rouge.) As a married man, he needed a bit more stability than the music world offered so he went to work for the Louisiana School Board. Of course, he always played his music on the weekends.

When asked about his biggest regret in life, Lum told me, "on October 2, 1952 Hank Williams made his last appearance in Baton Rouge, Louisiana I played on the show with him and then later that night he asked me to rejoin his band and play comedian. I told him I would call him back. It was a number at a hotel. I called him back and told him I was going to stay with Lefty. I always regretted that." He performed almost until his death. As he could no longer play the fiddle due to a heart condition, he played the spoons.

When Hank went to the Opry in 1949, they required him to use the house band on stage. Lum remained behind and played with the staff band on the Hayride then for Bill Monroe for a while. He began playing with Lefty Frizzell and was on the road when he learned of Hank’s death. When asked about that time Lum replied, "I was playing with Lefty (Frizzell) then and we were playing San Antonio, Texas. We were off for a few days and I had gone to Baton Rouge, Louisiana but had to return to San Antonio the next day. Mrs. Williams called my mother trying to find me but they didn’t know where I was. She wanted me to be a pall bearer but I had to go back to work, I couldn’t let Lefty down and we had to play in Texas."

Until 1948, Lum drove around the South with Hank and the band. Sometimes there was only one other member, the trumpet player. Occasionally Hank’s family joined them. Lycrecia, Hank’s stepdaughter, who was about five or six then, recalled those times in a letter to Lum." You were like a big brother to me. You were the one that played games with me, taught me to tell time when I was traveling from one town to another. You made me laugh; you were my best friend. When I think back about how I used to sit on your lap when we were traveling to the shows because there wasn’t anywhere for me to sit with the big bass fiddle running down the middle of the car, I have to laugh. We were so crowded in that car! Then when it would get late and I got sleepy, Mom would put me in your fiddle case backstage."

When Hank went to the Louisiana Hayride in 1948, Lum was the only player from Montgomery to go with him. "One thing about Hank, he never closed any of his shows without singing a hymn. There was always complete reverence with him and the band members at this time. Another thing, he never turned his back on the audience. He always stood facing or to the side."

In 1944 Lum and his big bass fiddle joined Hank’s band, The Drifting Cowboys. Lum told of the first time he played music with Hank, "We had got to be friends working together in the shipyard. One night I went where he was playing. I had bought a bass and was learning to play it. I was also friends with the guy who was playing bass that night and he asked me to sit in while he went to the bathroom. Hank and Audrey were dancing while I played the set. When the music ended, Hank asked me ‘You want a job playing with the band?’ I told him, ‘Hank, I don’t know how to play too good.’ He said, ‘You want to learn? I’ll pay you $20 a week and room and board.’"

Lum was also the unwitting inspiration for Hank’s "I Saw the Light" Hank, Audrey and the band, six people altogether, were crammed into a 1942 Chevy. As you can imagine, it was hard for any of them to rest comfortably. Lum raised up to change positions. He looked out the window and as he lay back down, he stated "We’re getting close to Montgomery. I saw the light." Referring to a beacon light near town that was always a landmark for the band as they returned home from shows.

Lum had to drop out of school to help his mother after his father died. He worked with the CCC, Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Program to help stimulate the economy by allowing boys and young men to work on public buildings and parks for a small salary plus room and board. When Lum returned from the CCC camp, he would hitchhike into town to hear the local bands play. Since he had no money to buy a ticket, he filched eggs from his mother’s chicken house and sold them to local groceries for the admission price. He had heard Hank on the radio and began to hang around the station. They first met in 1939. The friendship remained throughout Hank’s life. The two men worked together as musicians and at various shipyards when the money from the beloved music wasn’t enough to make ends meet.

In rural Alabama, the depression days of the 1930s and early 1940s were rough. Lum York remembers "I only had two pairs of overalls. My mother washed on Wednesdays so I had to wear them all week long."

Not far away in Georgiana, Alabama, another child was born in 1923 whose life was destined to link with Lum’s in the creation of the most enduring legend country music has ever known. Hank Williams had won a talent contest at the Montgomery Empire Theater singing an original song entitled "WPA Blues" in December 1937. There was no stopping his music career from that moment. He worked local clubs and did a show on WSFA, a Montgomery radio station.

William Herbert "Lum" York (November 16, 1918 – August 15, 2004) was a musician best known as the bass player in Hank Williams Drifting Cowboys from 1944–1949. After leaving the Drifting Cowboys, York played bass in Lefty Frizzell's band until 1953. York continued to perform until weeks before his death and was a fan favorite at the Hank Williams festival in Georgiana, Alabama.

Lum was born on November 16, 1918 as William Herbert York in the tiny hamlet of Elmore, just about 15 miles north of Montgomery, Alabama. Farming is a hard life at best. This was one of the worst times. Poverty gripped the rural south with an iron fist. To eke out a meager living, crops demanded grueling service. Lum was a schoolboy before they moved to a house with electricity. But life was more than just the backbreaking work of picking cotton and tilling the vegetable patch. On Saturday nights when the family gathered around the radio the Grand Ole Opry, Lum’s lifelong love of music was born. When he was 12, his older brother bought a guitar. Within a year, Lum had taught himself to play by listening to the radio. When his brother joined the army, Lum bought his guitar for fifty cents.