Hank Thompson (musician)

The 2013 game Grand Theft Auto V featured his song "It Don't Hurt Anymore" in the fictional radio show, Rebel Radio.

Thompson's last public performance was on October 8, 2007, in Waco, Texas, his birthplace. A smoker for most of his adult life, Thompson was admitted into a Texas hospital in mid-October for shortness of breath. He was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of lung cancer. On November 1, 2007, two days after being released, Thompson cancelled the rest of his 2007 "Sunset Tour" and retired from singing. He went into hospice care at his home in Keller, Texas, and died five days later, on November 6, 2007, aged 82.

Thompson was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1989, and was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1997. He continued touring throughout the U.S. until shortly before he became ill. Often, he worked with a reconstituted version of the Brazos Valley Boys that included a few original members.

The 1987 novel Crazy Heart by Thomas Cobb was inspired by Thompson's life, specifically by his practice of picking up a local band to back him when he toured. In 2009, Cobb's novel was turned into a successful film directed by Scott Cooper and starring Jeff Bridges in an Academy Award-winning performance.

1952 brought his first number-one single, "The Wild Side of Life", which contained the memorable line, "I didn't know God made honky-tonk angels". (This line inspired songwriter J. D. "Jay" Miller to write the 1952 answer song "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels", which became the first hit single for pioneer female country vocalist Kitty Wells.) Other hits for Thompson followed in quick succession in the 1950s and 1960s.

From 1947 to 1964, he recorded for Capitol Records, then joined Warner Bros. Records, where he remained from 1966 through 1967. From 1968 through 1980, he recorded for Dot Records and its successors, ABC Dot and MCA Records. In 1997, Thompson released Hank Thompson and Friends, a collection of solo tracks and duets with some of country music's most popular performers. In 2000, he released a new album, Seven Decades, on the Hightone label. The title reflected his recording history from the 1940s to 2000s.

Born in Waco, Texas, United States, Thompson was interested in music from an early age, and won several amateur harmonica contests. He decided to pursue his musical talent after serving in the United States Navy in World War II as a radioman and studying electrical engineering at Princeton University before his discharge. He had intended to continue those studies on the GI Bill following his 1946 discharge, and return to Waco. Later that year, after having regional hits with his first single "Whoa Sailor" for Globe Records, Dallas (Globe 124) and almost simultaneously "California Women" for another Dallas label (Blue Bonnet 123), he chose to pursue a full-time musical career.

Henry William Thompson (September 3, 1925 – November 6, 2007) was an American country music singer-songwriter and musician whose career spanned seven decades.