Bad month for Good Music.

It is with a great sadness that I report the death of one of rock and rolls largely unsung heroes, HASIL ADKINS. Hasil was making tapes in his bedroom throughout the 50's and 60's, eventually making some "proper" recordings. He was one of the prime originators of what has become an underground craze; the one-man band. The story goes that when he first heard Hank Williams on the radio as a teen he thought old Hank was playing all the instruments himself, and singing at the same time. This encouraged Hasil to figure out how to do it, and boy did he ever. He developed a raw, humorous, and often scary rockabilly style heavily influenced by Jerry Lee Lewis. Hasil gained a lot of exposure when the Cramps covered his song "She Said", which became a concert staple for the band. He had been enjoying a resurgence in popularity in the last decade, still living in his "hunchin' shack" in some West Virginia swamp. Apparently Mr. Adkins was on the porch of said shack petting his dogs when some deranged, teenage redneck in a monster truck pulled up and rammed him. This caused him to fly some distance which caused enough injury to land him in the hospital. From what I have been able to determine he passed away in his sleep after a few days. Supposedly this little scumbag went and rammed somebody else directly after this. He deserves some kind of nasty torture. No motive is known. This comes almost a month after Billy "Bass Wolf" of Japanese garage-rock band Guitar Wolf passed away in his mid-thirties and supposedly of natural causes. The world of primitive rock and roll/garage/punk/what-have-you has lost two of it's greatest contributors.

http://www.hasiladkins.com/

http://members.tripod.com/~Hasil_Adkins/