If you've got the answer, honey, I've got the time.

June 1, 2014 7:00 PM

I am looking for a recording of Hank Williams, Sr. doing the song "If You've Got The Money (I've Got The Time)." I have exhausted all the resources I can think of. Anyone out there have a clue?
posted by ronofthedead to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

here?
posted by koroshiya at 7:03 PM on June 1, 2014

Response by poster: koroshiya, that is, in fact, Lefty Frizzel. I don't know what idiot uploaded that to Grooveshark as Hank, but it's not.
posted by ronofthedead at 7:08 PM on June 1, 2014

I have The Complete Hank Williams, and there's no version of it on there.
posted by notsnot at 7:20 PM on June 1, 2014

Best answer: Frizzell is the correct spelling. The song came out in 1950 and was a huge breakout hit for Lefty. Hank would not have cut someone else's big copycat hit in the same year, and he died a year later. I'm positive he never cut it. Lefty cut it several times. It's a masterpiece of Jim Beck's Dallas studio. Beck mostly wrote the song.

Willie cut an excellent version too.
posted by spitbull at 7:31 PM on June 1, 2014 [7 favorites]

Just a point of order, Hank died in 1953 (barely), not 1951. However, Lefty toured with Hank, so it would have been a bit gauche for Hank to record a cover.
posted by notsnot at 8:02 PM on June 1, 2014 [2 favorites]

New Years Day 1953, I was being approximate with "the next year." He died about 2 years after the song went off the charts. Apologies.

The song was a dead on knock off of Hank's "Honky Tonkin'" but Lefty was a very different kind of singer. His command of melisma and less overt cry breaks and higher range basically marked the beginning of modern country singing. Hank broke on most vowels and sang with little melisma. The two cannot be mistaken for each other once you know their voices.
posted by spitbull at 8:40 PM on June 1, 2014 [3 favorites]

The encyclopedic (and engrossing) Hank Williams: The Biography, by Escott, has only one hit for "got the time," noting that Lefty Frizell's "If You've Got the Money, I've Got The Time" shared the topselling spot along with Hank's "Moanin' the Blues" at the end of the year. No other mention, not in the Sonography either.
posted by tintexas at 9:38 PM on June 1, 2014

By the way, that record features Madge Sutee, one of the few (and largely unsung) women instrumentalists who made major contributions to honky tonk style, on the piano. Arguably her jaunty, taut lines are the song's hook.

#yesallwomen!
posted by spitbull at 8:43 AM on June 2, 2014