![]() Tee Tot died nearly penniless in a charity hospital in 1939. In a 1951 interview, Hank said this about Payne: "All the music training I ever had was from him." In another interview, he said "I learned to play the guitar from an old colored man." According to this article, sources also say that Tee Tot helped Hank overcome his extreme shyness to help him display his talents to the world. When he became Williams' mentor, he was working odd jobs in Greenville, Alabama. He moved to New Orleans as a kid, and then back to Alabama to find work as an adult. Payne, whose exact date of birth is unknown, was probably born in 1884 on a plantation in Alabama. The older singer taught him to play blues guitar and got Williams interested in blues rhythms and phrasing, which would become central to his specific style of country music. As a teenager, Williams used play his guitar on the street or on the front porch with Tee Tot. ![]() ![]() ![]() The fact that Williams was a young white musician in the Jim Crow south makes his influences even more interesting. But by all accounts, his relationships with African-American blues singers-most importantly street musician Rufus "Tee Tot" Payne-were equally significant in his musical development. As a kid, Hank Williams listened to the yodeling star Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, and Roy Acuff, some of the biggest names in country music at the time. ![]()
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