Jett Williams

She’s the lovechild and only daughter of late, great American country music icon Hank Williams and she’s coming to Australia.

The product of a brief relationship between marriages with Hank and Nashville secretary Bobbie Webb Jett, Antha Belle Jett was born on January 6, 1953 – five days after her father died.

Jett’s story has all the ingredients of a great country song but for her, it’s real life.

Williams, who’s widely recognised as one of the most significant and influential American singer-songwriters of the 20th century, had a string of hits including Your Cheatin’ Heart, Kaw-Liga, Cold, Cold Heart and Take These Chains From My Heart. Ironically, among the tracks laid down at his final recording session in September 1952 was the prophetic I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive.

Jett didn’t find out who her father was until the early 1980s, and a legal battle followed. To say Hank Williams Jr was not keen to welcome her to the family fold is somewhat of an understatement. It wasn’t until 1985 that the courts recognised her as Hank’s only daughter and with it granted her a 50 per cent share of his estate, from 1985, when the claim was lodged.

All the while, Jett pursued her ambition of becoming a country singer like her dad, and has performed with his band members, the Drifting Cowboys, on a number of occasions singing his songs.

In 1990, she published her biography, Ain’t Nothin’ As Sweet As My Baby.

This is Jett’s first visit to Australia and she’s keen to meet fans of her father’s, and make some new friends herself in the land Down Under.