Episode Details

On August 8, 1975, a 26-year-old man tumbled nearly 500 feet down the snow-collapsed face of Ajax Peak in Montana, shattering his skull and face on solid rock. By the laws of physics he should not have survived, let alone sung again. But the man who fell was Randall Hank Williams, known as Hank Williams Jr., and the fall did not end his life. It ended his life as an impersonator of his famous father.

This episode traces one of the most visceral reinventions in modern music: how a brutal accident freed Hank Jr. from living as his father's echo and birthed the outlaw identity, Bocephus, that made him a star in his own right. We look at the long recovery, the new sound, and the defiance that defined the second act.

• The 1975 fall down Ajax Peak that nearly killed him
• Living in the shadow of Hank Williams Sr. before the accident
• How the near-death recovery birthed the Bocephus persona
• The outlaw reinvention that made him a star on his own terms