Hank Williams recorded “Mind Your Own Business” at Castle Studio in Nashville in early March 1949. Discographies split between March 1 and March 2, but either way, his son Randall Hank Williams was born on May 26, less than three months later. The record came out that July and became a top-10 country hit. It never reached No. 1.
Thirty-seven years later, Hank Williams Jr. got it there. And in 1988, he sat down on the set of Ralph Emery’s Nashville Now and played it with nothing but an acoustic guitar, with Waylon Jennings and Merle Kilgore there with him.
Four voices, four cities
The 1986 version did not start as a big plan. According to accounts of the sessions, Hank Jr. cut it during the sessions for his Montana Cafe album, and producer Jim Ed Norman did not hear it as a single on its own. Warner Bros. had been asking for an “event record,” something that paired Hank Jr. with famous names. Norman suggested this song could be it.
The guests were never in the same room. Norman recorded Willie Nelson in Chicago. Co-producer Barry Beckett traveled to New York to record Reverend Ike, the New York evangelist, at Atlantic Studios, then to Las Vegas for Reba McEntire and to North Hollywood for Tom Petty. Engineers then blended all five voices into one record.
Reverend Ike was surprised to be asked at all. He agreed to sing, but he begged off the verse he had been assigned, the one about preaching. Willie Nelson ended up singing it instead. Beckett later said the preacher was the most fun of the whole project to work with.
The record reached No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart on December 27, 1986, and stayed there for two weeks. It was Hank Jr.’s ninth No. 1 single. Reba, Willie, Petty and Reverend Ike were not credited on the chart, even though each of them sang a verse.
Just a guitar on Nashville Now
By 1988 the song belonged to Hank Jr. as much as to his father. On Nashville Now, the live weeknight talk show Ralph Emery hosted on The Nashville Network, Hank Williams Jr. shared the set with Waylon Jennings and Merle Kilgore. One account dates the episode to November 1988.
Hank Jr. played “Mind Your Own Business” acoustic, stripped of the five-voice production that had made it a hit. Accounts of the clip differ on how much Waylon sang on that number. What they agree on is what came next: Waylon and Hank Jr. sang “The Conversation” together.
The song they wrote about his father
“The Conversation” was written by Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams Jr. and Waylon’s longtime drummer Richie Albright. It is built as a talk between the two singers about Hank Williams Sr. It first appeared on Hank Jr.’s 1979 album Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound, then became a single in 1983 on Waylon’s duets album Waylon and Company, where it reached No. 15.
The bond behind it went back years. Waylon was about 12 years older. In his autobiography, he recalled Hank Jr. touring with him at around 18, riding on Waylon’s bus while his mother, Audrey Williams, kept a close watch on him. Waylon wrote that Hank Jr. “has always been like my little brother.”
Waylon also wrote that the song pushed Hank Jr. to face things about his parents’ marriage he had never really considered: that Hank and Audrey loved each other hard and hurt each other badly, and that nothing their son could have done would have changed it.
What happened after
Waylon Jennings died in 2002. “The Conversation” was finally certified Gold by the RIAA on October 10, 2024, about 45 years after it first came out. Hank Williams Jr. is still on the road, and in 2026 he was still playing shows across the country.
Do you remember watching Nashville Now in those years? Tell us which night you never forgot.