CANTON – Pop culture history has called it “Concert That Never Was.”
But the show did go on – a pair of shows, for 4,444 people in two different audiences at a matinee and an evening performance. The concerts were on New Year’s Day in 1953 at Canton Memorial Auditorium. But, the scheduled star, famed country music singer Hank Williams, never made it to Canton to perform.
Williams, only 29, died “En Route to Show Here,” according to the front-page headline in The Canton Repository on Jan. 2, 1953. The singer died quietly from presumed heart failure while traveling to Canton…