Being anybody the "third," except perhaps royalty where you take a name of your own choosing upon ascending the throne, can be quite the burden. Not only do you have to live up the expectations of being your father's son; you carry the added burden of his father's achievements around on your shoulders too. I've always looked at people saddled with that type of burden with some pity, wondering what kind of lives they can ever carve out for themselves when others have already tried to dictate who and what they will become right from the word go.
Perhaps that sympathy is mitigated by the fact that some who are bequeathed their grandfather's name also end up having a few million dollars or pounds placed at their disposal in compensation. At the very least it's sufficient to pay for any therapy the may require. Of course some are given a far less tangible inheritance, though one which is even more daunting to live up to than wealth: a reputation. Even children of famous people who don't share their parent's given name often have a hard time living up to expectations created by the accomplishments of the their family's previous generations.
Some talents are simply akin to lightning strikes, though, and are not genetic traits to be passed along from parent to child. Genius, in whatever form it might take, is not an inherent right. Intelligence may be something families share in the same way similar shaped noses will show up in generation after generation. But the circumstances which create a person's ability to perceive the world in a singular enough fashion that the impact of their actions endures for eras to come are usually as unique as the individual who lives with them.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s Hank Williams changed popular music forever. He was among the first artists to combine all of the various cultural influences in popular music (Anglo/Irish/Scottish-rooted country music; African American blues; French and Spanish Cajun from New Orleans) while in the process paving the way for the likes of Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and all of the other early rock and roll stars of the mid-to-late '50s. Songs like "Move It On Over," "Hey Hey Good Lookin'," and "Jambalaya," to name but a few, not only influenced future generations of musicians, but are still being played and appreciated sixty years after they were written.
Whatever inspired his greatness, however, wasn't passed along to his son. Hank Williams Jr., who although a capable musician has never shown the same spark of originality nor the willingness to experiment with content and form that marked his father's work. So when I heard Jr.'s son, Hank Williams III, had in turn become a musician, I really wasn't interested. It wasn't until I started to hear rumours of something called "hellbilly," a combination of punk, country and Cajun with occasional forays into speed metal, of which this third-generation Hank seemed to be a nexus, that my ears perked up.
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