I’ve long had a soft spot for Hank Snow. It goes back to when I was a kid. My father and my brother taught me the words to Hank Snow’s version of the Wreck of the Old 97. Even as a child I knew there were two Hanks – the Canadian one (the real Hank) who delivered a train song like nobody’s business, and then there was that other fellow, Williams. That was a time when there were (as my friend Barb recently reminded me) two kinds of music, country AND western.

Hank was a great singer and a pretty good player too and his Rainbow Ranch boys were a tight band. They had about a million records.

Hank had humble beginnings in Nova Scotia at a time when there really wasn’t much of a support system for Canadian home-grown music (Hank wasn’t the first country star to emerge from Nova Scotia though – he followed in the footsteps of the most awesome Wilf Carter AKA Montana Slim). Hank Snow went on to international fame, playing the Opry for 45 years, wearing crazy-coloured “Nudie suits” studded with rhinestones, hair lacquered back, playing a guitar with HANK SNOW across the fretboard, as if we didn’t know who he was.

They’re celebrating today in Liverpool NS at the Hank Snow Home Town Museum. Hank’s son, Rev. Jimmy Rodgers Snow is there, and Canada Post is there too, unveiling a commemorative stamp.

England’s Liverpool may have had the Beatles but Nova Scotia’s Liverpool had The Singing Ranger.