Tough Times In The Country For Jett Williams

Jett Williams says the 2-inch scar on her right wrist looks like a sea horse.

Given her country-song life, it might as well be a question mark.

Williams, the central figure in Nashville's juiciest family feud, is the long-lost daughter of country-music giant Hank Williams Sr. She's the child of Williams and Bobbie Jett, a Nashville secretary.

Williams, 37, has the delicately sculpted jaw line and thin lips of daddy Hank, the bedeviled author - he died of hard living at age 29 in 1953 - of such classics as ``Your Cheatin' Heart'' and `I Saw the Light.''

``One lady told me, `I looked in your eyes when you sang, and I saw a ghost,'' said Williams, whose 23-city tour to promote her new book, ``Ain't Nothing as Sweet as My Baby'' (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), included a stop yesterday in Seattle.

The book, written with the help of Pamela Thomas, a Harcourt Brace editor, is a dramatic recounting of a story that, if it were not documented in the courts, would be unbelievable.

``You can take country music out of this and the name `Hank Williams Sr.,' and it's still a good story,'' Williams said.

Jett Williams was born Antha Belle Jett on Jan. 6, 1953. It was five days after Hank Sr. fell asleep in the back seat of his Cadillac and never woke up. Alcohol, painkillers and years of one-night gigs killed him.

The baby, according to an earlier arrangement, was handed over to Lillian Stone, Hank Williams' mother. She died two years later, and the child was adopted and grew up as Cathy Louise Deupree in Mobile, Ala.

The first bombshell came when Jett was 21, when she was left money by Hank Williams' mother. Years later, a decisive piece of evidence would be exhumed: a document, drawn up Hank Williams and Bobbie Jett, when Jett was six months pregnant, on the care of the as-yet unborn child.

``That was the smoking gun,'' says Keith Adkinson, Jett Williams' attorney, manager, husband and the man who rediscovered the document.

Adkinson came into the picture in 1984, when Williams was married to another man. The couple would marry in 1986. Adkinson successfully led the fight to establish Jett as an heir to the Hank Williams Sr. estate.

Despite her legal victories, Jett Williams has yet to be embraced by the country-music establishment. Hank Williams Jr., who fought her attempts to establish her relationship with his father, refuses to speak with her.

Jett declines to take potshots at her famous half-brother, and says she'd like to sit down with him privately and talk over the situation. Adkinson says he's convinced that the powerful Junior has made sure doors have been closed in Nashville as Jett continues to search for a recording deal.

Liars, cheats and heroes people her book. It's essentially the tale of a person fighting to prove her identity against the colorful backdrop of country music and its bevy of larger-than-life characters. The narrative is conversational in tone, nothing fancy.

And thank the country-and-western gods for an 11-page chronology at the back of the 322-page book. Baby Jett's saga is nothing if not byzantine.

The story seems a natural for the big screen, and Adkinson and Williams are negotiating with a Hollywood producer, the same one who made ``Coal Miner's Daughter.''

For the past year, Jett Williams has been performing with a band that includes two members of her father's backup musicians, the Drifting Cowboys. She admits that at this stage of her musical career, she just ``plays along'' on the guitar. She takes the stage wearing a white cowboy hat, just as her lanky father did.

``A lot of people have shown up out of curiosity,'' she says of her 40 shows in the past year. ``But I've got to do something on my own to get the invitation to come back again. And that invitation has to come to Jett Williams.''