Hank’s Jambalaya

I chopped the ingredients, hummed and sang the lyrics as I whirled around the kitchen.

Goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me oh, my oh!

I diced onions, green bell peppers, celery and smoked sausage. I sliced fuzzy okra. I minced garlic. I staged a dozen or so ingredients on the kitchen counter next to my stove. I tossed the sausage, onions, peppers, and celery in the sizzling oil of a big enameled cast iron pot — a ruby red Le Creuset pot passed down to my husband when his father died in 2009. All the while, I kept singing.

Jambalaya and a Crawfish Pie and a Filé Gumbo.

I suddenly got that weird feeling that someone was looking at me. I turned and saw my husband standing on the other side of the kitchen island with a puzzled look on his face. He knew I was attempting to make Jambalaya and had walked into the kitchen to see how it was going. “I’ve never heard that song in my life,” he said. “Oh come on,” I said. “It’s Hank! Hank Williams! You know — the king of Country Music!” “We didn’t listen to Hank Williams growing up in the Nagle house. We listened to Simon and Garfunkel and things like that.” I sang one more line to him playfully, as my head bobbed up and down with the melody.

Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun, on the bayou.

“Okay, that does sound familiar to me, but I don’t think I’ve ever realized that the voice was Hank Williams’ or that the song was about Jambalaya,” he admitted. I rolled my eyes.

I’m a bit of a Hank Williams fan girl. Several of his songs are on my phone’s playlist, and I listen to them as I drive, run or work in the yard. I love his voice. I love his music. His songs trigger memories of my father singing Hank’s standards like “Move It On Over” and the yodelly tune, “Lovesick Blues.” Maybe I love his music because of the nostalgia his songs bring, or maybe I just have an old, old soul — probably the latter. I recently spent a few days at my stepfather and mother’s home in Ohoopee, and one morning, we listened to one of my “Old Country and Western” playlists on Spotify, and Hank came on singing about the Louisiana bayou with that great fiddle music brushed in here and there. I noticed my mother was smiling and keeping rhythm with her foot.

“Robert Louis loved that song. I can hear him singing it now. He could sing all the Hank Williams songs,” she said, referring to one of her older brothers, Robert Jarriel, who died in 1993. “That one was popular when I was a teenager.” The song’s melody stuck in my brain like an ear worm (as Hank Williams songs tend to do) and I hummed it in my head for several days after hearing it. I think that’s where the idea came from. I returned to Northwest Georgia and decided to make Jambalaya from scratch for my husband and me. I found a recipe and deployed my husband to the grocery store to pick up a few items.

The flavor palette was extraordinary and filled the kitchen with wonderful aromas as the ingredients fused together. Smoked sausage. Onions. Bell peppers. Garlic. Celery. Okra. Crushed tomatoes. Chicken Stock. Rice. Oregano. Shrimp.

Fearing that it would be too spicy for me, I only added half of the amount of Cajun seasoning and red pepper flakes that the recipe suggested. The

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end result was still pretty fiery and made my face sweat, but it was chock full of New Orleans flavor.

“I like it,” my husband announced with a mouth full of food. “It’s definitely different than our usual dinners, but it’s pretty good.”

“Good,” I said, “because we are going to be eating it all week. The recipe made enough to feed a small army.”

Hank Williams’ 1952 anthem, “Jambalaya,” is about life, parties, Cajun food and drinking liquor out of fruit jars. It’s about being happy in the moment and celebrating the people you love. Most of all, it’s just a fun song to sing as you try your hand at cooking Creole cuisine. Thanks, Hank! Me oh, my oh!