Maud Newton excerpts some of Dave Hickey's essay on Hank Williams and "The Song In Country Music." It includes this bit from Roger Miller, who is pretty much a God to me.

The only people in Nashville who learned any positive lessons from Williams's career were the songwriters and the cowboys... The songwriters, many of whom were Texans and nurtured in the culture of the laconic West, took control of country songwriting by learning the compression of Williams's craft. That craft was the primary topic of conversation among songwriters of the period. When I asked Rogert Miller what it was about Williams's songwriting that touched him, he said. "Meticulous. They're meticulous and all hooked up." When I asked him what this meant, he sang me two lines from one of his songs.