Atlanta - Atlanta writer Paul Hemphill, who chronicled the blue-collar South with his memoir "Leaving Birmingham" and wrote a biography of country singer Hank Williams, died Saturday. He was 73.

Hemphill, who had cancer, had spent some time in hospice care, according to A.S. Turner & Sons funeral home.

The son of a long-distance trucker, Hemphill grew up in Birmingham, Ala., and served with the Alabama Air National Guard. He worked in public relations and newspapers, arriving in Atlanta in 1964 with the Atlanta Times.

He was hired away by the Atlanta Journal as a columnist.

During a Nieman Fellowship in 1968-69, he wrote "The Nashville Sound," which sold 75,000 copies in hardcover as a groundbreaking look at country music and the Grand Ole Opry.