Honky-Tonk

Honky-Tonk lies at the heart of country music. It's all about smoky bars, red-eyed crowds, and loud, loud music (to paraphrase a classic Joe Maphis song), and it's a style that's been the country music standard ever since it first emerged. Though electric guitars were first pioneered in Western Swing bands during the 1930s, it was Honky-Tonk artists like Ernest Tubb who brought them onto the Grand Ole Opry stage and made them acceptable to eastern audiences. Tubb was one of the all-time Honky-Tonk greats, thanks to his deep gravelly voice and songs like "Walking the Floor Over You" and "Waltz Across Texas." But Hank Williams is the one who truly changed the standard of country songwriting with such indelible tunes as "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" and "Honky-Tonk Blues." Hank and contemporaries of his like Lefty Frizzell and Webb Pierce dominated the country charts during the early 1950s, until the arrival of Rockabilly singers led by Elvis Presley. Since then, Honky-Tonk has survived in the music of George Jones, Johnny Paycheck, Merle Haggard, and many other great singers. Such '80s singers as George Strait, John Anderson, and Randy Travis all sang fairly straight-up Honky-Tonk, and the whole New Country scene of the '90s is based in varying degrees on the core Honky-Tonk sound. Tracy Byrd, Sammy Kershaw, and Alan Jackson are some of the better Honky-Tonkers of the present day.