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| Handsome fella... |
Think of him as the bridge between the original generation and the modern one...
Ernest Dale Tubb was born in 1914 in the area around Crisp, Texas (southeast of Dallas, fwiw) to sharecropper middle management (his father oversaw a 300-acre cotton farm). He fell in love with and learned music on his own, mostly by listening to the Jimmie Rodgers records he pinched his dimes to buy (I covered Rodgers in an earlier chapter). By his late teens, Tubb had nailed down Rodgers style enough to get a sliver of time and too little money for performing on San Antonio’s KONO radio station, but he still needed day jobs (e.g., digging ditches for the Works Program Administration) to stay whole. Things could have carried on like that till Tubb met his maker, but two events changed his life.
First, he cold-called Rodgers’ widow, Carrie Rodgers, in 1936 (three years after his passing) to ask for an autographed photo of his idol when he found her name in a local phone book. Touched by his sincerity, she invited him over. A friendship developed and, "impressed by his friendly personality and heartfelt singing,” Carrie Rodgers became his mentor and champion, listening to his radio broadcasts to give him pointers and making introductions to connections at record labels. She got him signed with RCA, but they did little to promote him – a defensible choice given first singles like “The Passing of Jimmie Rodgers” and “Jimmie Rodgers’ Last Thoughts.”
Tubb’s second life-changing moment came when some undiscussed health issue led to a tonsillectomy in 1939. The procedure lowered his voice, putting both yodeling, higher pitches and a career as a Jimmie Rodgers imitator out of reach. After some time to heal, write some songs and rework his vocals, he approached Decca Records – again, with Carrie Rodgers making introductions. The label picked him up and sent him to Houston to record some new sides – “Blue Eyed Elaine” and “I’ll Get Along Somehow” – giving Tubb his first taste of success. Carrie Rodgers pulled some more strings and helped him to his first full-time gig as a musician: the “Gold Chain Troubadour,” named after Gold Chain Flour, a product put out by the sponsor of Fort Worth’s KGKO, Universal Mills. All that made him big enough to join package tours with other up-and-comers in mid-century country like Bob Wills and Roy Acuff, but his world changed in 1941 when Tubb wrote and released, “Walking the Floor Over You.”
The single sold 400,000 copies right away (though it wouldn’t go gold until 1965) and, in just two years time, scored Tubb an invite to play the Grand Ole Opry. Whether his name proceeded him or his just killed it that night, that debut performance received three standing ovations. From there, the rest is country music history.
Tubb became a staple of the Grand Ole Opry for the next four decades. He also toured like a damn maniac, playing north of 300 shows per year for 30 years, then 200+ for ten years thereafter, and traveling the globe. Fans flocked to his shows and Tubb reciprocated their affection by sticking around shows until he signed every autograph and shook every last hand. Collaborations came thick and fast and included the odd crossover – e.g.., The Andrews Sisters (profiled here) in 1949 with “Don’t Rob Another Man’s Castle” and “I’m Bitin’ My Fingernails Thinking of You” – but Tubb was mostly a devotee of and an apostle for country music. As he told one interviewer:
“Country music over the years has been the most successful type and I neither intend to knock it or to give it up. There are those who cross over the bridge and mix their music, but I personally have no desire to do this. Country music is good. It is humble, simple, and honest and relaxed. It is a way of life. It is not confined to any segment of the country. We see young faces and we see old faces--and many in-between faces. Therefore, country music must have a general appeal to all ages, to all sections. I like it, the people like it, and I'll stick to it.” (4)
Ernest Dale Tubb was born in 1914 in the area around Crisp, Texas (southeast of Dallas, fwiw) to sharecropper middle management (his father oversaw a 300-acre cotton farm). He fell in love with and learned music on his own, mostly by listening to the Jimmie Rodgers records he pinched his dimes to buy (I covered Rodgers in an earlier chapter). By his late teens, Tubb had nailed down Rodgers style enough to get a sliver of time and too little money for performing on San Antonio’s KONO radio station, but he still needed day jobs (e.g., digging ditches for the Works Program Administration) to stay whole. Things could have carried on like that till Tubb met his maker, but two events changed his life.
First, he cold-called Rodgers’ widow, Carrie Rodgers, in 1936 (three years after his passing) to ask for an autographed photo of his idol when he found her name in a local phone book. Touched by his sincerity, she invited him over. A friendship developed and, "impressed by his friendly personality and heartfelt singing,” Carrie Rodgers became his mentor and champion, listening to his radio broadcasts to give him pointers and making introductions to connections at record labels. She got him signed with RCA, but they did little to promote him – a defensible choice given first singles like “The Passing of Jimmie Rodgers” and “Jimmie Rodgers’ Last Thoughts.”
Tubb’s second life-changing moment came when some undiscussed health issue led to a tonsillectomy in 1939. The procedure lowered his voice, putting both yodeling, higher pitches and a career as a Jimmie Rodgers imitator out of reach. After some time to heal, write some songs and rework his vocals, he approached Decca Records – again, with Carrie Rodgers making introductions. The label picked him up and sent him to Houston to record some new sides – “Blue Eyed Elaine” and “I’ll Get Along Somehow” – giving Tubb his first taste of success. Carrie Rodgers pulled some more strings and helped him to his first full-time gig as a musician: the “Gold Chain Troubadour,” named after Gold Chain Flour, a product put out by the sponsor of Fort Worth’s KGKO, Universal Mills. All that made him big enough to join package tours with other up-and-comers in mid-century country like Bob Wills and Roy Acuff, but his world changed in 1941 when Tubb wrote and released, “Walking the Floor Over You.”
The single sold 400,000 copies right away (though it wouldn’t go gold until 1965) and, in just two years time, scored Tubb an invite to play the Grand Ole Opry. Whether his name proceeded him or his just killed it that night, that debut performance received three standing ovations. From there, the rest is country music history.
Tubb became a staple of the Grand Ole Opry for the next four decades. He also toured like a damn maniac, playing north of 300 shows per year for 30 years, then 200+ for ten years thereafter, and traveling the globe. Fans flocked to his shows and Tubb reciprocated their affection by sticking around shows until he signed every autograph and shook every last hand. Collaborations came thick and fast and included the odd crossover – e.g.., The Andrews Sisters (profiled here) in 1949 with “Don’t Rob Another Man’s Castle” and “I’m Bitin’ My Fingernails Thinking of You” – but Tubb was mostly a devotee of and an apostle for country music. As he told one interviewer:
“Country music over the years has been the most successful type and I neither intend to knock it or to give it up. There are those who cross over the bridge and mix their music, but I personally have no desire to do this. Country music is good. It is humble, simple, and honest and relaxed. It is a way of life. It is not confined to any segment of the country. We see young faces and we see old faces--and many in-between faces. Therefore, country music must have a general appeal to all ages, to all sections. I like it, the people like it, and I'll stick to it.” (4)
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| The storefront that launched 1,000 careers. |
In 1947, he opened the Ernest Tubb Record Shop at 720 Commerce Street in downtown Nashville, just a couple blocks from the Grand Ole Opry (which, for the record, just closed). Each Saturday night after the Opry wrapped, Tubb and the record shop hosted a live radio show called Midnite Jamboree as a kind of night cap for the night owls. The fact it doubled as a platform for up-and-coming country music artists gets to what makes Ernest Tubb a legend of the genre. From his Country Music Hall of Fame bio:
“The major stars Tubb boosted in these and other ways established his reputation as one of the industry’s most generous and selfless performers. Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Skeeter Davis, Jack Greene, George Hamilton IV, Stonewall Jackson, Loretta Lynn, Cal Smith, Carl Smith, Hank Snow, Justin Tubb (Tubb’s first child), Charlie Walker, the Wilburn Brothers, and Hank Williams all owed various degrees of thanks to Tubb.” (3)
Despite a famously unconventional voice - “He told an interviewer that 95% of the men in bars would hear his music on the juke box and say to their girlfriends, ‘I can sing better than him,’ and Tubb added they would be right” (1) – that loyalty and affection cut both ways: Tubb could not only collaborate with anyone, he could stock in his band with the best talent. He formed the original line-up of his Texas Troubadours when he started at the Grand Ole Opry in 1943, but many of the best musicians in mid-century country joined and passed through his various line-ups over the years – e.g., steel guitarists Jerry Byrd and Tommy “Butterball” Paige, pedal steel guitarists Buddy Emmons and Buddy Charleton, the “lightning-fingered” Leon Rhodes, and even his first guitarist, Jimmy Short, the man responsible for the single-string guitar picking sound that made Tubb famous. Speaking of firsts, he had more than his share:
“So many ‘firsts’ are associated with Tubb that it is easy to miss a few: he was the first country artist to popularize electric guitar accompaniment, the first major purveyor of honky-tonk music, and the first country musician to headline a performance at Carnegie Hall.” (4)
And he opened that Carnegie Hall show with the famous line, “My, my, this place sure could hold a lot of hay.”
Tubb toured at the same breakneck pace, or close to it, right up to the end, i.e., circa 1980 when he picked up emphysema. He managed to tour for a couple years after by giving up drinking and smoking and carrying an oxygen tank on his tour bus, but the disease eventually hauled him down. A couple years after his August 15, 1982 farewell appearance at the Grand Ole Opry, Ernest Tubb left this earth for the big honky-tonk in the sky in 1984.
Five Points of Interest
1) Tubb Really Loved Jimmie Rodgers
“He saved his dimes in order to buy each Rodgers release and painstakingly taught himself to play the guitar in his idol's style. Tubb said that when Rodgers died in 1933, ‘I thought my world had come to an end.’ He was wrong about that--his world had not ended, but was only beginning to unfold before him.” (4)
2) It Wasn’t Just That His Voice Was Flat
When Tubb recorded his singles - and, to carry forward a quote above, that was the Andrews Sisters crossing over to country, not Tubb to pop – the three sisters had stand on boxes to get close enough to the mic (i.e., he was tall). But Maxene Andrews (the nice one), also noted this:
“He sang different than anybody I've ever heard. He sang the melody of the song, but the timing was different. It wasn't like we were used to...you sing eight bars, and then you sing eight bars, and then you sing eight bars. Not with him. He just sang eight bars, ten bars, eleven bars, and then stopped, whatever it was. So, we'd just start to follow him, and then got paid on 750,000 records sold that never came above the Mason-Dixon Line!” (1)
3) In the Movies
Tubb appeared in a number of movies early in his career – e.g., The Fighting Buckaroo, Riding West and Jamboree (and, later, on his own TV show) – but his role in the Loretta Lynn bio-pic, Coal Miner’s Daughter, along with Acuff and Minnie Pearl, seems most fitting. He recorded some famous duets with Lynn, including “Sweet Thang” and “Mr. and Mrs. Used to Be.”
4) The Super Collaboration
In 1979, a label called Cachet Records (of which Tubb owned a piece) released a collection of duets titled The Legend and the Legacy that had Tubb recording with a “who’s who” of contemporary country musicians, including “Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, Vern Gosdin, Johnny Cash, Charlie Rich, Marty Robbins, Waylon Jennings, George Jones, Merle Haggard and many, many more.” It sold out fast. And when another label, First Generations, re-released the same to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the original, it sold out just as fast.
5) Even Saints Sin
In 1957, Tubb fired a pistol at a man he mistook for a producer named Jim Denny in Nashville’s National Life Building. He missed, fortunately, and was arrested only for public drunkenness.
All that and I neglected to mention Ernest Tubb was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1965 and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. And all the future stars of honky-tonk he inspired – e.g., Buck Owens, Ray Price, Webb Pierce, Lefty Frizzell and more recently Vern Gosdin, Mark Chesnutt and Tracy Byrd – but this was a lot to squeeze in.
Sources (with a numbering system that connects the quotes above and below to each)
Wikipedia – Ernest Tubb (1)
AlanCackett.com Bio (2)
Country Music Hall of Fame Bio (3)
MusicianGuide.com bio (4)
About the Sampler
“His style—a spare, personalized brand of honky-tonk music that featured a sole electric lead guitar playing straight melody—made him distinctive, recognizable, and, during his heyday, oft-imitated.” (3)
I’d call Tubb the first country music purist that I, you know, got. I couldn’t “almost smell the booze” as Alan Cackett put it, but his “drawling, almost narrative type of singing” translates well enough for someone raised on rock. I still managed to limit the sampler to 20 songs that do a fair job of representing his sound, as well as all the above. In the order I added them, and excluding songs already linked to above:
“Mean Mama Blues,” “Tomorrow Never Comes,” “Filipino Baby” (he meant well), the hard-drinkin’ “Drivin’ Nails in Coffin” (live from the Opry) “Thanks a Lot,” “Pass the Booze,” “Waltz Across Texas” (a later hit/smash in Texas dance halls), “Too Old to Cut the Mustard” (with Red Foley, one of his favorite collaborators), “Let’s Say Goodbye Like We Said Hello,” “Blue Christmas,” “You Nearly Lose Your Mind,” “Half a Mind,” “Hey Mr. Bluebird,” and the wonderfully named, “Rainbow at Midnight.”
All in all, a good dude who made some good music.
“The major stars Tubb boosted in these and other ways established his reputation as one of the industry’s most generous and selfless performers. Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Skeeter Davis, Jack Greene, George Hamilton IV, Stonewall Jackson, Loretta Lynn, Cal Smith, Carl Smith, Hank Snow, Justin Tubb (Tubb’s first child), Charlie Walker, the Wilburn Brothers, and Hank Williams all owed various degrees of thanks to Tubb.” (3)
Despite a famously unconventional voice - “He told an interviewer that 95% of the men in bars would hear his music on the juke box and say to their girlfriends, ‘I can sing better than him,’ and Tubb added they would be right” (1) – that loyalty and affection cut both ways: Tubb could not only collaborate with anyone, he could stock in his band with the best talent. He formed the original line-up of his Texas Troubadours when he started at the Grand Ole Opry in 1943, but many of the best musicians in mid-century country joined and passed through his various line-ups over the years – e.g., steel guitarists Jerry Byrd and Tommy “Butterball” Paige, pedal steel guitarists Buddy Emmons and Buddy Charleton, the “lightning-fingered” Leon Rhodes, and even his first guitarist, Jimmy Short, the man responsible for the single-string guitar picking sound that made Tubb famous. Speaking of firsts, he had more than his share:
“So many ‘firsts’ are associated with Tubb that it is easy to miss a few: he was the first country artist to popularize electric guitar accompaniment, the first major purveyor of honky-tonk music, and the first country musician to headline a performance at Carnegie Hall.” (4)
And he opened that Carnegie Hall show with the famous line, “My, my, this place sure could hold a lot of hay.”
Tubb toured at the same breakneck pace, or close to it, right up to the end, i.e., circa 1980 when he picked up emphysema. He managed to tour for a couple years after by giving up drinking and smoking and carrying an oxygen tank on his tour bus, but the disease eventually hauled him down. A couple years after his August 15, 1982 farewell appearance at the Grand Ole Opry, Ernest Tubb left this earth for the big honky-tonk in the sky in 1984.
Five Points of Interest
1) Tubb Really Loved Jimmie Rodgers
“He saved his dimes in order to buy each Rodgers release and painstakingly taught himself to play the guitar in his idol's style. Tubb said that when Rodgers died in 1933, ‘I thought my world had come to an end.’ He was wrong about that--his world had not ended, but was only beginning to unfold before him.” (4)
2) It Wasn’t Just That His Voice Was Flat
When Tubb recorded his singles - and, to carry forward a quote above, that was the Andrews Sisters crossing over to country, not Tubb to pop – the three sisters had stand on boxes to get close enough to the mic (i.e., he was tall). But Maxene Andrews (the nice one), also noted this:
“He sang different than anybody I've ever heard. He sang the melody of the song, but the timing was different. It wasn't like we were used to...you sing eight bars, and then you sing eight bars, and then you sing eight bars. Not with him. He just sang eight bars, ten bars, eleven bars, and then stopped, whatever it was. So, we'd just start to follow him, and then got paid on 750,000 records sold that never came above the Mason-Dixon Line!” (1)
3) In the Movies
Tubb appeared in a number of movies early in his career – e.g., The Fighting Buckaroo, Riding West and Jamboree (and, later, on his own TV show) – but his role in the Loretta Lynn bio-pic, Coal Miner’s Daughter, along with Acuff and Minnie Pearl, seems most fitting. He recorded some famous duets with Lynn, including “Sweet Thang” and “Mr. and Mrs. Used to Be.”
4) The Super Collaboration
In 1979, a label called Cachet Records (of which Tubb owned a piece) released a collection of duets titled The Legend and the Legacy that had Tubb recording with a “who’s who” of contemporary country musicians, including “Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, Vern Gosdin, Johnny Cash, Charlie Rich, Marty Robbins, Waylon Jennings, George Jones, Merle Haggard and many, many more.” It sold out fast. And when another label, First Generations, re-released the same to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the original, it sold out just as fast.
5) Even Saints Sin
In 1957, Tubb fired a pistol at a man he mistook for a producer named Jim Denny in Nashville’s National Life Building. He missed, fortunately, and was arrested only for public drunkenness.
All that and I neglected to mention Ernest Tubb was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1965 and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. And all the future stars of honky-tonk he inspired – e.g., Buck Owens, Ray Price, Webb Pierce, Lefty Frizzell and more recently Vern Gosdin, Mark Chesnutt and Tracy Byrd – but this was a lot to squeeze in.
Sources (with a numbering system that connects the quotes above and below to each)
Wikipedia – Ernest Tubb (1)
AlanCackett.com Bio (2)
Country Music Hall of Fame Bio (3)
MusicianGuide.com bio (4)
About the Sampler
“His style—a spare, personalized brand of honky-tonk music that featured a sole electric lead guitar playing straight melody—made him distinctive, recognizable, and, during his heyday, oft-imitated.” (3)
I’d call Tubb the first country music purist that I, you know, got. I couldn’t “almost smell the booze” as Alan Cackett put it, but his “drawling, almost narrative type of singing” translates well enough for someone raised on rock. I still managed to limit the sampler to 20 songs that do a fair job of representing his sound, as well as all the above. In the order I added them, and excluding songs already linked to above:
“Mean Mama Blues,” “Tomorrow Never Comes,” “Filipino Baby” (he meant well), the hard-drinkin’ “Drivin’ Nails in Coffin” (live from the Opry) “Thanks a Lot,” “Pass the Booze,” “Waltz Across Texas” (a later hit/smash in Texas dance halls), “Too Old to Cut the Mustard” (with Red Foley, one of his favorite collaborators), “Let’s Say Goodbye Like We Said Hello,” “Blue Christmas,” “You Nearly Lose Your Mind,” “Half a Mind,” “Hey Mr. Bluebird,” and the wonderfully named, “Rainbow at Midnight.”
All in all, a good dude who made some good music.
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