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| Honky-tonk, from his lips to our ears. |
Sources disagree on the birth year of Clarence Albert Poindexter, but most list either 1902 or 1905. Whatever the year was, Al Dexter was born in Jacksonville, Texas. Either nothing remarkable happened in his childhood or people didn’t find anything worth mentioning, but he started playing music during the 1920s. According to Country Thang Daily, Dexter did a little recording even back then, religious numbers mostly, until something other than divine intervention pushed him to another track: “However, after a friend asked him if he wanted to “write pretty songs or make money,” he was inspired to switch to honky-tonk music.”
Dexter made the switch, but the weight of the Great Depression squeezed Dexter out of music and into the painting business. The fire still burned bright enough that he started moonlighting with an all-black band playing private clubs and square dance parties, just to keep playing. For the record, Wikipedia tweaks that narrative, saying that Dexter kept forming bands throughout the early 1930s, including the all-black ensemble because he couldn’t get white musicians to play his style of music. Once he had enough of everything in place, Dexter toured his band and sound around East Texas oil-boom towns, finally earning enough to return to a career in music.
With money he’d earned on the road, Dexter settled down, opened a tavern, named it Turner Town, and set up as the house band. With that as a base, he further refined his sound until he had something new for American audiences. From a bio on the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame's website:
“Al Dexter is considered to be one of the forefathers of the honky-tonk music style. But rather than specializing in forlorn heartache laments, he emphasized the rollicking, good-time, barrelhouse side of this country barroom genre.”
Dexter recorded a smattering of songs in the 1930s, the biggest being “New Jelly Roll Blues” (1935) and “Honky Tonk Blues” (1937). The latter slipped the phrase “honky tonk” into a song’s title for the first time and into the American musical lexicon, but he spent years struggling to write a follow-up. As the slump deepened, people at his then-label, Columbia Records, urged its president to drop him, but Art Satherley still saw potential and the sound and the act and kept him on. Dexter kept playing Turner Town and tinkering with bands until 1939, when he finally found the right mix. With his name finally clipped to Al Dexter and “his Texas Troopers” behind him, he returned to the studio to take another run at recording…and then World War II broke out.
Dexter made the switch, but the weight of the Great Depression squeezed Dexter out of music and into the painting business. The fire still burned bright enough that he started moonlighting with an all-black band playing private clubs and square dance parties, just to keep playing. For the record, Wikipedia tweaks that narrative, saying that Dexter kept forming bands throughout the early 1930s, including the all-black ensemble because he couldn’t get white musicians to play his style of music. Once he had enough of everything in place, Dexter toured his band and sound around East Texas oil-boom towns, finally earning enough to return to a career in music.
With money he’d earned on the road, Dexter settled down, opened a tavern, named it Turner Town, and set up as the house band. With that as a base, he further refined his sound until he had something new for American audiences. From a bio on the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame's website:
“Al Dexter is considered to be one of the forefathers of the honky-tonk music style. But rather than specializing in forlorn heartache laments, he emphasized the rollicking, good-time, barrelhouse side of this country barroom genre.”
Dexter recorded a smattering of songs in the 1930s, the biggest being “New Jelly Roll Blues” (1935) and “Honky Tonk Blues” (1937). The latter slipped the phrase “honky tonk” into a song’s title for the first time and into the American musical lexicon, but he spent years struggling to write a follow-up. As the slump deepened, people at his then-label, Columbia Records, urged its president to drop him, but Art Satherley still saw potential and the sound and the act and kept him on. Dexter kept playing Turner Town and tinkering with bands until 1939, when he finally found the right mix. With his name finally clipped to Al Dexter and “his Texas Troopers” behind him, he returned to the studio to take another run at recording…and then World War II broke out.
