A style of popular music first played by country-music bands in Texas during the 1930s and 40s. It was loud and had a heavy beat, the bands using electric instruments. The music was associated with uprooted rural people, and the lyrics dealt chiefly with the social problems of their newly adopted urban life: job insecurity, marital stress and family dissolution. Among the earliest honky-tonk performers were Al Dexter, whose Honky Tonk Blues (1936) is the first known country song to have used the term, Rex Griffin, Ted Daffan, and Ernest Tubb, who did much to make honky tonk the predominant country-music style for a time after World War II. Since then, although such musicians as Hank Williams, Ray Price, George Jones, Moe Bandy and George Strait have preserved the honky-tonk style, it is no longer as popular. A recording of 40 representative honky-tonk songs was issued by Time-Life Records in 1983 (Honky-tonkin’, TL CW-12; with liner notes by B.C. Malone).
See also Country music.
BILL C. MALONE