Ernest Tubb

Songwriter

• Born: February 9, 1914
• Birthplace: Crisp, Texas
• Died: September 6, 1984
• Place of death: Nashville, Tennessee

American country singer-songwriter, bandleader, and guitarist

Tubb was a key transitional figure in country music’s evolution from self-accompanied singer-guitarists in the mold of his idol, Jimmie Rodgers, to singer-bandleaders accompanied by amplified instruments. Melodically simple and lyrically direct, many of his songs became country standards. He was influential in making Nashville a recording center and acted as mentor to singers ranging from Hank Williams to Loretta Lynn.

Member of The Texas Troubadours

The Life

Ernest Dale Tubb was the son of a Texas cotton farmer. Though the world of his childhood offered few luxuries, a phonograph player was an exception. The recordings of Jimmie Rodgers were immensely popular, and Tubb first heard them in 1928. Soon, like young men across the South, Tubb was singing Rodgers’s songs and attempting to master his so-called blue yodel. What set him apart was geographic good fortune: He was in San Antonio, Texas, where Rodgers’s widow lived, when he launched his career. Carrie Rodgers liked Tubb’s renditions of her late husband’s songs and used her influence to get him on the Bluebird label, where Tubb made his first recordings in 1936.

His initial recordings, reverently imitative of his idol, were unsuccessful, but a change in Tubb’s voice—one he blamed on a tonsillectomy—forced him to develop his own distinctive singing style and to write songs to suit it. After a move to the Decca label in 1940, Tubb scored a major hit a year later with “Walking the Floor over You.” During and after World War II, he recorded many songs related to wartime separation and longed-for reunions, most successfully “Soldier’s Last Letter.” After the war, Tubb would open the Ernest Tubb Record Shop and take the first Grand Ole Opry troupe to Carnegie Hall, both in 1947. He launched a popular “live” radio show following Grand Ole Opry broadcasts called The Midnight Jamboree, and he fronted a band, the Texas Troubadours, named for his old tag. In the mid-1960’s, Tubb hosted a syndicated television show, even though his hit-making prime was past. He and his Texas Troubadours remained a popular touring act well into the 1970’s, but in 1984 Tubb lost his long-running battle with emphysema.

The Music

Tubb’s rise followed the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, the reopening of taverns, and the widespread dissemination of jukeboxes to offer their patrons entertainment. It was an ideal environment for songs like “Walking the Floor over You,” songs which were unassuming in their production and delivered with an Everyman’s relaxed confidence. America’s entry into World War II was a disaster from which the so-called big bands never recovered, among them Tubb’s rival, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. But Tubb’s bare-bones production in the 1940’s meant loss of drafted personnel was no crisis, so long as he could find a competent electric guitarist to accompany him. After World War II, he would build a bigger band and add drums, but the jazzy “take-off” solos of Western Swing were anathema to Tubb, and his band always hewed close to the melody. The baleful, barely on-pitch sincerity of Tubb’s voice epitomized what some ears found intolerable in country music. Yet Tubb’s magic was working his limitations in ways that told his fans he was one of them. They rewarded him with a loyalty that extended far beyond his hit-making prime.

“Walking the Floor over You.”Widely considered an exemplary first step toward a style of country that would later be labeled honky-tonk, this recording offered an amplified guitar accompanying Tubb in the straightforward, no-frills manner that characterized most of his future recordings. Electric guitars were not entirely new to country recordings by 1941, but they had tended to appear in the more jazz-tinged context of Western swing bands. Here, Tubb was responding to a jukebox distributor’s telling him his records needed to be louder. Tubb’s acoustic rhythm guitar still bears the imprint of his idol, Jimmie Rodgers, but his plank-plain vocals lack the honeyed drawl that was Rodgers’s calling card. Instead, they offer the audible smile that was Tubb’s best defense against his severe limitations as singer. That, coupled with a bounce that owed more to swing than Tubb may have consciously known and lyrics that were a comic—but not corny—portrayal of a domestic breakup, made the song a hit when released and, in time, Tubb’s theme song and a much-covered country standard.

“Soldier’s Last Letter.”As World War II raged, this song topped the so-called folk chart for four weeks in 1944 and even made it to number twenty-nine on the pop side. It may have been the last song of this nature to be so hugely successful. Country music has, more than other genres, retained both maudlin and patriotic themes to this day, but this song is clearly of another era. Even in 1944, it was a throwback to songs like Rodgers’s “The Soldier’s Sweetheart,” though the patriotism of Tubb’s dead soldier is underscored more than that of Rodgers. As melodically simple as anything Tubb recorded, its lyrics, penned by an army sergeant, are the contents of a soldier’s letter to his mother. The fact that the letter is unsigned reveals that her son died in combat. To call this a tearjerker is an understatement. Yet the success of this song in its time—it was Tubb’s greatest chart success—speaks volumes of the era and makes it a cornerstone of Tubb’s career. Not surprisingly, he would record other songs related to the experience of soldiers well into the era of the Vietnam conflict.

“Waltz Across Texas.”This 1965 recording was never a major chart hit, yet it became, over the remainder of Tubb’s life, a second theme song for him. Written by his nephew, Talmadge Tubb, it had the old-fashioned sound of something Tubb might have recorded in the 1940’s. He had recorded other songs related to his home state, but this one—simple, sentimental, and sounding vaguely like something Rodgers might have recorded about his adopted home state—became an understated classic.

Musical Legacy

Tubb, by dint of a winning personality and plain hard work, created a persona and legacy far exceeding his limited range as singer. (Johnny Cash would later do the same.) Tubb grew out of a musical world mapped by Jimmie Rodgers, with his “blue yodels” and “heart songs,” and Hollywood’s singing cowboys, such as Gene Autry. Tubb would forge their prewar sensibilities into a sound that drew nickels to postwar jukeboxes and that would, in time, be labeled honky-tonk. If his music sounded hopelessly dated by the 1960’s, Tubb would not waver from it, and he lived to see it celebrated by the likes of Merle Haggard and Hank Williams, Jr. His tireless touring and legendary patience with, and devotion to, his fans gave Tubb’s career as performer a longevity beyond his career as hit maker, though that was itself remarkable. In 1979, thirty-eight years after the original, a sixty-five-year-old Tubb, helped by Haggard and Charlie Daniels, climbed to number thirty-one on Billboard’s country chart with a remake of “Walking the Floor over You.”

Principal Recordings

albums (solo): Ernest Tubb Favorites, 1952; The Importance of Being Ernest, 1959; Midnight Jamboree, 1961 (with others); Family Bible, 1963; Ernest Tubb and Loretta Lynn, 1965 (with Loretta Lynn); Mr. and Mrs. Used to Be, 1965 (with Lynn); Singin’ Again, 1967 (with Lynn); Stand by Me, 1967; Great Country, 1969; If We Put Our Heads Together, 1969 (with Lynn); Ernest Tubb, 1975.

albums (with the Texas Troubadours): Jimmie Rodgers Songs, 1951; Old Rugged Cross, 1951; The Daddy of ’Em All, 1957; Ernest Tubb and the Texas Troubadours, 1960; Ernest Tubb Record Shop, 1960; On Tour, 1962; Blue Christmas, 1964; Just Call Me Lonesome, 1964; The Texas Troubadours, 1964; Thanks a Lot, 1964; Country Dance Time, 1965; Hittin’ the Road, 1965; My Pick of the Hits, 1965; By Request, 1966; Ernest Tubb Sings Country Hits, Old and New, 1966; Ernest Tubb’s Fabulous Texas Troubadours, 1966; Another Story, 1967; Country Hit Time, 1968; Ernest Tubb Sings Hank Williams, 1968; The Terrific Texas Troubadours, 1968; Let’s Turn Back the Years, 1969; Saturday Satan, Sunday Saint, 1969; Good Year for the Wine, 1970; One Sweet Hello, 1971; Baby, It’s So Hard to Be Good, 1972; Say Something Nice to Sarah, 1972; I’ve Got All the Heartache I Can Handle, 1973.

Bibliography

Kingsbury, Paul, and Alan Axelrod, eds. Country: The Music and the Musicians. New York: Abbeville Press, 1988. Rich with photographs, this book provides topical and chronological information on country music, placing honky-tonk within a larger historical context. Includes selected discography and bibliography.

Russell, Tony. Country Music Originals: The Legends and the Lost. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Russell is a British researcher of early country music who brings a refreshing and insightful perspective to his work. His two pages on Tubb may tell most readers all they need to know about the man and his music. Other miniessays on vintage country artists, both famous and obscure, provide readers with a context for measuring Tubb’s contribution to the country genre.