Ernest Tubb

Ernest Tubb was foundational to the honky-tonk sound, building his early style on devoted imitation of Jimmie Rodgers's blue yodels: a debt he openly acknowledged, aided by Rodgers's widow Carrie, who championed Tubb's career. Rodgers's music carried strong blues feeling absorbed from the shared world of Black and white musicians in the early-twentieth-century South, and Tubb inherited that strain. His pioneering use of the electric guitar in country music paralleled the urbanization happening simultaneously in Chicago and Texas blues, though his mature honky-tonk voice moved well beyond simple Rodgers imitation.