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ERNEST TUBB-A DRUNKARD'S CHILD

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Tubb was born on a cotton farm near Crisp, Texas (now a ghost town in Ellis County, Texas). His father was a sharecropper, so Tubb spent his youth working on farms throughout the state. He was inspired by Jimmie Rodgers and spent his spare time learning to sing, yodel, and play the guitar. At the age of nineteen, he took a job as a singer on a San Antonio radio station. The pay was low, so Tubb also dug ditches for the Works Progress Administration and then clerked at a drug store. In 1939 he moved to San Angelo, Texas and was hired to do a 15 minute afternoon live show on radio station KGKL. He drove a beer delivery truck in order to support himself during this time. During World War II he wrote and recorded a song titled "Beautiful San Angelo". In 1936, Tubb contacted Jimmie Rodgerss widow (Rodgers died in 1933) to ask for an autographed photo. A friendship developed and she was instrumental in getting Tubb a recording contract with RCA. His first two records were unsuccessful. A tonsillectomy in 1939 affected his singing style, so he turned to songwriting. In 1940, he switched to Decca records to try singing again and it was his sixth Decca release with the single "Walking the Floor Over You" that brought Tubb to stardom. Tubb joined the Grand Ole Opry in February, 1943 and put together his band, the "Texas Troubadours." He remained a regular on the radio show for four decades, and hosted the Midnight Jamboree after it. In 1947, Tubb headlined the first Grand Ole Opry show presented in Carnegie Hall in New York City. In 1965, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and in 1970, Tubb was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Tubb always surrounded himself with some of Nashville's best musicians. Jimmy Short, his first guitarist in the Troubadours, is credited with the Tubb sound of single-string guitar picking. From about 1943 to 1948, Short featured clean, clear riffs throughout Tubb's songs. Other well-known musicians to either travel with Tubb as band members or record on his records were steel guitarist Jerry Byrd and Tommy "Butterball" Paige, who replaced Short as Tubb's lead guitarist in 1947. In 1949, Billy Byrd joined the Troubadours, and brought jazzy riffs to the instrumental interludes, especially the four-note riff at the end of his guitar solos that would become synonymous with Tubb's songs. Actually a jazz musician, Byrd - no relation to Jerry - remained with Tubb until 1959. Another Tubb musician was actually his producer, Owen Bradley. Bradley played piano on many of Tubb's recordings from the 1950s, but Tubb wanted him to sound like Moon Mullican, the honky-tonk piano great of that era. The classically trained Bradley tried, but couldn't quite match the sound, so Tubb said Bradley was "half as good" as Moon. Therefore, when Tubb called out Bradley's name at the start of one of the piano interludes, the singer always referred to him as "Half-Moon Bradley." In the 1960s, Tubb was well known for having one of the best bands in country music history. The band included lightning-fingered Leon Rhodes, who later appeared on TV's Hee Haw as the guitarist in the show's band. Buddy Emmons, another pedal steel guitar virtuoso, began with Tubb in about 1958 and lasted through the early 1960s. Emmons went on to create a steel-guitar manufacturing company that bears his name. Ernest Tubb never possessed the best voice. In fact, he missed some notes horribly on some recordings. When Tubb was recording "You Don't Have to Be a Baby to Cry" in 1949 and tried to hit a low note, Red Foley, his duet partner at the time, was sitting in the booth when somebody asked, "I bet you wish you could hit that low note." Foley replied, "I bet Ernest wishes he could hit that low note." Tubb actually mocked his own singing. He told an interviewer that 95% of the men in bars would hear his music on the juke box and reply to their girlfriends, "I can sing better than him," and Tubb added that they would be right. But Tubb inspired one of the most devoted fan bases of any country artist and his fans followed him throughout his career even until the 1970s when Tubb could only croak his songs and his band was probably the least talented bunch of Troubadours. However, Tubb would "bring the house down" every time he broke into "Waltz Across Texas" or another favorite.

Category: Music
Uploaded: December 5th, 2008 @ 5:24 am
Author: oldcountrytunes

Length: 03:01
Rating: Whole StarWhole StarWhole StarWhole StarWhole Star
Views: 491

Tags: country ernest music tubb

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