Thanks a Lot · The Way You’re Living

Ernest Tubb had been recording for Decca Records since 1940 and was one of the label's most durable country artists by the time he entered the 1960s. His Texas Troubadours had been his working band for decades — a rotating but stylistically consistent group of musicians whose honky-tonk ensemble sound Tubb maintained through changing musical fashions with deliberate conservatism. Where Nashville's countrypolitan movement was pushing toward strings and vocal choruses, Tubb continued recording in the stripped, roadhouse style that had made him a Grand Ole Opry mainstay.

"Thanks a Lot" / "The Way You're Living," released on Decca in 1963, and "Waltz Across Texas" / "Lots of Luck," released in 1965, are representative of his mid-decade work — direct, unadorned productions built around Tubb's distinctive bass-baritone voice and the Texas Troubadours' electric country arrangements. "Waltz Across Texas" in particular became one of his signature numbers, closely associated with his stage show and his identity as a Texas-rooted honky-tonk performer.

By the mid-1960s Tubb had been recording continuously for a quarter century and had helped establish the template for the electric honky-tonk style that defined mainstream postwar country music. His Decca recordings of this period were not commercial departures or reinventions — they were the continuation of a proven formula delivered with the assurance of a performer who had no interest in competing with trends he had helped set in motion. The Texas Troubadours during this era included players who had long been part of his road show, and the recordings carry the same lived-in quality as his touring performances.

Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.