Two Glasses, Joe · Journey’s End

Ernest Tubb’s singles career spans more than four decades, and it began as a tribute. Born in Crisp, Texas, in 1914, he made his first records for Bluebird at the Texas Hotel in San Antonio in October 1936, alone with his guitar, and two of the six sides were laments for his hero: “The Passing of Jimmie Rodgers” and “The Last Thoughts of Jimmie Rodgers.”

Decca, the label he stayed with for decades, first recorded him on 4 April 1940 at the Rice Hotel in Houston, with Jimmie Short on second guitar. A year later, on 26 April 1941 in Dallas, he cut “Walking the Floor Over You” with Smitty Smith on guitar, the record that made him a national name. Through the war years he recorded wherever Decca could get him into a studio, in Los Angeles, Hollywood and New York, backed by a small band built around the Short brothers, with Jack Drake on bass by 1946 and Jerry Byrd on steel; “Filipino Baby” and “Drivin’ Nails in My Coffin” came from a New York session in September 1946.

From August 1947 his sessions moved to Nashville, to Castle Studio in the Tulane Hotel, with Paul Cohen producing. There the Texas Troubadours, with Billy Byrd on lead guitar and Dickie Harris on steel, were joined by the city’s studio players: Owen Bradley on piano from 1949, Grady Martin on guitar from 1950, and Farris Coursey on drums. “Two Glasses, Joe,” cut at Castle in June 1954, is a typical record of that decade. In 1957 the sessions moved again, to Bradley Film and Recording Studio on 16th Avenue South, and Tubb kept recording through the 1970s.

Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.