Ernest Tubb
Best known for
Lead Vocals
Guitar
Songwriter
Ernest Tubb was one of the founding architects of honky-tonk and one of country music’s most beloved and durable stars, a plain-spoken Texan whose booming electric-backed sound helped drag country out of the string-band era and onto the jukebox. Known as the “Texas Troubadour,” he turned a limited but instantly recognizable baritone into a five-decade career built on the barroom lament, the road, and an unstinting generosity toward the artists who followed him. His 1941 hit “Walking the Floor Over You” remains a genre cornerstone.
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- Born February 9, 1914, on a cotton farm near Crisp, in Ellis County, Texas, the youngest of five children of a sharecropper; his rural, hardscrabble upbringing left him with the working-class plainness that defined his stage persona.
- As a teenager he became obsessed with Jimmie Rodgers, the “Singing Brakeman,” teaching himself guitar and yodeling in direct imitation of his idol; Rodgers’ blend of blues and country would shape Tubb’s entire approach.
- In the mid-1930s he befriended Rodgers’ widow, Carrie Rodgers, who became his patron and mentor, lending him Jimmie’s own Martin guitar and using her connections to secure Tubb a recording contract with RCA’s Bluebird label in 1936.
- A 1939 tonsillectomy cost him the ability to yodel, forcing him to abandon the Rodgers imitation and develop his own conversational, slightly-off-pitch baritone — a limitation that became his signature and made him seem approachable to ordinary listeners.
- He signed with Decca Records in 1940 and, backed by amplified electric guitar to cut through noisy Texas dance halls, helped pioneer the honky-tonk style that would dominate postwar country.
- His breakthrough came in 1941 with “Walking the Floor Over You,” a self-written smash that sold in the millions, crossed to a national audience, and stands as one of the definitive early honky-tonk recordings.
- The record’s success led to Hollywood, with Tubb singing in Columbia westerns including The Fighting Buckaroo (1943) and Riding West (1944), cementing his national profile.
- He joined the Grand Ole Opry in February 1943 and remained a fixture there for more than forty years, becoming one of the show’s most reliable draws and elder statesmen.
- In 1947 he opened the Ernest Tubb Record Shop on Nashville’s Lower Broadway, which became a pilgrimage site for fans, and launched the Midnite Jamboree, a live post-Opry radio broadcast that ranks among the oldest continuously running programs in country radio.
- His backing band, the Texas Troubadours, was a proving ground for major talent, its ranks over the years including guitarist Billy Byrd, steel player Buddy Emmons, and future stars Jack Greene and Cal Smith.
- He notched a long run of hits across the 1940s and 1950s, among them “Soldier’s Last Letter” (1944), “Tomorrow Never Comes” (1945), “Rainbow at Midnight” (1946), and the frequently covered “Waltz Across Texas” (1965), which became a Texas dance-hall standard.
- His 1949 duet with Red Foley on “Tennessee Border No. 2” launched a popular partnership, and their 1950 recording of “Goodnight, Irene” was a chart-topping crossover success.
- A tireless champion of new talent, he was an early supporter of Hank Williams and of Loretta Lynn, with whom he later recorded duets.
- In 1965 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, one of the earliest members enshrined, honored as a pioneer who bridged the Jimmie Rodgers era and the modern Nashville sound; in 1970 he was among the charter inductees of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
- He kept a punishing touring schedule for decades, logging hundreds of thousands of road miles even as emphysema, aggravated by heavy smoking, gradually eroded his health in his final years.
- Ernest Tubb died of emphysema in Nashville on September 6, 1984, at age seventy; his influence echoes through generations of honky-tonk and country singers who cite him as a foundational voice.
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Ernest TubbPlayed on recordings with Ernest Tubb
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Ernest Tubb and His Texas TroubadoursPlayed on recordings with Ernest Tubb and His Texas Troubadours
