honky-tonk

A vintage belt buckle from Gilley's, a large honky tonk featured in the movie Urban Cowboy.

A honky tonk is a type of bar with musical entertainment common in the Southwestern and Southern United States, also called honkatonks, honkey-tonks, tonks or tunks. The term has also been attached to various styles of 20th-century American music. As of 2007, honky tonk seems to be the most recognized and mainstream subgenre of country music.

Derivation

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) states that the origin of the word honky tonk is unknown. However, the earliest source explaining the derivation of the term (spelled honkatonk) was an article published by the New York Sun in 1900 and widely reprinted in other newspapers^[1]. It states uncategorically that the term came from the sound of geese which led an unsuspecting group of cowboys to the flock instead of to the variety show they expected. Also, the OED states that the first use in print was in 1894^[2] in the Daily Ardmorite (Oklahoma) newspaper where it was honk-a-tonk. However, honkatonk has been cited from at least 1892 in the Galveston Daily News (Texas)^[3] where it referred to an adult establishment in Ft. Worth.

Other sources speculate that the "tonk" portion of the name may well have come from a brand name of piano. One American manufacturer of large upright pianos was the firm of William Tonk & Bros. (established 1889^[4]), which made a piano with the decal "Ernest A. Tonk". These upright grand pianos were made in Chicago and New York and were called Tonk pianos. Some found their way to Tin Pan Alley and may have given rise to the expression of "honky tonk bars". It is unlikely, however, that a Tin Pan Alley piano manufactured in 1889 would influence the vocabulary in either Texas or the Oklahoma Territory by 1892 or 1894.

There are no reliable sources stating that "Tonks" were originally specifically African American institutions; similar establishments that catered to Whites acquired the name Honky Tonk, from the slang honky, referring to a white person. Although there may be multiple examples of oral history and writings by African Americans born in the 19th century referring to African American establishments as "honkey tonks" or "honk-a-tonks", none were written contemporary to the events.

It is a fact that the term "honky" was, as a term for whites, derived from bohunk and hunky. In the early 1900's, these were derogatory terms for Bohemian, Hungarian, and Polish immigrants. According to Robert Hendrickson, author of the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, Black workers in Chicago meat-packing plants picked up the term from white workers and began applying it indiscriminately to all Caucasians.

Honky tonks

Honky tonks were rough establishments, mostly in the Deep South and Southwest, that served alcoholic beverages to working class clientele. Honky tonks sometimes also offered dancing to piano players or small bands, and sometimes were also centers of prostitution. In some rougher tonks the prostitutes and their customers would have sex standing up clothed on the dance floor while the music played. Honky tonk bars were also prone to bar brawls due to the nature of most of its customers who were usually bikers and truckers passing by. Such establishments flourished in less reputable neighborhoods, often outside of the law. As Chris Smith and Charles McCarron noted in their 1916 hit song "Down in Honky Tonk Town", "It's underneath the ground, where all the fun is found."

Origins of the honky tonk establishment

Although the derivation of the term is unknown, honky tonk originally referred to bawdy variety shows in the West (Oklahoma and Indian Territories and Texas) and to the theaters housing them. In fact, the earliest mention of them in print refers to them as variety theaters^[5] and describe the entertainment as variety shows^[6]. The theaters often had an attached gambling house and always a bar.

In recollections long after the frontiers closed, writers such as Wyatt Earp and E.C. Abbott referred often to honky tonks in the cowtowns of Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, etc. of the 1870s and 80s^[7]. Their recollections contain lurid accounts of the women and violence accompanying the shows. However, in contemporary accounts these were nearly always called hurdy gurdy shows, possibly derived from the term hurdy gurdy that was sometimes mistakenly applied to a small, portable barrel organ that was frequently played by organ grinders and buskers (street musicians.

As late as 1913, Col. Edwin Emerson, a former Rough Rider commander, hosted a honky-tonk party in New York ("COL. EMERSON'S NOVEL PARTY; Rough Rider Veteran Gives 'Old Forty-niners’ Honky-Tonk Fandango'." New York Times, New York, N.Y., February 23, 1913. pg. C7). The Rough Riders were recruited from the ranches of Texas and New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Indian Territories, so the term was still in popular use during the Spanish American War.

Bars

The distinction between honky tonks, saloons, and dancehalls was often blurred, especially in cowtowns, mining districts, military forts, and oilfields of the West. Eventually, as variety theaters and dancehalls disappeared, honky tonk became associated mainly with lower class bars catering to men. Synonymous with beer joint and like terms, honky tonks usually serve beer or hard liquor and may have had a bandstand and dance floor. Many may have furnished only a juke box. In the Southeastern US, honky tonk gradually replaced the term juke joint for bars primarily oriented toward blues and jazz. As Western swing slowly became accepted in Nashville, Southeastern bars playing Western swing and Western swing influenced country music, were also called honky tonks.

Honky tonk music

The first genre of music to be commonly known as honky tonk music was a style of piano playing related to ragtime, but emphasizing rhythm more than melody or harmony, since the style evolved in response to an environment where the pianos were often poorly cared for, tending to be out of tune and having some nonfunctioning keys. (Hence an out-of-tune upright piano is sometimes called a honky-tonk piano, e.g. in the General MIDI set of standard electronic music sounds.)

Such honky tonk music was an important influence on the formation of the boogie woogie piano style, as indicated by Jelly Roll Morton's 1938 record "Honky Tonk Music" (recalling the music of his youth, see quotation below), and Meade "Lux" Lewis's big hit "Honky Tonk Train Blues" which Lewis recorded many times from 1927 into the 1950s and was covered by many other musicians from the 1930s on, including Oscar Peterson and Keith Emerson.

The 12-bar blues instrumental "Honky Tonk" by the Bill Doggett Combo with a sinuous saxophone line and driving, slow beat, was an early rock and roll hit. New Orleans native Antoine "Fats" Domino was another legendary honky tonk piano man, whose "Blueberry Hill" (originally recorded by singing cowboy Gene Autry) and "Walkin' to New Orleans" became hits on the popular music charts.

During the pre-World War II years, the music industry began to refer to the Honky Tonk music being played from Texas and Oklahoma to the West Coast as Hillbilly music. More recently it has come to refer primarily to the primary sound in country music, which developed in Nashville as Western Swing became accepted there. Originally, it featured the guitar, fiddle, string bass and steel guitar (an importation from Hawaiian folk music), and is one of the early sources of electric guitar in country music. The vocals were originally rough and nasal, like singer-songwriters Floyd Tillman and Hank Williams, but later developed a clear and sharp sound with singers such as George Jones and Johnny Paycheck. Lyrics tended to focus on working-class life, with frequently tragic themes of lost love, adultery, loneliness, alcoholism, and self-pity. Ted Daffin's "Born to Lose" is the prototype song.

During World War II, honky tonk country was popularized by Ernest Tubb ("I'm Walking The Floor Over You") who took the sound to Nashville, where he was the first musician to play electric guitar on Grand Ole Opry. In the 1950s, though, honky tonk entered its golden age with the massive popularity of Webb Pierce, Hank Locklin, Lefty Frizzell, George Jones and Hank Williams. In the mid to late 1950s, rockabilly, which melded honky tonk country to Rhythm & Blues, and the slick country music of the Nashville sound ended honky tonk's initial period of dominance.

In the 1970s, outlaw country music was the most popular genre, and its brand of rough honky tonk, represented by artists such as Gary Stewart, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, David Allen Coe and Billy Joe Shaver gradually influenced the rock-influenced alternative country in the 1990s. Lynyrd Skynyrd played some honky tonk, during live performances of their song Gimme Three Steps while getting the crowd to clap he would say "Let's play some ole honk". During the 1980s, a revival of slicker honky tonk took over the charts. Beginning with Dwight Yoakam and George Strait in the middle of the decade, a more pop-oriented version of honky tonk became massively popular. It crossed over into the mainstream in the early 1990s with singers like Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson and Clint Black. Later in the 90s, country music became more pop-oriented and even farther removed from its rough roots with the mainstream success of slickly produced female singers like Shania Twain and Faith Hill.

Endnotes

See also

• Juke joint
• Honky Tonk Magazine

Bibliography

• American Dialect Society. Honkatonk (1900, from wild geese?). American Dialect Society, December 27, 2005. (Retrieved July 16, 2006.)
• Hunter, J. Marvin (editor). Trail Drivers of Texas: Interesting Sketches of Early Cowboys. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993 (Reprint of 1925 edition). ISBN 0-292-73076-4
• Pierce, Bob; Larry Ashley. Pierce Piano Atlas. Pierce Piano Atlas; 10th edition (June 1996). ISBN 0-911138-02-1

Additional reading

• Abbott, E.C. We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8061-1366-9

• Boyd, Jean Ann. Jazz of the Southwest: An Oral History of Western Swing. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998. ISBN 0-292-70860-2

• Dary, David. Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Centuries. University Press Of Kansas, 1989 (reprint edition). ISBN 0-7006-0390-5

• Kienzle, Rich. Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky Tonk, Western Swing, and Country Jazz. New York: Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0-415-94102-4

• Lake, Stuart. Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal. Pocket, 1994 (reprint edition). ISBN 0-671-88537-5

• Shay, Anthony. Boys Night Out in Leadville. (Retrieved July 16, 2006.)

• Honky-Tonk.bg

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