 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 U.S., honky tonk gradually replaced the term juke joint for bars primarily oriented towards 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.
The first music genre 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; 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.
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" and Meade Lux Lewis's big hit "Honky Tonk Train Blues." Lewis recorded the latter many times from 1927 into the 1950s, and the song was covered by many other musicians, including Oscar Peterson.
The twelve-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 Fats Domino was another honky tonk piano man, whose "Blueberry Hill" 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 honky tonk music being played from Texas and Oklahoma to the West Coast as hillbilly music. More recently, the term has come to refer to the primary sound in country music, developing in Nashville as Western swing became accepted there. Originally, it featured the guitar, fiddle, string bass, and steel guitar (imported from Hawaiian folk music). The vocals were originally rough and nasal, as exemplified by singer-songwriters Floyd Tillman and Hank Williams, but later developed a clear and sharp sound, such as that of singers 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.
Copyrighted and released in 1941,"I'm Walking The Floor Over You" by Ernest Tubb his sixth release for Decca, helped establish the honky tonk style and Tubb as one of its foremost practitioners. He took the sound to Nashville, where he was the first musician to play electric guitar on Grand Ole Opry. In the 1950s, 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 and blues) and the slick country music of the Nashville sound ended honky tonk's initial period of dominance.
In the 1970s, outlaw country's brand of rough honky tonk was represented by artists such as Gary Stewart, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, David Allan Coe, and Billy Joe Shaver. 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. This more pop-oriented version of honky tonk crossed over into the mainstream in the early 1990s, with singers such as Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson and Clint Black.