Ernest Tubb – Walking The Floor Over You

10th November 2021 · 1940s, 1941, Country, Music

Ernest Tubb once remarked that whenever one of his songs came on a jukebox, men in bars would turn to their girlfriends and say: “Heck, I can sing better than that.” And, agreed Ernest, “They’d be right.”

Despite his noticeably flat voice, The Texas Troubadour remains one of the most important figures in country music.
He was the pioneer of honky-tonk music, a style influenced by Western Swing, with fiddle and pedal steel behind gritty lyrics and vocals.

Visitors to Nashville will see his name soon enough, when they spot Ernest Tubb’s Record Store, which he opened back in 1947 as the first all-country record shop in America.

Its weekly live Midnite Jamboree showcase (still going, but in a different venue) was a stepping stone for future stars from Hank Williams and Patsy Cline to Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash.

I first came across Ernest Tubb on a mixtape my friend Steve England made for me, representing the roots music he played at Son Of Redneck, the club he ran with Jo Hagan in the 1980s.
“ET” (as he was known to all) defined the honky-tonk style with his biggest hit, Walking The Floor Over You, which sold more than a million copies in 1941.

His background could scarcely have been more authentic. Born into a family of sharecroppers on a cotton farm in Texas, Tubb worked on farms throughout his youth and spent his spare time learning to play guitar and sing and yodel like his hero Jimmie Rodgers.

He earned his first record deal in the mid-Thirties, thanks to the help of Rodgers’ widow, whom he had contacted in the hope of getting an autographed photo of his idol – and received one of his idol’s guitars instead.

Tubb started out imitating The Snging Brakeman, famous for his yodelling, with little immediate success. After having his tonsils out, he lost the ability to yodel and was forced to develop his own style – earning him fame and fortune as a bona fide country music legend.

He continued to play up to 200 shows a year up to the early Eighties, when emphysema took its toll and forced him into retirement prior to his death in 1984.