Honky Tonkin'

This is a start of a regular unregular or in better words, unregular regular blog about all the aspects of Honky Tonks, it's music and it's patrons. In one of the future editions, I will try to explain what a Honky Tonk is or what it has become over the years.

Just to start the blog, let's use Hank Williams' "Honky Tonkin'" which was Williams second big hit on MGM, reaching #14 in 1948. The reason why it didn't reach the Top-Ten could have been because there were two versions of the song available. A first version was recorded on 2/13/47 at WSM radio studios and included besides Williams, Zeke Turner on electric guitar, Dale "Smokey" Lohman on steel guitar, Louis Innis on bass and Tommy Jackson on fiddle. The first version was released as a B-Side to "Pan American" on Hank's last record for Sterling (Sterling 210) but failed to chart.



New manager Fred Rose was able to sign Williams to MGM on April 1st, 1947 and bought all copies of the earlier release for $ 2,000 and sold them to MGM and made Williams re-cut "Honky Tonkin'" on November 6, 1947. Zeke Turner was still on the electric guitar, but it was Jerry Byrd on steel guitar and Robert "Chubby" Wise on fiddle. Bassist could have been Louis Innis again, but that's not known for sure, it is also speculated who the piano player on this recording is, either Fred Rose or Owen Bradley.
This second version is more vibrant, maybe of better recording utilities at Castle studios, maybe also of a better relationship by now, between Williams and Rose.

This was the introduction blog (12/9/11) of my Honky Tonk series https://honkytonkdaily.blogspot.com/ - the top picture was shot later, but was the blog header for about 4-5 years. Copied to amu-ricana on 8/25/21 - 174.