Ernest Tubb

Early years The youngest of five children, Tubb was born on a cotton farm near Crisp, in Ellis County, Texas, United States. He was inspired by Jimmie Rodgers and spent his spare time learning to sing, yodel, and play the guitar. Recording career In 1936, Tubb contacted Jimmie Rodgers' widow (Rodgers died in 1933) to ask for an autographed photo. Tubb joined the Grand Ole Opry in February 1943 and put together his band, the Texas Troubadors. Tubb's first band members were from Gadsden, Alabama. They were Vernon "Toby" Reese, Chester Studdard, and Ray "Kemo" Head. He remained a regular on the radio show for four decades, and hosted his own Midnite Jamboree radio show each Saturday night after the Opry. Tubb headlined the first Grand Ole Opry show presented in Carnegie Hall in New York City in September 1947. Tubb always surrounded himself with several of Nashville's best musicians. Jimmy Short, his first guitarist in the Troubadors, is credited with the Tubb sound of single-string guitar picking. From about 1943 to 1948, Short was featured in clean, clear riffs throughout Tubb's songs. Other well-known musicians to either travel with Tubb as band members or record on his records were steel guitarist Jerry Byrd and Tommy "Butterball" Paige, who replaced Short as Tubb's lead guitarist in 1947. Billy Byrd joined the Troubadors in 1949 and brought jazzy riffs to the instrumental interludes, especially the four-note riff at the end of his guitar solos that would become synonymous with Tubb's songs. A jazz musician, Byrd— no relation to Jerry— remained with Tubb until 1959. Another Tubb musician was actually his producer, Owen Bradley. Bradley played piano on many of Tubb's recordings from the 1950s, but Tubb wanted him to sound like Moon Mullican, the honky-tonk piano great of that era. The classically-trained Bradley tried, but could not quite match the sound, so Tubb said Bradley was "half as good" as Moon. When Tubb called out Bradley's name at the start of one of the piano interludes, the singer always referred to him as "Half-Moon". In 1949, Tubb helped the famed boogie-woogie Andrews Sisters crossover to the country charts when they teamed on Decca Records to record a cover of Eddy Arnold's "Don't Rob Another Man's Castle" and the Western swing-flavored "I'm Bitin' My Fingernails and Thinking of You". and he was then eager to repeat that success. He brought the upbeat "Fingernails" tune to the session, hoping that the trio would like it, and they did. Not realizing how tall the Texas Troubadour was, the recording technicians at Decca had the sisters stand on a wooden box on one side of the one microphone they shared with Tubb so the audio would balance. The rhythm trio also was not used to Tubb's vocal style, as Maxene once remembered, "He sang different than anybody I've ever heard. He sang the melody of the song, but the timing was different. It wasn't like we were used to...you sing eight bars, and then you sing eight bars, and then you sing eight bars. Not with him. He just sang eight bars, ten bars, eleven bars, and then stopped, whatever it was. So, we'd just start to follow him, and then got paid on 750,000 records sold that never came above the Mason-Dixon Line!" and actually mocked his own singing. He told an interviewer that 95% of the men in bars would hear his music on the juke box and say to their girlfriends, "I can sing better than him," and Tubb added they would be right. In fact he noticeably missed some notes on some recordings. When Tubb was recording "You Don't Have to Be a Baby to Cry" in 1949 and tried to hit a low note, Red Foley, his duet partner at the time was sitting in the booth when somebody said, "I bet you wish you could hit that low note." Foley replied, "I bet Ernest wishes he could hit that note." The two, who released seven albums together, maintained a friendly on-air "feud" over the years, and Tubb appeared on Foley's Ozark Jubilee on ABC-TV. In 1957, he walked into the lobby of the National Life Building in Nashville in the early morning hours and fired a .357 magnum, intending to shoot music producer Jim Denny. Instead, Tubb mistakenly shot at WSM news director, Bill Williams, as he was walking in to work. Luckily, Tubb barely missed (twice) before realizing he had shot at the wrong man. He was arrested and charged with public drunkenness. In the 1960s, Tubb was well known for having one of the best bands in country music history. The band included lightning-fingered Leon Rhodes (1932–2017), who later appeared on TV's Hee Haw as the guitarist in the show's band. Buddy Emmons, another pedal-steel guitar virtuoso, began with Tubb in fall of 1957 and lasted through the early 1960s. Emmons went on to create a steel-guitar manufacturing company that bears his name. Buddy Charleton, one of the most accomplished pedal-steel guitarists known, joined Ernest in spring 1962 and continued to fall of 1973. Buddy Charleton and Leon Rhodes formed a nucleus for the Texas Troubadours that would be unsurpassed. Drummer Jack Greene joined the Texas Troubadours in 1962 and eventually graduated to becoming Tubb's opening act and a standout country singer himself. Beginning in the fall of 1965, he hosted a half-hour TV program, The Ernest Tubb Show, which aired in first-run syndication for three years. That same year, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and in 1970, Tubb was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Later years Tubb inspired some of the most devoted fans of any country artist — and his fans followed him throughout his career, long after the chart hits dried up. He remained, as did most of his peers, a fixture at the Grand Ole Opry, where he continued to appear. he made his final appearance on the Grand Ole Opry on August 15 of that year. Death Tubb died on September 6, 1984, at the Baptist Hospital in Nashville from emphysema. He is buried in Nashville's Hermitage Memorial Gardens. ==Legacy==

Tubb was inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999, and he ranked No. 21 in CMT's 40 Greatest Men of Country Music in 2003. One of his sons, Justin, was a popular country singer and songwriter in the mid-1950s through the early 1960s; Justin's sons, Carey and Zachary Tubb, also became musicians. Tubb's nephew, Billy Lee Tubb, was his lead guitarist briefly (fall 1959 – April 1960). He also had solo careers under several pseudonyms (Ronny Wade, X. Lincoln) and played with John Anderson, writing several songs with him. Tubb's great nephew, Lucky Tubb, has toured with Hank Williams III. Cal Smith, who played guitar for the Texas Troubadours during the 1960s, went on to a successful country music career of his own in the 1970s, recording hits such as "Country Bumpkin". Jack Greene, who played drums for the Texas Troubadours, went on to become a successful country music star following his departure from Tubb's band, recording the hits "There Goes My Everything" and "Statue of a Fool". Ernest Tubb's nephew, Glenn Douglas Tubb, wrote his first hit song for his uncle in 1952. He went on to write more than 50 hit songs for more than two dozen country and rock music superstars, including Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, BJ Thomas, George Jones, Kentucky Headhunters, Charlie Pride, Ann Murray, and Kitty Wells. Glenn Tubb won a Grammy Award for "Skip a Rope", which was made a hit by Henson Cargill. Glenn Douglas Tubb died in 2021. Beatles drummer Ringo Starr has also been open about Tubb's inspiration on him as well. The Midnite Jamboree Tubb founded in 1947 continues to air, recorded each weekend from a stage at his record shop and airing after each episode of the Grand Ole Opry. The song "Set 'Em Up Joe", recorded and made famous by Vern Gosdin, was a tribute to Tubb's music, particularly the song "Walking the Floor Over You". The Ernest Tubb Record Store, founded in 1947, is still in operation in Nashville and is now owned by Robert's Western World. On March 11, 2022, the store owners announced on their Facebook page that the business and its real estate had been sold, and the store would close at an unspecified time. ==Discography==