Click here to see The Music Barn's selection of Ernest Tubb recordings for sale
Long before Steven Spielberg’s smash movie about an endearing little extraterrestrial, the initials, E. T. meant something far different but just as endearing to countless honky-tonkers and lovers of Texas swing and country music. The letters, E. T. were short for the Texas Troubadour himself, Ernest Tubb.
Ernest Tubb was a hard-working entertainer, a savvy businessman and, long before the term was bandied about as it is today, a mentor to countless entertainers and songwriters. I don’t think you can "train" to "be a mentor," as the radio and TV ads proclaim we should all do. One can train to be a teacher, but being a mentor is more than that. It is a leadership quality, a respect factor and you either have it or you don’t. Ernest Dale Tubb had it in spades. Loretta Lynn once said, "He’s helped more singers than any other two people I know. And he never did ask for anything in return." The list of those he helped along the way reads like a country music who’s who with names like Hank Williams, Hank Snow, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Charlie Walker, Cal Smith and countless others.
He was born in Crisp, Texas in 1914 and grew up at a time when what we now know as country music was in its infancy. As a teenager, he sang wherever he could around his locale but was twenty years old before he bought his first guitar. He idolized the "Singing Brakeman," Jimmie Rodgers and laid out what was a huge sum of money in those depression years, fifty dollars, for a guitar to accompany himself. H e was even championed by Rodgers’ wife, Carrie. After Jimmie’s death, she heard Tubb performing on a radio show and was captivated by him. She felt he was the natural heir to the Rodgers legacy and even let him borrow some of Jimmie’s stage clothes and hi s guitar.
He may have become stuck in the role of being a Jimmie Rodgers clone had he not had his tonsils out in 1939. After that, he could no longer do the trade mark yodels of his hero and was forced to seek his own style. In retrospect, it’s probably one of the best things that ever happened to him. He picked up a lead guitar player and, himself, switched over to playing rhythm and, gradually, he built the band that was to become known as the Texas Troubadours.
Ernest wrote songs and performed but his success was moderate until, in 1942, he wrote and recorded what is perhaps his signature song, "Walking The Flo or Over You." It became a million selling record and opened the door to an appearance on the Grand Ole Opry. The following year, he became a regular member and a crowd-pleasing favorite. He is the first regular Opry member to use electric guitar and a ful l drum kit on the Opry stage. He was also the first country entertainer to perform on the stage of New York’s Carnegie Hall. During that show, he proclaimed, "My, my, this place sure could hold a lot of hay." Over the years, he introduced many a newcomer to the Opry stage and performed there right up until the time of his death, in 1984.
Hearing the pleas of many of his fans who told him they often had a hard time finding his recordings and those of other country favorites in their local record stores, he opened the Ernest Tubb Record Shop in 1947. It was, and is, just down the street from what was then the home of the Grand Ole Opry, the Ryman Auditorium. There are now two other locations in Nashville, as well as one each in Pigeon Forg e, Branson, Mo. and Fort Worth, Texas. E. T.’s record shop has long had the well-deserved reputation of being the place to get those hard to find records. If you can’t get it at E. T.’s, it probably can’t be had. The record shop also served as the springb oard and the venue for his WSM radio show, the Ernest Tubb Midnight Jamboree which was started to provide a showcase for fellow performers and up and coming entertainers who needed a place where their talents could be heard.
From his 1942 success with "Walking The Floor," he was a chart regular right up through the decade of the sixties with songs like "Thanks A Lot," the Ci ndy Walker penned favorite, "Warm Red Wine" and many, many others. But he didn’t spend a lot of time in the recording studio. He and the Troubadours were out on the road meeting, greeting and entertaining fans at an average of 300 shows a year. That’s a w hopping schedule! And they did it in cars and busses in those days -- no fancy, schmancy Lear jets. Perhaps, in part, that grueling schedule accounted for the number of pickers who passed through the revolving door of the Troubadours. The list is long and filled with the names of many of the greatest of country musicians. Some might say that Tubb was hard to work for but, like many great front men, all he wanted was for you to do your job and do it well. He could also be like a father to a new picker. One ex-Troubadour, steel guitar player, Roy Jordan, once told me that E. T. had given him some of the best advice of anyone he’d ever known along the way. At first, Roy, perhaps not yet feeling confident with the new songs and not being totally sure of his p arts, was playing a bit tentatively and not very loud. He said "the old man" told him, "Play it like you mean it. If you make a mistake, you’ll know not to make it the next time." From then on, he played with a confidence he’d never known before.
"I have offered advice and counsel to other artists," Tubb once said. "Remembering that somebody -- mainly Mrs. Rodgers -- helped open important doors for me." He always remembered the help he’d been given and showed his humility and appreciation to his fans every time he flipped his guitar over so we could read the large "THANKS" that was printed on its back. And, for the doors he opened to us as writers, musicians and fans, we say, as he said in the song, "Thanks, thanks a lot."
Cal Adams