[Dixielandjazz] SUBJECT: Honky Tonks, Hymns & the Blues

[DWSI at aol.com]

Bill Grist writes: Honky Tonks sprang up in the 1930s around the east Texas 
oil fields as
>places to get loose after a long hard day's work, as described best in Hank 
Williams' country hit "Honky Tonkin." 
Sorry, Bill, but the term was in common use long before 1930 according to 
Gammond's The Oxford Companion To Popular Music. To partially quote from this 
source: "The name (Honky-Tonk) was the name given in America to a low-class 
nightclub, usually a one-room affair with a piano or small jazz group, such as was 
generally frequented by less affluent black people in early jazz days. The 
beer was generally served from direct from barrels, hence (this name is) an 
alternative name for 'barrel house.' The name 'honky-tonk' or 'barrelhouse' was 
then applied to the kind of boisterous music that was generally played there, 
necessary to cut through the noise. The name was rather curiously perpetuated in 
Meade Lux Lewis's Honky Tonk Train Blues recorded in 1928." In my reading, I 
have come to believe that the Texans and the early jazz people both used the 
term but with slightly different bar rooms in mind.

Dan (piano fingers) Spink