For many listeners, Honky Tonk is the most familiar style in country music. It's spare and direct, driven acoustic guitars, steel guitars, fiddles, and a high, lonesome vocal. Ernest Tubb was the first honky tonk musician to popularize the genre, but Hank Williams, George Jones, and Lefty Frizzell became the definitive artists in the '50s. (
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For many listeners, Honky Tonk is the most familiar style in country music. It's spare and direct, driven acoustic guitars, steel guitars, fiddles, and a high, lonesome vocal. Ernest Tubb was the first honky tonk musician to popularize the genre, but Hank Williams, George Jones, and Lefty Frizzell became the definitive artists in the '50s. As the genre aged, it essentially remained the same, but there was one notable permutation of Honky Tonk: the Bakersfield Sound. Bakersfield was the first genre of country music to rely heavily on electric instrumentation, as well as a defined backbeat -- in other words, it was the first to be significantly influenced by rock & roll. Named after the town of Bakersfield, California where a great majority of the artists performed, the sound was pioneered by Wynn Stewart and popularized by Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. Using telecaster guitars, the singers developed a clean, ringing sound that stood in direct opposition to the produced, string-laden Nashville sound. The Bakersfield sound became one of the most popular -- and arguably the most influential -- country genres of the '60s, setting the stage for country-rock and outlaw, as well as reviving the spirit of Honky Tonk. After Bakersfield, Honky Tonk would forever rely on electric guitars as much as acoustics, yet at its core it remained faithful to the sound pioneered by Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams.(
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