Tubb was born on a cotton farm near Crisp, Texas (now a ghost town in Ellis County, Texas). His father was a sharecropper, so Tubb spent his youth working on farms throughout the state. He was inspired by Jimmie Rodgers and spent his spare time learning to sing, yodel, and play the guitar. At the age of nineteen, he took a job as a singer on a San Antonio radio station. The pay was low, so Tubb also dug ditches for the Works Progress Administration and then clerked at a drug store. In 1939 he moved to San Angelo, Texas and was hired to do a 15 minute afternoon live show on radio station KGKL. He drove a beer delivery truck in order to support himself during this time. During World War II he wrote and recorded a song titled “Beautiful San Angelo”. Ernest Tubb was known to be good friends with the father of Dan Seals, country music singer.In 1936, Tubb contacted Jimmie Rodgerss widow (Rodgers died in 1933) to ask for an autographed photo. A friendship developed and she was instrumental in getting Tubb a recording contract with RCA. His first two records were unsuccessful. A tonsillectomy in 1939 affected his singing style, so he turned to songwriting. In 1940, he switched to Decca records to try singing again and it was his sixth Decca release with the single “Walking the Floor Over You” that brought Tubb to stardom.Tubb joined the Grand Ole Opry in February, 1943 and put together his band, the “Texas Troubadours.” He remained a regular on the radio show for four decades, and hosted the Midnight Jamboree after it. In 1947, Tubb headlined the first Grand Ole Opry show presented in Carnegie Hall in New York City. In 1965, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of

Fame and in 1970, Tubb was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.Tubb always surrounded himself with some of Nashvilles best musicians. Jimmy Short, his first guitarist in the Troubadours, is credited with the Tubb sound of one-string guitar picking. From about 1943 to 1948, Short featured clean, clear riffs throughout Tubbs songs. Other well-known musicians to either travel with Tubb as band members or record on his records were Jerry Byrd, the phenomenal steel guitarist; Tommy “Butterball” Paige, who replaced Short as Tubbs lead guitarist in 1947. In 1949, Billy Byrd, the quintessential Tubb guitarist, joined the Troubadours, and brought jazzy riffs to the instrumental interludes, especially the four-note riff at the end of his solos that would become synonymous with Tubbs songs. Actually a jazz musician, Byrd–no relation to Jerry–remained with Tubb until 1959.Another Tubb musician was actually his producer, Owen Bradley, who is honored with a statue of his likeness in front of one of Nashvilles recording studios. Bradley played piano on many of Tubbs 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 couldnt quite match the sound, so Tubb said Bradley was “half as good” as Moon. Therefore, when Tubb called out Bradleys name at the start of one of the piano interludes, the singer always referred to him as “Half-Moon Bradley.”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, who later appeared on TVs Hee Haw as the guitarist in the shows band. Buddy Emmons, another steel guitar virtuoso, began with Tubb in about 1958 and lasted through the early 1960s. Emmons went on to create a steel-guitar manufacturing company that bears his name.FROM WIKIPEDIA

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