Honky-tonk
A honky-tonk (also called honkatonk, honkey-tonk, or tonk) is both a bar that provides country music for the entertainment of its patrons and the style of music played in such establishments. It can also refer to the type of piano (tack piano) used to play such music. Bars of this kind are common in the South and Southwest United States. Many eminent country music artists, such as Jimmie Rodgers, Ernest Tubb, Lefty Frizzell, Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Johnny Horton, and Merle Haggard, began their careers as amateur musicians in honky-tonks.
For other uses, see Honky Tonk (disambiguation).
The origin of the term "honky-tonk" is disputed, originally referring to bawdy variety shows in areas of the old West (Oklahoma, the Indian Territories and mostly Texas) and to the actual theaters showing them.
The first music genre to be commonly known as honky-tonk was a style of piano playing related to ragtime but emphasizing rhythm more than melody or harmony; the style evolved in response to an environment in which pianos were often poorly cared for, tending to be out of tune and having some nonfunctioning keys. This honky-tonk music was an important influence on the boogie-woogie piano style. Before World War II, the music industry began to refer to hillbilly music being played from Texas and Oklahoma to the West Coast as "honky-tonk" music. In the 1950s, honky-tonk entered its golden age, with the popularity of Winifred Atwell, Webb Pierce, Hank Locklin, Lefty Frizzell, Ray Price, Faron Young, George Jones, and Hank Williams.
Etymology[edit]
The origin of the term honky-tonk is unknown. The earliest known use in print is an article in the Peoria Journal dated June 28, 1874, stating, "The police spent a busy day today raiding the bagnios and honkytonks."[1]
There are subsequent citations from 1890 in The Dallas Morning News,[2] 1892 in the Galveston Daily News (Galveston, Texas)[3] (which used the term to refer to an adult establishment in Fort Worth), and in 1894 in The Daily Ardmoreite in Oklahoma.[4] Early uses of the term in print mostly appear along a corridor roughly coinciding with cattle drive trails extending from Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, into south central Oklahoma, suggesting that the term may have been a localism spread by cowboys driving cattle to market. The sound of honky-tonk (or honk-a-tonk) and the types of places that were called honky-tonks suggests that the term may be an onomatopoeic reference to the loud, boisterous music and noise heard at these establishments.
One theory is that the "tonk" portion of the name may have come from the brand name of piano made by William Tonk & Bros., an American manufacturer of large upright pianos[5] (established 1881),[6] which made a piano with the decal "Ernest A. Tonk". The Tonk brothers, William and Max, established the Tonk Bros. Manufacturing Company in 1873, so such an etymology is possible,[7][8] however, these pianos were not manufactured until 1889, at which point the term seems to have already been established.[9]
An early source purporting to explain the derivation of the term (spelled honkatonk) was an article published in 1900 by the New York Sun and widely reprinted in other newspapers.[10] The article, however, reads more like a humorous urban (or open range) legend or fable, so its veracity is questionable.