George Jones is the greatest of country singers but he has also been a victim of the infamous hard-living honky-tonk lifestyle. Though he's gone through several phases, from rockabilly to honky-tonk to countrypolitan, his melismatic, Lefty Frizell-in…

Along with Buck Owens and Wynn Stewart, Merle Haggard created the Bakersfield country sound of the '60s, emphasizing two-part harmonies, tasty guitar solos, catchy choruses and a no-frills approach to production. To this, the singer/songwriter/guitar…

The Robert Johnson of country, Hank Williams was a troubled visionary who hung around just long enough to change the face of American music forever. He added electric instruments and touches of Western swing and proto-rockabilly to the post-hillbilly…

b. Muriel Ellen Deason, 30 August 1919, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. The family relocated to Humphries County but returned to Nashville in 1928, where Deason's father, who played guitar and sang for local dances, worked as a brakeman for the Tennessee …

Johnny Cash was part rockabilly rebel, part campfire storyteller, part outlaw in black. Cash made country and rockabilly history on the Sun label in the 1950s. During the '60s, the ruggedly charismatic Cash rose to superstardom, ending the decade wit…

Influenced equally by Jimmie Rodgers and by the cowboy jazz of Texas-based western swing, Texan country legend Lefty Frizzell was among the first to apply jazzy vocal phrasing to the honky-tonk country template. Equally seminal as a songwriter, he tu…

Canada-born country legend Hank Snow started out in the 1930s with a yodeling style heavily influenced by Jimmie Rodgers. In the '40s he adopted a more straightforward singing style. It was the dawn of the '50s, however, that made him a star, with su…

Although best-known for such cowboy songs as "El Paso" and "Big Iron," 1950s, '60s and '70s country star Marty Robbins enjoyed a varied career that spanned the entire gamut between pure honky-tonk and countrypolitan. Robbins was gifted with one of co…

Shreveport, LA native Faron Young first gained attention via the popular Louisiana Hayride radio program in the early 1950s. After working with fellow honky tonk artist Webb Pierce, he began recording on his own in 1951, and joined the Grand Ole Opry…

b. 8 August 1921, near West Monroe, Louisiana, USA, d. 24 February 1991, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. His father died when Pierce was only three months old, his mother remarried and he was raised on a farm seven miles from Monroe. Although no one in th…

In an era when female country music stars were few and far between, Patsy Cline not only took the country world by storm but also redefined the genre. Her tremendous popularity opened the door through which a legion of followers poured, while her gor…

b. Aubrey Mullican, 29 March 1909, Corrigan, Polk County, Texas, USA, d. 1 January 1967, Beaumont, Texas, USA. Mullican was raised on a farm that was manned by black workers. One sharecropper, Joe Jones, taught Mullican how to play blues guitar. His …

The first country feminist, Lynn developed a hard-hitting persona as the wife who stood no nonsense from her rivals or her husband. Her 1966 hit "You Ain't Woman Enough" exemplified her uncompromising honky tonk approach. She answered Tammy Wynette's…

With great songs and beautiful, heartrending voices, the Louvin Brothers had everything going for them but hit records. From the early '50s through the mid-'60s, the Louvins released a steady stream of first-rate material but somehow never managed to…

b. Henry William Thompson, 3 September 1925, Waco, Texas, USA. Thompson, as a young boy, was fond of records by Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family. He first learned the harmonica and then his parents gave him a guitar for his tenth birthday. He als…

b. 3 April 1928, Shelby, North Carolina, USA, d. 17 November 2003, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. If loneliness meant world acclaim, then Gibson, with his catalogue of songs about despair and heartbreak, should have been a superstar. Considering himself …

In the mid-'80s the Nashville scene was at a low point until Dwight Yoakam helped usher in a new wave of country that was both traditionalist and progressive. Yoakam's allegiance to the classic Bakersfield sound of the '60s (Buck Owens, Merle Haggard…

The first of country's honky-tonkers, Ernest Tubb came to fame in the 1940s, making famous such immortal classics as "Walking the Floor Over You," "Thanks a Lot," "You Don't Have to Be a Baby to Cry," and innumerable others. A singer of limited range…

Texan country singer Waylon Jennings was always a bit of a rocker. Early on, he played bass with Buddy Holly, and his first solo records included Beatles covers, highly unusual for a country artist at the time. Jennings was one of the key figures of…

Willie Nelson began working in a conventional Nashville style and had great success as the songwriter of Faron Young's hit "Hello Walls" and others, but he was initially unable to make it as a performer. In the 1970s, he and Waylon Jennings made hist…