Gonna Shake This Shack...

A fresh slant on the king? the originator? of honky tonk music!A full CD of his up-tempo recordings, including era-defining hits like Walking The Floor Over You, You Nearly Lose Your Mind, and Drivin' Nails In My Coffin. The next best thing to a night at a Texas honky tonk circa 1950?minus the guns and cigarette smoke! Ernest Tubb's life was a catechism in what it once meant to be a country star. He took his music to isolated townships and he'd stand outside the dance hall in bone-chilling cold or stifling heat until every autograph had been signed, every hand shaken, every photo snapped. That was the old way. That was the E. T. way These recordings ooze character and believability. Ernest Tubb's voice wavers off-key here and there, but the gritty realism and human warmth more than compensate. Ernest Tubb made records that could only be Ernest Tubb records. The contrast with the cookie-cutter similarity and artificial perfection of today's country music could not be more obvious. 'I don't read music,' Ernest Tubb once said, 'and I'd fight the man who tried to teach me. I don't care whether I hit the right note or not. I'm not looking for perfection. Thousands of singers have tried that. I'm looking for individuality. I sing the way I feel like singing at the moment. I never sang for the dollar. I sing because I want to sing.'Ernest Tubb bridged the pre-War music of Jimmie Rodgers and the post-War world of the honky tonk and the Nashville Sound. These are some of the finest songs of the time, songs that literally ushered in the post-War era in country music