Sing Flat, Look Sharp

Texas Troubadours, indeed. Plenty of heavy hitters in that band. But Buddy Emmons, holy shit. Ernie Tubb was an impresario. If you’re a musician, you might be familiar with this sort of fellow. You can’t quite put your finger on their talent. Can’t really sing or play well enough to stand out. Not exactly Cary Grantish either.

Tubb was not known to possess the most adept voice: he always sang flat and actually mocked his own singing. He told an interviewer that 95% of the men in bars would hear his music on the juke box and say to their girlfriends, “I can sing better than him,” and Tubb added they would be right.

But somehow or another they end up with ten guys with way more talent working for them. I guess that’s the talent. Getting the gigs is the supreme skill. And a lot of those kinds of guys turn a taciturn, smiling face to the public, but are slightly more, ahem, serious in their private affairs.

In 1957, he walked into the lobby of the National Life Building in Nashville in the early morning hours and fired a .357 magnum, intending to shoot music producer Jim Denny. Instead, Tubb mistakenly shot at WSM news director, Bill Williams, as he was walking in to work. Luckily, Tubb barely missed (twice) before realizing he had shot at the wrong man. He was arrested and charged with public drunkenness.

Ernie Tubb is one of those guys that becomes larger than life. A country Santa Claus. I swear he was born looking fifty-five years old, but in return, the heavens decreed he would never look much older, either. He appeared on the Grand Ole Opry long after he had the chart hits to make it inevitable. He set up shop down the street with an eponymous record store, and hosted his own show, the Midnite Jamboree, right from the middle of the record stacks.

People just liked him. Sometimes it’s a simple as that.