From: Tom Bingham
Date: December 16, 2002
I tried to ask this question when the brief hiatus in this forum occurred. I'm not sure if it was ever posted and, if so, whether it was answered, so here it goes again.
Where (I won't ask when) does one draw the line between w.s. and honky tonk (hereafter h.t.). When I was listening to my uncle's 78's as a kid, he had Adolph Hofner, Cliff Bruner, and Al Dexter, and to my young ears they sounded like part of the same fabric. "Pistol Packin' Mama" is now considered h.t. by most observers, despite the lightly swinging beat, the slight improvisation of the trumpet, etc. To my ears, Floyd Tillman is a jazz singer, but his slow ballads certainly don't *swing*. Ted Daffan's "Worried Mind", Adolph Hofner's "Maria Elena" don't *swing*, but then again neither did the ballads recorded by Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, and other bands who are generally thought of as definitively swing.
I think I'm trying to set up a definition/criteria/categorization guideline, even though I'm always the guy who teaches his his students to mistrust definitions and categories because there are too many exceptions to too many restrictions. But on the other hand, if western swing didn't *begin* as country music, it seems to have ended up as country music, partly as a matter of media perception, partly in its influence on the rise of h.t. I don't imagine that one day Hank Thompson woke up and said to himself that he was done with w.s., it's time to switch to h.t. The move from w.s. to h.t. (and to rockabilly in some cases) in general wasn't sudden, but h.t. grew out of w.s. in many ways. I'm sure there are flaws in this analysis. I'd appreciate comments on this.
Thanks, as always