PATSY YOUR ENTHUSIASM (16)
By:
August 26, 2026
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… Country Music of the Fifties (1954–1963)! Series edited by Josh Glenn. Qobuz playlist here.
ERNEST TUBB | THE YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS | 1955
There are many rivers in Texas, a fair number of them musical. There’s the Brazos — Hank Thompson named his band the Brazos River Boys. There’s the Rio Grande, which is honored with a John Ford movie the Sons of the Pioneers perform in though the picture was shot in Monument Valley, Utah. There’s the Pedernales, which is both a country icon’s recording studio and his nine-hole golf course, Willie Nelson’s Pedernales Cut N Putt. There’s the Colorado, after Ricky Nelson’s character in Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo – it’s true! “Ridin’ to Amarillo, just my rifle, my pony and me.”
That’s a lie, of course. The river came first, then Ricky. But Ernest Tubb did play Amarillo god knows how many times. In September 1950, he played a week at the Tri-State Fair there with Hank Williams and Minnie Pearl also on the bill. Williams was 27 and wouldn’t live to see 30. Pearl was a month shy of 38, Tubb an already weathered 36.
He was born Ernest Dale Tubb on February 9, 1914, the last of five children, in Crisp, Texas, Ellis County, on a cotton farm where his father was overseer; other times, his father was a sharecropper himself, part of a vast rural laboring class that had as much in common with their Black sharecropping brethren as they did with the landowners, cotton brokers and others who collectively limited their fortune. Music, specifically that of Jimmie Rodgers, “The Singing Brakeman,” of Meridian, Mississippi, was Tubb’s way out. On July 16, 1930, in Los Angeles, Rodgers recorded “Blue Yodel #9” with Louis Armstrong on trumpet and Louis’ wife, Lil Hardin Armstrong, on piano. Is country music Black music or white music, or just another type of blues?
The closest river to Crisp is the Trinity, which winds and winds its way to the Gulf of Mexico. Over 700 miles long, its headwaters are only a couple miles from the Red River — which is another Hawks’-directed western starring John Wayne. Coincidence? Not a “chance” — which was also the name of Dean Martin’s character in Rio Bravo.
When Tubb recorded what would become a Top 10 country version of “Yellow Rose of Texas” in August 1955, he was following Mitch Miller, whose unlikely and quite un-country #1 pop arrangement was recorded earlier that summer. Stan Freberg’s subsequent parody cover puts the country back in and then some, including extra snare drum, but Tubb and his band, the Texas Troubadours, played it straight, swinging hot with twin fiddles, Dickie Harris, pedal steel, Billy Byrd guitar.
Nobody knows who wrote the song, which was first published in Christy’s Plantation Melodies. No. 2, in 1853. As minstrel songs go, it’s very mild, with only the words “darkey” and “yellow girl” tying it to the northern antebellum society that birthed minstrelsy. The tune was so great it could serve many purposes, however. Dropping the racial language, it became both a Confederate Army marching song (“You can talk about your Beauregard and sing of General Lee / But the gallant Hood of Texas played hell in Tennessee!”) and a jaunty Lone Star love song popularized by Roy Rogers in 1944 (“You may talk about your dearest maid and sing of Rosalie / But the Yellow Rose of Texas beats the belles of Tennessee.”)
Tubb, following Miller, sings “You may talk about your Clementine, and sing of Rosalie / But the Yellow Rose of Texas is the only girl for me.” Such is the winding of American folkways. That October, Tubb recorded a recent Chuck Berry song, “Thirty Days.” A minor hit, it raised a question: Was Chuck Berry country or Ernest Tubb rock and roll?
PATSY YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn. Nadine Hubbs on Marty Robbins’ EL PASO | Elizabeth Nelson on Dave Dudley’s SIX DAYS ON THE ROAD | Lynn Peril on Jean Chapel’s WELCOME TO THE CLUB | David Cantwell on Porter Wagoner’s MY BONFIRE | Will Hermes on Johnny Cash’s RING OF FIRE | Mimi Lipson on Loretta Lynn’s I’M A HONKY TONK GIRL | Charles Hughes on Roger Miller’s YOU DON’T WANT MY LOVE | Eric Weisbard on Lefty Frizzell’s THE LONG BLACK VEIL | Steacy Easton on Jean Shepard’s A SATISFIED MIND | Josh Glenn on Johnny Cash’s THE REBEL — JOHNNY YUMA | Carlo Rotella on Buck Owens’ CLOSE UP THE HONKY TONKS | Annie Nocenti on Patsy Cline’s THREE CIGARETTES IN AN ASHTRAY | Douglas Wolk on Lucky Starr’s I’VE BEEN EVERYWHERE | Will Groff on Ray Price’s NIGHT LIFE | Jonny Auping on Willie Nelson’s CRAZY | Brian Berger on Ernest Tubb’s THE YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS | Jason Grote on Bill Browning and His Echo Valley Boys’ DARK HOLLOW | Peter Doyle on Willie Nelson’s FUNNY HOW TIME SLIPS AWAY | Sam Glenn on Johnny Cash’s BIG RIVER | Mark Richardson on Elvis Presley’s BLUE MOON | Adam McGovern on Elvis Presley’s BLACK STAR / FLAMING STAR | Chris Spurgeon on Ricky Nelson’s BELIEVE WHAT YOU SAY | Stephen Thomas Erlewine on George Jones’ WHITE LIGHTNING | Devin McKinney on George Hamilton IV’s ABILENE | Annie Zaleski on Patsy Cline’s WALKIN’ AFTER MIDNIGHT.
ALSO SEE: DOLLY YOUR ENTHUSIASM (25 of our favorite Country records from 1964–1973) | & more Country at HILOBROW, including short appreciations of Gene Pitney, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, Buck Owens, George Jones, June Carter Cash, Charley Pride, and many others.
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