For many listeners, Honky Tonk is the most familiar style in country music. It's spare and direct, driven acoustic guitars, steel guitars, fiddles, and a high, lonesome vocal. Ernest Tubb was the first honky tonk musician to popularize the genre, but Hank Williams, George Jones, and Lefty Frizzell became the definitive artists in the '50s. As the genre aged, it essentially remained the same, but there was one notable permutation of Honky Tonk: the Bakersfield Sound. Bakersfield was the first genre of country music to rely heavily on electric instrumentation, as well as a defined backbeat -- in other words, it was the first to be significantly influenced by rock & roll.
