Ernest Tubb - A Good Year For The Wine (2:32)
Ever notice how many crusty country honky-tonkers like Ernest Tubb seem to drink way more wine than you'd ever expect? Porter Wagoner comes to mind (One Dime For Wine, Daddy And The Wine, When I Drink My Wine) and so do Merle Haggard (Little Ole Wine Drinker Me, Wine Take Me Away), Faron Young (Wine Me Up), Johnny Bush (Back From The Wine, Waltz Of The Wine), and Bob Wills (Warm Red Wine) among others.
These are, generally speaking, the kind of guys you'd expect to be throwing back beer and shots if you ever encountered them nursing a heartache in a bar somewhere. Yet they seemed to have an unshakeable affinity for wine over and above all other alcoholic beverages. Sure, there are lyrical and metaphorical reasons for this, but I find it fun to contemplate all the same.
One of these days, I'll round up 10 or 20 of my favorite examples of this now-deceased trend but for today here's the Texas Troubadour himself, Ernest Tubb, with A Good Year For The Wine. I don't know about the rest of you, but at my house it was indeed a good year for the wine. And by wine, I mean beer.
And speaking of Ernest Tubb, here are some selected excerpts from The Troubadour, ET's fan club newsletter from the winter of 1964.
Of related interest... my collection of songs about drinking.
Posted by: Samm Bennett | December 30, 2011 at 02:48 AM
I have noticed this wine thing and find it striking. Even Jerry Lee Lewis got into sampling the varietals with "It All Depends (Who Will Buy The Wine)" and "Honky Tonk Wine."
Posted by: Cavorting With Nudists | December 31, 2011 at 05:43 PM
nothing unusual about it -"fortified wine" e.g. Night Train, Thuderbird, etc is the cheap crap ghetto wine that gave winos their name.
Posted by: Conrad | December 31, 2011 at 06:39 PM
Funny you should bring this up. I was listening to some old country song and it mentioned sitting in bar, drinking wine. I wondered, "what type of wine do they serve in honky tonks?" I imagined lots of beer, whiskey of course, but wine? Red? White? Out of jug? No, that sounds like moonshine.
Posted by: Plasticsun | January 13, 2012 at 12:26 PM