Honky-tonk
I first came across the phrase as an impressionable youngster courtesy of the Rolling Stones and one of their best numbers, Honky-Tonk Women. Although the lyrics are not works of art, I deduced enough to realise that it described a house of ill-repute, a dive where women of easy virtue hung out.
That I was somewhat on the right track is confirmed by this rather informative, if somewhat illiterate, definition from the Kansan Iola Register of 23rd June 1893; “when a particularly vicious and low-grade theatre opens up in an Oklahoma town they call it a honky-tonk. The name didn’t just come from anything; it just growed (sic).” That rather calls time on our etymological searches, if true. But what is fascinating is that whilst the term may have required some introduction to the folks of Kansas, it was in use in Oklahoma and judging from the gloss, had been in common usage for some time.
This enables us to deduce two things.
The first attribution in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to sometime in 1924 is wrong and, secondly, the phrase probably has nothing to do with the piano makers, William Tonk and Brothers of Chicago and New York who introduced a make of joanna from 1889 which was known as the Ernest A Tonk. It was a very popular model, particularly on Tin Pan Alley, and made its way out west, but probably too late in the day to give its name to the type of hostelry and the mode of music that were associated with honky-tonk.
In the late 19th century the West was wild and many a bar was a mix of music hall, dance hall, casino, bar and knocking shop. The better sorts in a town were keen to see the back of them and the council of Fort Worth, in particular, waged a long and ultimately unsuccessful campaign to close down a couple that had sprung up on Main Street. However, there were many who valued the attractions that they offered and they were not going to give them up without a fight. The Fort Worth Daily Gazette reported on 24th January 1889 that “a petition to the council is being circulated for signatures, asking that the Honky Tonk theatre on Main Street be reopened.” This may well be the first recorded usage of the term in print.
In order to give honky tonks the veneer of respectability, some proprietors called the attractions they had to offer “variety shows.” The Morning News of Dallas noted on 6th August 1890 that “myself and he set and talked awhile and he got up and said he wanted to go to the honk-a-tonk (variety show).”
But its attractions soon waned and by 1900 newspapers were reporting rather wistfully that “the once popular institution is dying off.” In its reminiscences the Evening Gazette of Reno, in what was a syndicated article, on 3rd February 1900 gave the flavour of an evening which began “about nine o’clock, and continues in full blast until one, or thereabouts, as long as its patrons will patronise the bar…always at least one drama is presented, the entire company, vocalists, dancers and all, participating.”
The same article gave a fanciful origin for the name. A group were wandering in search of the source of some music they could hear. “From far out in the distance there finally came to their ears a “honk-a-tonk-a-tonk-a-tonk-a,” which they mistook for the bass viol. They turned toward the sound, to find alas! a flock of wild geese. So honkatonk was named.”
We can almost certainly discount this etymological root but whence it came is anybody’s guess. Honky as a pejorative term for whites didn’t emerge (at least in print) until the 1960s and Tonkin, the name given to the French colony of north Vietnam, is too far of a stretch to give its name to a type of bar in the Wild West of America.
The Iola Register was probably right.
windowthroughtime 