Eddie Stubbs on fiddle, Johnson Mountain Boys Hanover, Massachusetts, 1981

There is an old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. Pictures serve as reminders of what was witnessed by the photographer, which becomes a time capsule of a moment that is gone. In Honky Tonk, there are more than one hundred of these time-capsule moments. There aren't enough words to describe adequately such an important era in the history of country music.

The period between 1972 and 1981, when the photographs contained in this book were taken, was an exciting, yet transitional time for country music. Many of the giants of the business were at a point when their recordings, new or old, were receiving little or no airplay; a point of frustration not only for the artists but also for their longtime fans. It was a time when the "Countrypolitan" and "Nashville Sound" with background voices and string sections were reigning on recordings, when the earlier traditional stylings with large portions of steel guitar and fiddle had nearly faded away. This format was successful; as the number of radio stations programming country music grew, so did the number of new fans. The late 1970s gave way to the "Urban Cowboy" era, attracting yet another legion of new artists and fans to country music.

Henry Horenstein, a serious fan of country music, was a young Massachusetts photographer who had only been taking pictures for a few years when he made the earliest images featured in this book—individual shots of Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton taken in Boston in 1972. Later that year, Henry made his first of three pilgrimages to Nashville. With the help of Rounder Records, then a relatively new company, for whom he was doing a shoot, Henry was able to attain backstage access to WSM's Grand Ole Opry. It was there that his camera committed to film dozens of country music greats on stage and off, in what was the Opry's last full year at the historic Mother Church of Country Music, the Ryman Auditorium. Also during the Nashville visits, Henry captured a number of wonderful images of artists at their homes, in addition to taking numerous shots at Nashville's most famous honky tonk, Tootsies Orchid Lounge. While bluegrass music and its festivals are very popular now, these venues were in their formative years when Henry was taking his pictures. Photographs of legends like Charlie Monroe, the Blue Sky Boys, and the Bailey Brothers, all semiretired at the time, are even more legendary today to serious students of the music. Just as insightful are the youthful shots of Ricky Skaggs, then playing with J. D. Crowe, and the ultratraditional Del McCoury in front of one of his first buses.

Country music parks, once a thriving entity, especially north of the Mason-Dixon line, are virtually extinct today. Henry was in the right place at the right time to capture the images of more legends like Mother Maybelle Carter, Carl and Pearl Butler, Ernest Tubb, along with one of his most famous lead guitar players, among others. The chapter devoted to honky tonks is especially important to country music history. For several decades, honky tonks were a haven where a band could learn and hone its skills, try out new material, play old songs that radio didn’t program anymore, and essentially learn to put on a show. Honky tonks were a tremendous training ground for a band that could learn when to get out of this environment and move up the ladder to work in better places that offered more money. Once a thriving entity for country music fans to see and hear live music as well as listen to a jukebox loaded with country records, the honky tonk is a piece of Americana that is fading quickly into obscurity, having given way to chain restaurants with fern bars. In the middle 1980s, VCRs were becoming an almost essential part of every home, and stronger DWI/DUI laws and enforcement went into effect. As a result, people started going out less and staying home more. It was a lot easier and cheaper to stay at home, put a tape in the VCR, and "pop a top" on a can of beer in the den. While these life-saving laws were essential socially, they definitely had a negative effect on live music at the time.

This book fills a void in the documentation of country music history, showing many venues important to the music and its patrons, who are as integral a part of the contents of this book as the performers. Through Henry's lens, we get an up-close look at these special people. Country music in those days was expanding rapidly, attracting new fans all the time, but it couldn't shake loose the longtime fans: hard-core, largely blue-collar workers who bought the Carl Smith and Kitty Wells records when they were new back in the 1950s. When you look at the images of the fans out in front of the Ryman Auditorium, the older people especially, you can tell that these were real country music fans. In many cases these individuals had saved for years, in some instances a lifetime, to make the journey to Nashville and see the Grand Ole Opry. These are people who knew all the words to Ernest Tubb's "Walking the Floor Over You" and George Morgan’s "Candy Kisses," and could tell you the name of Loretta Lynn’s latest single on the radio.

Even though it was a troubling time for our nation, with the Watergate scandal surrounding then-president Richard Nixon and other big issues that would shape America’s future, it was a simpler time for country music. In the opinion of many longtime fans and observers, the 1970s were the last great decade of country music. Granted, while multitalented traditional stylists like Ricky Skaggs, Randy Travis, George Strait, Vince Gill, and Alan Jackson have all emerged since then, their legacy belongs to a different era.

This book's most recent photograph was taken in October of 1981 in Hanover, Massachusetts. The subjects were a new band on the bluegrass circuit out of Maryland, just nearing the end of their first year on the road as a full-time group. They were the Johnson Mountain Boys, an act for which I was proud to be the fiddle player for eighteen years. The photo shoot was for a new publicity picture and for an album cover for the group's second album on Rounder, entitled Walls of Time. It was on this blustery, cold, autumn day that I first met Henry Horenstein. Henry had taken a number of album cover photographs for Rounder, and we were all acquainted with his work in that area. At the time, if we had gotten to see the full contents of this book, we probably would have tied him up for hours asking an endless number of questions like, "How did it feel to attend the Opry at the Ryman?," and "What was it like to photograph DeFord Bailey?"

The photographs in this book take me back to when I was a teenager in the 1970s, the early years of what for me has become an obsession with all facets of bluegrass and traditional country music. Henry's images remind me vividly what icons Ernest Tubb, Bill Monroe, and Lester Flatt looked like the first time I saw them, either on network television or in person. They, and numerous others, definitely had a different look from the musicians on the 1950s and 1960s album covers I had studied so meticulously. To keep up with the times, many male country artists were letting their hair grow longer and fuller and had let their sideburns grow down to the bottom of their ears. Hair coloring, long a staple in female grooming, was becoming common among the older male stars in country music. At the time, they were wearing polyester more often than the sequined gabardine outfits from tailors like Nudie Cohen or Manuel that had been so prevalent among country stars.

Although none of us knew it at the time, some of the artists captured in this book were in the last decade of their lives. By the 1970s, the interstate highways in most areas had only been in use for a decade. To make life easier, many of the stars had gravitated to traveling by bus. However, the rigors of the road—in many cases a lifelong unhealthy diet of foods high in cholesterol and saturated fat, often coupled with addiction to tobacco and sometimes alcohol, along with family problems, and business pressures—all contributed to the aging process, sadly, not always in a graceful manner. Horenstein's images of the fans, standing alone or as part of the audience, and especially in the honky tonks, transport me back to the middle and late 1970s. At the time I was legally underage, playing music in some of northern-central Maryland’s finest smoky roadhouse taverns. The way these patrons looked, the clothes they wore, the hair styles, the way they acted, the lifestyle they possessed, and the passion they had for the music, are wonderful memories that Henry has allowed many of us who were around at the time to call up again.

Photographs, like music, serve as memory makers. For many who look at these pages, Henry Horenstein's images will open a floodgate of memories. To those who have come to the music since the 1970s, welcome! Whether you're a lifelong fan or just got introduced to country music yesterday, this book is an absolute treasure chest of special photographs. There is much here to enjoy, not only by the artists and musicians, but by the fans who made it all possible.

—Eddie Stubbs
WSM Grand Ole Opry Announcer
Nashville, Tennessee