About The Song
“Honky Tonkin'” is a country song written and recorded by Hank Williams. The first version was cut on February 13, 1947, at the WSM radio station studio in Nashville during one of his last sessions for Sterling Records, and it was released that same year as the B-side to “Pan American” on Sterling 210. After Williams moved to MGM, he recut the song on November 6, 1947, at Castle Studio in Nashville with a slightly different band, and this MGM single (MGM 10171), issued in 1948 with “I’ll Be a Bachelor ’Til I Die” on the flip side, became the best-known version.
The song was published by Acuff-Rose in November 1948 and is credited to Hiram (Hank) Williams as writer. On the Billboard country chart, the MGM recording of “Honky Tonkin'” reached No. 14 in 1948, giving Williams one of his early national hits following the breakthrough of “Move It On Over.” Chart summaries and retrospective discographies list it among his first run of successful honky-tonk singles in the late 1940s, though it did not climb as high as some of his later classics like “Lovesick Blues” or “Cold, Cold Heart.”
Musically, “Honky Tonkin'” is a hillbilly and honky-tonk piece with noticeable country blues inflections. Commentators have pointed out that the chorus is rhythmically unusual: it can be analyzed as three ten-beat phrases followed by two measures of four beats, for a total of thirty-eight beats in the chorus section, something that could be written in 10/4 time up to the final turnaround. The MGM remake benefits from the improved acoustics of Castle Studio and from the chemistry between Williams and producer Fred Rose, with support from musicians such as Robert “Chubby” Wise (fiddle), Jerry Byrd (steel guitar), Zeke Turner (lead guitar) and Louis Innis (bass).
Lyrically, the song invites the listener to go “honky tonkin’” – that is, to go out drinking and dancing in honky-tonk bars. The narrator reassures his partner that if she is lonely when he is not around, she is free to join him at the honky-tonk, where the two of them can drink, dance and forget their troubles. The text combines everyday speech with simple rhyme schemes and a strong, repetitive hook, reflecting Williams’s ability to turn common expressions and situations into memorable, singable lines.
Thematically, “Honky Tonkin'” reflects the postwar barroom scene that shaped much of Williams’s early performing life. Biographical sources emphasize that he spent many nights working in rough roadhouses and beer joints, and the song captures the atmosphere of those venues: loud music, drinking, fights and a mix of escape and hardship. In this respect it belongs to the same world as later honky-tonk numbers by Williams and his contemporaries, which documented the lives of working-class Southerners in the late 1940s.
Over the years, “Honky Tonkin'” has become a standard in country music. It has been covered by numerous artists, including Maddox Brothers and Rose, Teresa Brewer, George Jones, Townes Van Zandt and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Hank Williams Jr. took his own version of the song to No. 1 on the country chart in 1982, more than three decades after the original release, helping to introduce the composition to a new generation of listeners. Modern writers continue to cite the 1948 recording as an important early example of Williams’s honky-tonk style and as one of the stepping stones toward the harder-edged country sound of the 1950s.
Video
Lyric
When you are sad and lonely and have no place to go
Come to see me, baby, and bring along some dough
And we’ll go honky tonkin’, honky tonkin’
Honky tonkin’, honey baby
We’ll go honky tonkin’ ’round this town
When you and your baby have a fallin’ out
Call me up, sweet mama, and we’ll go steppin’ out
And we’ll go honky tonkin’, honky tonkin’
Honky tonkin’, honey baby
We’ll go honky tonkin’ ’round this town
We’re goin’ to the city, to the city fair
If you go to the city, baby, you will find me there
And we’ll go honky tonkin’, honky tonkin’
Honky tonkin’, honey baby
We’ll go honky tonkin’ ’round this town
We goin’ honky tonkin’, honky tonkin’
Honky tonkin’, honey baby
We goin’ honky tonkin’ ’round this town