Country stars don’t get much more classic than Ernest Tubb, who was making country hits before there were country charts. A youth spent bouncing around his home state of Texas and trying to be Jimmie Rodgers was capped with a tonsillectomy that transformed his voice from that of a skilled imitator to something all his own: rough-hewn, country, and endlessly distinctive. Tubb’s first real success transformed the very fabric of Nashville: His composition “Walking the Floor Over You,” released in 1941, brought honky-tonk to the world in its most mournful, spare form (and sold hundreds of thousands of copies). Tubb and his band, the Texas Troubadours, would follow their two-step trailblazing with dozens of hit songs over the years like “Half a Mind” and “Waltz Across Texas,” never veering too far from the honky-tonk that brought them fame.