Named for the no-nonsense saloons that were its natural habitat, honky-tonk music emerged in the ‘40s country continuum as a disruption analogous to the first-gen rock 'n' roll that appeared a decade later—a hard-driving, literally electrified sound powering songs about drinking, cheating, fighting, and falling in lust. The honky-tonk wave led by the likes of Lefty Frizzell and Ernest Tubb displaced the comparatively strait-laced sounds of early country just as rock's initial onslaught in the early ‘50s would chase off buttoned-down, family-friendly pop. And when the "Hillbilly Shakespeare" Hank Williams hit the scene, honky-tonk had its Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan rolled into one. Faithful followers of the honky-tonk creed carried the torch forward through the generations, with neo-traditional artists like Randy Travis and Alan Jackson bringing elements of the sound back into the country music mainstream in the late ‘80s and early '90s.