Honky-Tonk Piano

Honky-tonk piano is the percussive, deliberately battered piano style named for the American saloons in which it first flourished, recreated as a commercial recording genre in the early 1950s. Pianists played ragtime, boogie-woogie and current hits on uprights doctored with tacks in the hammers and slight detuning, producing a bright, clattering tone meant to evoke a frontier barroom. #Capitol Records# pianist *Lou Busch*, recording as *Joe "Fingers" Carr*, launched the craze with "Honky Tonk Piano" (1950), and a school of specialists followed, among them *Johnny Maddox*, *Del Wood*, *Big Tiny Little* and Britain's *Winifred Atwell*, before rock and roll absorbed its energy.