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 straitlaced 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.