"Jukebox", Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, Nashville, Tennessee, 1972
This isn't one of those moments to simply cob photographs from this colossal book straight off the Internet (which I'm doing) — it's to share at just how magnificent a book this is. In fact it might have been naughtier, but it gets darn close to the bone enough, mainly reaching back when the photographer Henry Horenstein, out of New Bedford, MA., and boosted by folksinger Paul Clayton (who owned a music shop then in town) got young Henry's eye to look around with a camera, and what a feast we have. I only wish I could draw up the young photograph of Norman Blake for you, and the recent one of hardscrabble troubadour Spider John Koerner. This book takes you back stage, back road, back down, back up, back back. A keeper.
"Hillbilly Tex," Hillbilly Ranch, Boston, Massachusetts, 1972
"Roscoe Holcomb", Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1972
"Fan and Musician", Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, Nashville, Tennessee, 1974
"Lovers," Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, Nashville, Tennessee, 1975
"Patron (2)", Hillbilly Ranch, Boston, Massachusetts, 1972
"Bluegrass Music Fan Frank Brown," Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1974
"Curly Ray Cline at Home," Rock House, Kentucky, 1974
"Waylon Jennings," Performance Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1976
"Drunk Dancers," Merchant's Cafe, Nashville, Tennessee, 1974
"Country Western Bar and Grill," Highway 41, Nashville, Tennessee, 2008
"Ponderosa," Near Pikeville, Kentucky, 1974
"Tex Ritter", Hillbilly Ranch, Boston, Massachusetts, 1973
"Connie Smith", Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, Tennessee, 1972
"Henry with Mother Maybelle Carter,"
Lonestar Ranch, Reeds Ferry, New Hampshire, 1973
photo : Lewis Rosenberg
Honky Tonk
portraits of Country Music
by Henry Horenstein
Norton, 2012
