Video hit Ernest Tubb

Ernest Tubb - I'm Walking the Floor Over You

"Walking the Floor Over You" is a country music song written by Ernest Tubb and released in the United States in 1941.

The original version included only Tubb's vocals and acoustic guitar accompanied by "Smitty" Smith on electric guitar. Tubb later re-recorded the song with his band, The Texas Troubadours.

The single became a hit and sold over a million copies.

Critic David Vinopal called "Walking the Floor Over You" the first honky tonk song that launched the musical genre itself.

Ernest Tubb's first big hit single sounds as startling today as it undoubtedly did in 1941. Many consider "Walking the Floor Over You" the first honky-tonk single, but it's not just an archetype of a particular musical style, because it still sounds so singularly unique. The arrangement is remarkably spare, consisting of Tubb playing an acoustic rhythm guitar and singing in his trademark nasal style, accompanied only by guitarist Fay "Smitty" Smith, who plays the very first electrified lead guitar fills on a country record.

Smith, a Dallas-based player who worked with Tubb at local radio station KGKO, had played electric guitar in a big band jazz context (in the manner of the Dallas-born Charlie Christian), and he doesn't change his attack or his volume much for this song.

Smitty's guitar seems absurdly loud in comparison to Tubb's easygoing vocals and laid-back acoustic track; his introduction and two brief solos stand out primarily due to their novelty, since the second solo in particular just sort of flails around for a few bars, as if Smitty has lost his train of thought and is simply trying to get back to the verse in time.

The solos would be little remembered today were they not in service to one of the great country songs of the '40s, a million seller with a wittily heartbroken lyric and one of Ernest Tubb's finest vocal performance. Tubb rerecorded the song, a longtime fan favorite, in the early '60s with a lineup of the Texas Troubadours, but that version lacks the homespun quality and simple joy of the 1941 original.

The lyrics:

I'm walking the floor over you I can't sleep a wink that is true

I'm hoping and I'm praying as my heart breaks right in two walking the floor over you

You left me and you went away you said that you'd be back in just a day

You've broken your promise and you left me here alone

I don't know why you did dear but I do know that you're gone

I'm walking the floor over you...

Now someday you may be lonesome too walking the floor is good for you

Just keep right on walking and it won't hurt you to cry

Remember that I loved you and I will the day I die

I'm walking the floor over you...