Thompson's music genre, characterized when Honky Tonk Swing, is a mixture of big-band instrumentation, fiddle & steel guitar that supports his distinctive, gravelly baritone vocals on songs he typically writes himself. His backing band, A Brazos Valley Boys, was voted a There is no.I United states American Band for Fourteen years inside the row by Billboard Magazine.

He decided to pursue his musical talent fallowing serving in the U.S. Navy in World War II as a radioman and studying electrical engineering at the university level. His number 1 only was "Whoa Sailor" around 1946. A month 1952 brought his first #1 disc, "The Wild Side of Life", which contained a memorable line "I didn't know God made honky-tonk angels" (which inspired a Kitty Wells response, It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels). More hits followed within promptly succession in the 1950s and 1960s. Although non when large inside late decades, he has remained an active & respected performing artist within the field, locating fresh audiences following of the revitalization of the harder-edged healthy in c and w.

Hank Thompson was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1989 and was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1997.