Jimmie Rodgers

• Born: September 8, 1897
• Birthplace: Near Meridian, Mississippi
• Died: May 26, 1933
• Place of death: New York, New York

American country singer, guitarist, and songwriter

Through his recordings and performances, Rodgers made Southern and rural music popular, laying the foundation for country music.

The Life

Jimmie Rodgers was born James Charles Rodgers in 1897 in Meridian, Mississippi. Rodgers admired his father Aaron, who was a railroad section foreman, and Rodgers used his father as the source of his songs, including “Daddy and Home.” His mother died when he was only six years old, forcing Rodgers to live with various relatives and instilling in him a perennial wanderlust. Though never really the destitute orphan depicted in his songs or in his publicity stories, Rodgers never had another permanent home until he bought a mansion just before he died.

Meridian, the largest city in Mississippi, hosted entertainers of all kinds. Rodgers was starstruck, and he decided early on that he wanted to be a performer. The first hint of success came with his winning a small talent contest when he was twelve, singing the parlor-song hits “(Won’t You Come Home) Bill Bailey” and “Steamboat Bill” (also known as “Casey Jones”). After some time on the medicine-show circuit with only modest success, he settled down at home, working with his father on the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad as a brakeman. These wages allowed Rodgers to enjoy his favorite pastimes: girls, records, and music concerts. Rodgers married a local beauty, Stella Kelly, in 1917, but the marriage ended in a few months because of money problems.

Rodgers eloped with his second wife, Carrie Williamson, in 1920 against her family’s wishes (financial security again being an issue). It was not a good time to marry: The post-World War I economic slump made times hard, and Rodgers lost his railroad job. The birth of their daughters in 1921 and 1923 compounded their difficulties. In addition, in the fall of 1924, Rodgers was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Largely ignoring his ill health, Rodgers began to take his amateur music career more seriously, playing in dance bands, in medicine shows, in blackface minstrel shows, and in a Hawaiian carnival. He also went back to work on the railroad. However, in 1927, for reasons that are still unclear, Rodgers went to Asheville, North Carolina, where he played a number of part-time gigs before going on the road and stopping off to see a couple of musician friends in Bristol, Tennessee, where he made some recordings for Victor Records.

He had a brief success, but even though people were willing to spend seventy-five cents for one of his records (almost twice the price of a good steak at that time, one observer noted), the Great Depression took its toll. By 1932 record sales plummeted, and it was hard for Rodgers to find work; he had to resort to touring with small tent shows. His health was failing fast, too, causing him to cut back on those few personal appearances he could find. A large cash settlement in 1932 with his first wife over child support for a daughter (who may or may not have been his) added to his financial burdens. In 1933, against his doctor’s advice, Rodgers traveled from Texas to New York for a week-long, thirteen-song recording session to provide money for his family after his death. Two days after finishing, Rodgers died.

The Music

When Rodgers began his career just after World War I, country music had not yet been defined. Songs based on Southern rural-oriented dance tunes and folk ballads were just beginning to be noticed as a genre, although they were often dismissed as hillbilly music. At that time, commercial popular music, mostly confined to the Northern cities, consisted of live music hall and vaudeville shows outside the home and various family parlor musical instruments (with their sheet music) inside the home.

Soon, radio and records began to introduce new musical styles to different audiences, offering Southern musicians new opportunities to perform as professionals and allowing many to make a living playing the tunes they grew hearing. Southern radio stations found that broadcasting live local talent was an inexpensive way to fill airtime, attract listeners, and gain sponsors. Artists found radio to be a good way to increase attendance at their personal appearances (where they made most of their money). With the advent of the automobile, local talent could appear at a greater number of venues, and the latest city stars and songs could come out to the farms. In the South, square dance songs, rural white mountain folk ballads, and African American Delta blues mixed easily with the latest urban show tunes, rags, and Tin Pan Alley novelty hits from the North. By the 1920’s hillbilly music was becoming commercialized, and many artists from the South, including Rodgers, dreamed of national fame and fortune.

Recording Country Music. New York record company executives discovered that Northerners, too, were interested in hillbilly music, believing it to be reflective of simpler, pastoral times. Ralph Peer, a producer and talent scout for the Victor record label, was one of the first to realize there was a national audience for authentic (or songs that sounded authentic), old-time Southern songs, and he made some of the first country-music recordings in the early 1920’s. In 1927 he visited the Appalachian town of Bristol (Tennessee or Virginia, the state line runs down the main street) on a field trip in search of local rural musicians and traditional songs he might be able to copyright. He recorded nineteen artists, who performed seventy-six songs over a ten-day period. Six songs were by the Carter Family, a group that helped to define country music. Two others were by a scrawny kid who looked younger than his twenty-nine years: Rodgers.

Yodeler. At that time, Rodgers was a bandleader without a band, because he and his musicians had split up over an argument about money. Calling themselves the Tenneva Ramblers, the others decided to audition without him. Peer was dubious about a Rodgers solo audition, but he was impressed by Rodgers’s yodel. Rodgers’s two numbers were a Spanish-American World War I ballad called “The Soldier’s Sweetheart” and a country lullaby called “Sleep, Baby, Sleep.” In spite of apocryphal tales to the contrary, Peer did not immediately recognize Rodgers’s genius nor did these songs become instant hits. Though they sold moderately well, considering Rodgers was unknown, they did not make Rodgers an immediate star. However, typical of his optimism or perhaps his denial of unpleasant news, Rodgers traveled to New York and persuaded Peer to record him again. One of the records made then, “Blue Yodel No. 1,” became Rodgers’s breakthrough hit and his trademark tune. Finally seeing Rodgers’s great commercial potential, Peer became the singer’s manager, working with him until his death in 1933. Within months Rodgers’s name spread all over the country, and soon he was making radio appearances and traveling the concert circuit.

The Singing Brakeman. Rodgers’s career would only last another five years, but his unique yodel and choice of material struck the heartstrings of listeners, both Northern and Southern. His fame spread with each new record and personal appearance. He worked with some of the most famous entertainers of the day, including jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong and humorist Will Rogers. In 1929 Rodgers made what was probably the first country-music video, The Singing Brakeman, a ten-minute film short of Rodgers in a brakeman’s outfit outside a railroad café singing three songs to an elderly lady and young waitress. This was one of the early “talkies” and the first Hollywood feature to depict a country artist.

Musical Legacy

Rodgers helped commercialize country music, giving it national attention by taking it out of its regional and rural roots. He sold more than twelve million records in his lifetime. He could play railroad songs, cowboy laments, Mississippi blues, mountain ballads, and vaudeville pop tunes, and he never adopted the hillbilly persona that other Southern artists were using as their stage presence. Though publicity stills often showed him in railroad overalls or a cowboy hat, his live performances always had him in fashionable suits and ties.

Rodgers provided the vocal model that the first generation of country stars emulated—from cowboy troubadours such as Gene Autry to bluegrass artists such as Bill Monroe to Western swingers such as Bob Wills. The singer-songwriter genre, whether folk or rock, is a direct offshoot of his style, a kind of music that Rodgers often said was “just me and my old guitar.” Peer reissued Rodgers’s records through the 1960’s, probably to keep his royalties coming. Regardless of Peer’s motivation, this exposed new generations to Rodgers’s music. Critical recognition began to come some three decades after his death. He was inducted as a first charter member into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1961, the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Early Influence) in 1986. He was inducted into the National Academy of Popular Music Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1986. Rodgers was the first person of European descent to receive the W. C. Handy Blues Award for contributions to blues. The Smithsonian Institution’s two-record set of Rodgers’s songs was nominated for two Grammy Awards in 1987, and his song “Blue Yodel No. 9“ entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2007. The image of Rodgers appeared on a U.S. Postal Service first-class stamp in 1978.

Bibliography

Comber, Chris, and Mike Paris. “Jimmie Rodgers.” In Stars of Country Music, edited by Bill Malone and Judith McCulloh. New York: Da Capo Press, 1975. This brief reference gives new information on Rodgers’s musical styles.

Ellison, Curtis. Country Music Culture: From Hard Times to Heaven. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1995. This book examines the development of country music as social history.

Hagan, Chet. “Jimmie Rodgers.” In Country Music Legends in the Hall of Fame. Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, 1982. This resource provides biographies of twenty-six country-music artists, among them Rodgers. Includes illustrations.

Lilly, John. “Jimmie Rodgers and the Bristol Sessions.” In The Bristol Sessions: Writings About the Big Bang of Country Music, edited by Charles Wolfe and Ted Olson. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2005. The book describes the discovery of Rodgers at the historic sessions in Bristol that started country music. Includes an excerpt from Rodgers’s widow’s biography and an article comparing the careers of Rodgers with that of Alfred G. Karnes, a harp-guitar playing gospel singer and preacher, explaining why one artist at these sessions fell into obscurity while the other achieved superstardom.

Malone, Bill. “The First Country Singing Star: Jimmie Rodgers.” In Country Music USA. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985. This book is an excellent single-volume history of the country-music genre through the 1970’s, with good information on Rodgers.

Peterson, Richard. “Renewable Tradition: The Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers.” In Creating Country Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. This resource discusses the institutionalization of country music: how fans, musicians, and promoters negotiated what would be authentic and popular country music.

Porterfield, Nolan. Jimmie Rodgers: The Life and Times of America’s Blue Yodeler. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992. A well-researched and thorough biography of Rodgers, addressing rumors and myths that have shrouded his personal and professional life.

Rodgers, Carrie. My Husband Jimmie Rodgers. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1995. This was the first book-length biography written about a country musician (originally published in 1935, a few years after this death). This edition includes photographs and a critical introduction by Rodgers scholar Nolan Porterfield.

Principal Recordings

singles: “Away out on the Mountain,” 1927; “Ben Dewberry’s Final Run,” 1927; “Blue Yodel No. 1,” 1927; “Mother Was a Lady (If Brother Jack Were Here),” 1927; “Sleep, Baby, Sleep,” 1927; “The Soldier’s Sweetheart,” 1927; “Blue Yodel No. 2,” 1928; “Blue Yodel No. 3,” 1928; “The Brakeman’s Blues,” 1928; “Daddy and Home,” 1928; “Dear Old Sunny South by the Sea,” 1928; “I’m Lonely and Blue,” 1928; “In the Jailhouse Now,” 1928; “Lullaby Yodel,” 1928; “Memphis Yodel,” 1928; “My Carolina Sunshine Girl,” 1928; “My Little Lady,” 1928; “My Little Old Home down in New Orleans,”1928; “My Old Pal,” 1928; “Never No Mo’ Blues,” 1928; “The Sailor’s Plea,” 1928; “Treasures Untold,” 1928; “Waiting for a Train,” 1928; “You and My Old Guitar,” 1928; “Anniversary Blue Yodel (Blue Yodel No. 7),” 1929; “Any Old Time,” 1929; “Blue Yodel No. 5,” 1929; “Blue Yodel No. 6,” 1929; “Blue Yodel No. 11,” 1929; “Desert Blues,” 1929; “Everybody Does It in Hawaii,” 1929; “Frankie and Johnnie,” 1929; “High Powered Mama,” 1929; “Hobo Bill’s Last Ride,” 1929; “I’m Sorry We Met,” 1929; “I’ve Ranged, I’ve Roamed, and I’ve Traveled,” 1929; “Jimmie’s Texas Blues,” 1929; “The Land of My Boyhood Dreams,” 1929; “Mississippi River Blues,”1929; “My Rough and Rowdy Ways,” 1929; “Nobody Knows But Me,” 1929; “She Was Happy Till She Met You,” 1929; “That’s Why I’m Blue,” 1929; “Train Whistle Blues,” 1929; “Tuck Away My Lonesome Blues,” 1929; “Whisper Your Mother’s Name,” 1929; “Why Did You Give Me Your Love?,” 1929; “Yodeling Cowboy,” 1929; “Blue Yodel No. 8 (Mule Skinner Blues),” 1930; “Blue Yodel No. 9,” 1930; “For the Sake of Days Gone By,” 1930; “I’m Lonesome Too,” 1930; “In the Jailhouse Now, No. 2,” 1930; “Jimmie’s Mean Mama Blues,” 1930; “Moonlight and Skies,” 1930; “My Blue-Eyed Jane,” 1930; “The Mystery of Number Five,” 1930; “The One Rose (That’s Left in My Heart),” 1930; “Pistol Packin’ Papa,” 1930; “Take Me Back Again,” 1930; “Those Gambler’s Blues,” 1930; “Why Should I Be Lonely?,” 1930; “The Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers in Texas,” 1931; “Gambling Polka Dot Blues,” 1931; “Jimmie Rodgers Visits the Carter Family,” 1931; “Jimmie the Kid,” 1931; “Let Me Be Your Sidetrack,” 1931; “Looking for a New Mama,” 1931; “My Good Gal’s Gone Blues,” 1931; “Southern Cannon-Ball,” 1931; “T.B. Blues,” 1931; “Travelin’ Blues,” 1931; “What’s It?,” 1931; “When the Cactus Is in Bloom,” 1931; “Why There’s a Tear in My Eye,” 1931; “The Wonderful City,” 1931; “Blue Yodel No. 10,” 1932; “Down the Old Road to Home,” 1932; “Gambling Barroom Blues,” 1932; “Hobo’s Meditation,” 1932; “Home Call,” 1932; “In the Hills of Tennessee,” 1932; “I’ve Only Loved Three Women,” 1932; “Long Tall Mama Blues,” 1932; “Miss the Mississippi and You,” 1932; “Mississippi Moon,” 1932; “Mother, the Queen of My Heart,” 1932; “My Time Ain’t Long,” 1932; “Ninety-nine Years Blues,” 1932; “No Hard Times,” 1932; “Peach-Pickin’ Time down in Georgia,” 1932; “Prairie Lullaby,” 1932; “Rock All Our Babies to Sleep,” 1932; “Roll Along, Kentucky Moon,” 1932; “Sweet Mama Hurry Home (or I’ll Be Gone),” 1932; “Whippin’ That Old T.B.,” 1932; “Blue Yodel No. 12,” 1933; “The Cowhand’s Last Ride,” 1933; “Dreaming with Tears in My Eyes,” 1933; “I’m Free (From the Chain Gang Now),” 1933; “Jimmie Rodgers’ Last Blue Yodel,” 1933; “Mississippi Delta Blues,” 1933; “Old Love Letters,” 1933; “Old Pal of My Heart,” 1933; “Somewhere down Below the Dixon Line,” 1933; “Years Ago,” 1933; “Yodeling My Way Back Home,” 1933; “The Yodeling Ranger,” 1933.