In the 50's.
ANSWER:
It's true there was a pop singer by the name of Jimmie Rodgers who was living in the 1950's.
However, the "Father of Country Music," Jimmie Rodgers, was born on September 8, 1897, in Last Gap, Mississippi. His father worked as a foreman for the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. His mother had been infirm for most of her adult life, dying of tuberculosis when her youngest son was seven years old.
Jimmie Rodgers would die in New York, New York while there to do a recording session. He was suffering from tuberculosis, and had to rest on a cot at the studio between songs he was in the process of recording.
He died on May 26, 1933, less than six years after his first initial recording.
In 1961, Jimmie Rodgers joined Hank Williams and Fred Rose as the first inductees into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Jimmie Rodgers was elected to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.
