Jimmie Rodgers

For more information on Jimmie Rodgers, visit Britannica.com.

Jimmie Rodgers (1897-1933), known as "The Mississippi Blue Yodeler" and "The Singing Brakeman,"was the first nationally-known country music star. He influenced many later performers from Hank Snow and Ernest Tubb to Lefty Frizzell and Merle Haggard. Rodgers was the first musician to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Born in Meridian, Mississippi, on September 8, 1897, Rodgers grew up in hard times. He was the third son of Aaron Rodgers, a maintenance-of-way railroad foreman for the Mobile & Ohio Railroad. His mother died when he was four and Rodgers went to live with his mother's sister, a former teacher who had degrees in music and English. She introduced him to many kinds of music, including vaudeville, pop, and dance hall ditties. He was a wild boy and, when he returned to his father in 1912, he hung out in pool halls and seedy bars, though never got into serious trouble.

At the age of 12, he sang "Steamboat Bill" at a talent contest and won. It was his first taste of fame and he decided to start his own traveling show. His father tracked him down and brought him home, but Rodgers ran away again to join a medicine show-a traveling combination of entertainment and live commercials for mostly-useless and often dangerous medical remedies. By the time his father tracked him down again, Rodgers had had enough of life on the road. When his father gave him the choice of going to school or working on the railroad, Rodgers chose the railroad. He taught himself to play banjo, ukelele, and guitar and learned train songs, barroom ballads, slave songs, and blues tunes from the other railway men.

Rodgers worked as a brakeman for the New Orleans & Northeastern railroad for the next ten years, traveling along the south and west coasts. This was how he earned his nickname, "The Singing Brakeman."

Two Marriages

In May, 1917, he married Sandra Kelly, whom he had known for only a few weeks. By the fall, they were already separated, even though she was pregnant. Two years later they officially were divorced and Rodgers met Carrie Williamson, a high-school student and preacher's daughter. They married in April, 1920, while she was still in school.

Soon after the marriage, Rodgers was laid off by the railroad and the couple entered some hard times. Rodgers took odd jobs and sang whenever he could. He was on the road performing when he received word that their second daughter, who was only six weeks old, had died of diphtheria.

In 1923, Rodgers contracted pneumonia and the following year was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Despite his doctor's advice, he left the hospital and formed a trio with fiddler Slim Rozell and his sister-in-law Elsie McWilliams. Rodgers had taught himself to play and sing, and was not able to read or write music; he relied on McWilliams for help. The two collaborated on writing the songs that Americans would be singing throughout the late 1920s and 1930s.

Rodgers sang with the trio, performed comedy skits in medicine shows, and continued to work for the railroad. Because he believed that a warm, dry climate would help his tuberculosis, he moved his family to Tucson, Arizona, and continued to sing there. The railroad, saying his performing interfered with his job, fired him.

Rodgers and his family then moved to Meridian, Mississippi, where they lived with Carrie's parents before moving again, this time to Asheville, North Carolina, in 1927. Although Rodgers planned to take another railroad job, his tuberculosis had advanced to the point where he was unable to do the work, and he took odd jobs as a janitor and cab driver, sang on a local radio station and took whatever other singing jobs he could find.

Recorded with RCA Victor

Rodgers moved to Johnson City, Tennessee, where he joined a string band called the Tenneva Ramblers. This group was a trio before Rodgers arrived but he convinced them to let him be the lead performer because he already had a regular radio show back in Asheville. The group performed regularly on the radio and at local concerts.

Ralph Peer, a talent scout for RCA Victor records, came to Bristol, Tennessee, to record country and string bands. These recording sessions were the first time anyone had made an effort to record white rural music, known as "hillbilly music," for nationwide sale. The recordings, including those of Rodgers and the Carter Family, encouraged the beginnings of the country music industry.

Rodgers heard about the auditions and convinced the band to travel to Bristol. On the night before the audition, they had a heated argument about whose name should be billed first and the Tenneva Ramblers broke away from Rodgers, telling him to sing on his own. According to a biography on the Jimmierodgers.com, website, Rodgers said, "All right… I'll just sing one myself," and went to the audition anyway. He wanted to sing his signature song, "T for Texas," but Peer rejected that and instead recorded two songs, "The Soldier's Sweetheart" and "Sleep, Baby, Sleep." For these recordings, he was paid $100.

The record was released in October 1927. Although it wasn't a hit, Victor Records agreed to record more of Rodgers' songs. In November 1927, he recorded four songs, including "T for Texas," which was retitled "Blue Yodel," a song that gave Rodgers another nickname. "Blue Yodel," one of a very few early country records that sold over a million copies, led to success for Rodgers. He would eventually record 14 variations of "Blue Yodel," which Tom Piazza described in www.sony.music as "Loosely strung outlaw blues lyrics, sung in a sly, jaunty manner, alternated with Rodgers' trademark yodel in a unique overlay of the Southern rounder and the Western cowboy, literally and symbolically representing a blending of the streams of white and black rural music."

Unique Style

Other singers of the Appalachian mountain music known as "Old Time Music" stayed within their traditional folk-music boundaries. But Rodgers blended country, gospel, jazz, blues, pop, cowboy, and folk and wrote most of his own best-loved songs. He also brought his distinctive yodeling style into his music. A biography in the Alabama Music Hall of Fame remarks, "Although Rodgers wasn't the first to yodel on records, his style was distinct from all the others. His yodel wasn't merely sugar-coating on the song, it was as important as the lyric, mournful and plaintive or happy and carefree, depending on a song's emotional content." He sometimes sang to his guitar only, but on other songs he had a full jazz band, including horns-very different from the traditional mountain string band.

Rodgers' songs spoke to Americans, many of whom had endured hard times. Fans responded to his humble background, honest singing and playing, and his drive to overcome poverty and illness. In addition, his songs were simple and easy to understand. As Tom Piazza wrote, "His career was a meeting point for images and folk material from the American South and West, from black and white traditions, and it offered clues to ways in which that material could be blended into the mainstream of popular music.… His songs… evoked both the expansive frontier spirit and the longing, backward glance toward home. Along with the Carter Family and others, he was both a preserver and a popularizer of a precious body of expression."

First Country Music Star

Rodgers moved his family to Washington, D.C. He began singing on a weekly radio show as the "Singing Brakeman." Rodgers recorded more songs, including the four hits "Way Out on the Mountain," "Blue Yodel No. 4," "Waiting for a Train" and "In the Jailhouse Now." Ralph Peer and Rodgers experimented with the accompaniment, sometimes recording him with unlikely combinations such as a jazz band that included Louis Armstrong, jug bands, orchestras, and a Hawaiian combo.

By 1929, Rodgers was a star. He made a short film, titled The Singing Brakeman, recorded more songs, and made national tours. Although he was financially successful, all the money in the world couldn't stop the progress of his tuberculosis. He worked hard anyway, perhaps knowing that he would die young and wanting to make more money for his family's future. He recorded more songs, toured with Will Rogers on a Red Cross fund-raising mission to help farmers affected by a long drought in the southern states and built a home for his family in Kerrville, Texas.

Rodgers was deeply affected by the decline in the American economy. The Great Depression brought concert bookings and record sales to a virtual halt. Despite these difficulties, he continued to record new songs. In the six short years of his career, he recorded 127 songs.

Health Declines

In 1932, Rodgers recorded with the original Carter Family, but was so ill by then that he could barely lift his guitar. Mother Maybelle Carter played and sang for him. "I had to play like him, you know, so everybody would think it was him. But it was me," she said, according to the Jimmie Rodgers Home Page.

Rodgers knew his health was rapidly declining and, according to the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, told his wife Carrie, "I want to die with my shoes on." He kept performing wherever he could, at vaudeville shows and radio programs. At one radio program in San Antonio, Texas, he collapsed from exhaustion and ended up in the hospital. Knowing death was near, he called Peer and told him to set up one more recording session in New York City in May of 1933. In this, his last recording session, tuberculosis had left him so weak and ill that a cot had to be set up in the studio so he could rest in between songs. In eight days, he recorded twelve songs.

Rodgers slipped into a coma and died of a massive lung hemorrhage in New York City on May 26, 1933. He was 35 years old. His body was taken to Meridian by train in a converted baggage car. The train's engineer blew its whistle throughout the journey. In Meridian, hundreds of country music fans were waiting. His body lay in state for several days to allow the fans to pay tribute to their beloved idol.

Lasting Influence

A brass plaque dedicated to Rodgers in the Country Music Hall of Fame records that "Jimmie Rodgers' name stands foremost in the country music field as the man who started it all." His influence can still be heard in today's country singers, rock and rollers and blues greats like Blind Boy Fuller and Peetie Wheatstraw. Fans can visit the Jimmie Rodgers Memorial and Museum in Meridian, Mississippi, and attend the Jimmie Rodgers Festival, which is held in Kerrville, Texas, each year.

Bob Dylan wrote in the liner notes to a 1997 tribute album: "Jimmie Rodgers, of course, is one of the guiding lights of the twentieth century, whose way with song has always been an inspiration to those of us who have followed the path. … He was a performer of force without precedent with a sound as lonesome and mystical as it was dynamic. He gives hope to the vanquished and humility to the mighty."

Further Reading

"Jimmie Rodgers," Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, http://www.rockhall.com/induct/rodgjimm.html (February 23, 1999).

"Jimmie Rodgers: 1993 Inductee, John Herbert Orr Pioneer Award," Alabama Music Hall of Fame, http://www.alamhof.org/rodgersj.htm (February 23, 1999).

"Jimmie Rodgers: Biography," http://jimmierodgers.com/Main/Biography/biography.html (February 23, 1999).

"Jimmie Rodgers: Biography," Sony Music, http://www.conymusic.com/artists/JimmieR…s/TheSongsOfJimmieRodgers/biography.html (February 23, 1999).

"Jimmie Rodgers' Biography," http://www.ping.be/ml-cmb/jrbio.htm (February 23, 1999).

"Jimmie Rodgers: The Father of Country Music," Discover Texas, http://www.discover-texas.com/jimmie/ (February 23, 1999).

"Jimmie Rodgers-'The Singing Brakeman'," http://www.ils.unc>.edu/dolma/rodgers.html (February 23, 1999).

"Songs of Jimmie Rodgers Resonate Still," St. Louis Post-Dispatch,http://www.stlnet.com/pdnews/jrodgers/ (February 23, 1999).

See Jimmie Rodgers Lyrics

• Born: September 08, 1897, Meridian, MS
• Died: May 26, 1933, New York, NY
• Active: '20s, '30s
• Genres: Country
• Instrument: Vocals, Songwriter, Guitar
• Representative Albums: "RCA Country Legends," "The Essential Jimmie Rodgers," "Riding High 1929-1930"
• Representative Songs: "Waiting for a Train," "In the Jailhouse Now," "Frankie and Johnny"

Biography

His brass plaque in the Country Music Hall of Fame reads, "Jimmie Rodgers' name stands foremost in the country music field as the man who started it all." This is a fair assessment. The "Singing Brakeman" and the "Mississippi Blue Yodeler," whose six-year career was cut short by tuberculosis, became the first nationally known star of country music and the direct influence of many later performers, from Hank Snow, Ernest Tubb, and Hank Williams to Lefty Frizzell and Merle Haggard. Rodgers sang about rounders and gamblers, bounders and ramblers -- and he knew what he sang about. At age 14 he went to work as a railroad brakeman, and on the rails he stayed until a pulmonary hemorrhage sidetracked him to the medicine show circuit in 1925. The years with the trains harmed his health but helped his music. In an era when Rodgers' contemporaries were singing only mountain and mountain/folk music, he fused hillbilly country, gospel, jazz, blues, pop, cowboy, and folk; and many of his best songs were his compositions, including "TB Blues," "Waiting for a Train," "Travelin' Blues," "Train Whistle Blues," and his 13 blue yodels. Although Rodgers wasn't the first to yodel on records, his style was distinct from all the others. His yodel wasn't merely sugar-coating on the song, it was as important as the lyric, mournful and plaintive or happy and carefree, depending on a song's emotional content. His instrumental accompaniment consisted sometimes of his guitar only, while at other times a full jazz band (horns and all) backed him up. Country fans could have asked for no better hero/star -- someone who thought what they thought, felt what they felt, and sang about the common person honestly and beautifully. In his last recording session, Rodgers was so racked and ravaged by tuberculosis that a cot had to be set up in the studio, so he could rest before attempting that one song more. No wonder Rodgers is to this day loved by country music fans.

The youngest son of a railroad man, Rodgers was born and raised in Meridian, MS. Following his mother's death in 1904, he and his older brother went to live with their mother's sister, where he first became interested in music. Rodgers' aunt was a former teacher who held degrees in music and English, and she exposed him to a number of different styles of music, including vaudeville, pop, and dancehall. Though he was attracted to music, he was a mischievous boy and often got into trouble. When he returned to his father's care in 1911, Rodgers ran wild, hanging out in pool halls and dives, yet he never got into any serious trouble. When he was 12, he experienced his first taste of fame when he sang "Steamboat Bill" at a local talent contest. Rodgers won the concert and, inspired by his success, decided to head out on the road in his own traveling tent show. His father immediately tracked him down and brought him back home, yet he ran away again, this time joining a medicine show. The romance of performing with the show wore off by the time his father hunted him down. Given the choice of school or the railroad, Rodgers chose to join his father on the tracks.

For the next ten years, Rodgers worked on the railroad, performing a variety of jobs along the South and West Coasts. In May of 1917, he married Sandra Kelly after knowing her for only a handful of weeks; by the fall, they had separated, even though she was pregnant (their daughter died in 1938). Two years later they officially divorced, and around the same time, he met Carrie Williamson, a preacher's daughter. Rodgers married Carrie in April of 1920 while she was still in high school. Shortly after their marriage, Rodgers was laid off by the New Orleans & Northeastern Railroad, and he began performing various blue-collar jobs, looking for opportunities to sing. Over the next three years, the couple was plagued with problems, ranging from financial to health -- the second of their two daughters died of diphtheria six months after her birth in 1923. By that time, Rodgers had begun to regularly play in traveling shows, and he was on the road at the time of her death. Though these years were difficult, they were important in the development of Rodgers' musical style as he began to develop his distinctive blue yodel and worked on his guitar skills.

In 1924, Rodgers was diagnosed with tuberculosis, but instead of heeding the doctor's warning about the seriousness of the disease, he discharged himself from the hospital to form a trio with fiddler Slim Rozell and his sister-in-law Elsie McWilliams. Rodgers continued to work on the railroad and perform blackface comedy with medicine shows while he sang. Two years after being diagnosed with TB, he moved his family out to Tucson, AZ, believing the change in location would improve his health. In Tucson, he continued to sing at local clubs and events. The railroad believed these extracurricular activities interfered with his work and fired him. Moving back to Meridian, Rodgers and Carrie lived with her parents before he moved away to Asheville, NC, in 1927. Rodgers was going to work on the railroad, but his health was so poor he couldn't handle the labor; he would never work the rails again. Instead, he began working as a janitor and a cab driver, singing on a local radio station and events as well. Soon, he moved to Johnson City, TN, where he began singing with the string band the Tenneva Ramblers. Prior to Rodgers, the group had existed as a trio, but he persuaded the members to become his backing band because he had a regular show in Asheville. The Ramblers relented, and the group's name took second billing to Rodgers, and the group began playing various concerts in addition to the radio show. Eventually, Rodgers heard that Ralph Peer, an RCA talent scout, was recording hillbilly and string bands in Bristol, TN. Rodgers convinced the band to travel to Bristol, but on the eve of the audition, they had a huge argument about the proper way they should be billed, resulting in the Tenneva Ramblers breaking away from Rodgers. He went to the audition as a solo artist, and Peer recorded two songs -- the old standards "The Soldier's Sweetheart" and "Sleep, Baby, Sleep" -- after rejecting Rodgers' signature song, "T for Texas."

Released in October of 1927, the record was not a hit, but Victor did agree to record Rodgers again, this time as a solo artist. In November of 1927, he cut four songs, including "T for Texas." Retitled "Blue Yodel" upon its release, the song became a huge hit and one of only a handful of early country records to sell a million copies. Shortly after its release, Rodgers and Carrie moved to Washington, where he began appearing on a weekly local radio show billed as the Singing Brakeman. Though "Blue Yodel" was a success, its sales grew steadily throughout early 1928, which meant that the couple wasn't able to reap the financial benefits until the end of the year. By that time, Rodgers had recorded several more singles, including the hits "Way Out on the Mountain," "Blue Yodel No. 4," "Waiting for a Train," and "In the Jailhouse Now." On various sessions, Peer experimented with Rodgers' backing band, occasionally recording him with two other string instrumentalists and recording his solo as well. Over the next two years, Peer and Rodgers tried out a number of different backing bands, including a jazz group featuring Louis Armstrong, orchestras, and a Hawaiian combo.

By 1929, Rodgers had become an official star, as his concerts became major attractions and his records consistently sold well. During 1929, he made a small film called The Singing Brakeman, recorded many songs, and toured throughout the country. Though his activity kept his star shining and the money rolling in, his health began to decline under all the stress. Nevertheless, he continued to plow forward, recording numerous songs and building a large home in Kerrville, TX, as well as working with Will Rogers on several fundraising tours for the Red Cross that were designed to help those suffering from the Depression. By the middle of 1931, the Depression was beginning to affect Rodgers as well, as his concert bookings decreased dramatically and his records stopped selling. Despite the financial hardships, Rodgers continued to record.

Not only did the Great Depression cut into Rodgers' career, but so did his poor health. He had to decrease the number of concerts he performed in both 1931 and 1932, and by 1933, his health affected his recording and forced him to cancel plans for several films. Despite his condition, he refused to stop performing, telling his wife that "I want to die with my shoes on." By early 1933, the family was running short on money, and he had to perform anywhere he could -- including vaudeville shows and nickelodeons -- to make ends meet. For a while he performed on a radio show in San Antonio, but in February he collapsed and was sent to the hospital. Realizing that he was close to death, he convinced Peer to schedule a recording session in May. Rodgers used that session to provide needed financial support for his family. At that session, Rodgers was accompanied by a nurse and rested on a cot in between songs. Two days after the sessions were completed, he died of a lung hemorrhage on May 26, 1933. Following his death, his body was taken to Meridian by train, riding in a converted baggage car. Hundreds of country fans awaited the body's arrival in Meridian, and the train blew its whistle consistently throughout its journey. For several days after the body arrived in Rodgers' hometown, it lay in state as hundreds, if not thousands, of people paid tribute to the departed musician.

The massive display of affection at Rodgers' funeral services indicated what a popular and beloved star he was during his time. His influence wasn't limited to the '30s, however. Throughout country music's history, echoes of Rodgers can be heard, from Hank Williams to Merle Haggard. In 1961, Rodgers became the first artist inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame; 25 years later, he was inducted as a founding father at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Though both honors are impressive, they only give a small indication of what Rodgers accomplished -- and how he affected the history of country music by making it a viable, commercially popular medium -- during his lifetime. ~ David Vinopal, All Music Guide

Country & Folk Roots Buy this CD	RCA Country Legends Buy this CD	Recordings 1927-1933 Buy this CD	Blue Yodel: The Recorded Legacy Buy this CD	Very Best of Jimmie Rodgers Buy this CD
Famous Country Music Makers Buy this CD	Jimmie Rodgers Buy this CD	Singing Brakeman [Country Stars] Buy this CD	Father of Country Music Buy this CD	Singing Breakman [Prism Platinum] Buy this CD

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