Rodgers' career straddled the years when America stood on, then slid over, the brink of Depression. His songs, which include some of the best-known tunes in the country repertoire, evoked both the expansive frontier spirit and the longing, backward glance toward home. Along with the Carter Family and a handful of others, he was both a preserver and a popularizer of a precious body of expression. And in many ways he extended that tradition as well, crossing the color line to record with black artists such as Louis Armstrong and blues guitarist Clifford Gibson and, with his short 1929 film The Singing Brakeman, starred in what could be thought of as the first music video.
Born September 8, 1897, near Meridian, Mississippi, to a railroadman father and a mother who died when he was four years old, Rodgers was on the move from his earliest days. He began performing in his early teens, winning an amateur talent contest in Meridian and traveling briefly with a medicine show before going to work full-time for the railroads out of Meridian. For the next fifteen years, Rodgers worked as a section hand and brakeman on railroad lines throughout the South and West, occasionally picking up work as an entertainer. He appeared on radio and in tent shows, and also during this period apparently picked up the lung inflammation that would later be diagnosed as tuberculosis and go on to kill him.
In 1927, in a moment that has long since passed into legend, Rodgers recorded two titles in Bristol, Tennessee during the marathon "Bristol Sessions"; organized by Victor A&R man Ralph Peer, the watershed recordings were the first concerted effort to record white rural music -- then called "hillbilly" music -- for the popular market. Peer recorded many singers and instrumentalists, including the equally significant Carter Family, in addition to Rodgers during those weeks of recording, and those records' brisk sales fueled the growth of what was to become the country music industry.
Rodgers was invited back to the studios in short order, this time to the Victor studios in Camden, New Jersey, where he recorded the first of his Blue Yodels, the famous "T for Texas." Rodgers' Blue Yodels, of which he recorded 13, along with numerous other songs that fit the form but were not designated as such (like "Jimmie's Texas Blues" and "No Hard Times"), were a genre within a genre. 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.
Rodgers recorded copiously during in his six years in the studios. His songs ranged across the spectrum from tough blues to sentimental odes to home and mother, and they reflected an America with much of the 19th Century still clinging to it: the lust for mobility and change coupled with the love of the furious pursuit of technology which made that possible (trains, of course, but also the phonographs and radios on which messages from far away could be heard like train whistles in the night); sentimental to a fault about mother and home and innocence, the past was being mortgaged to pay for all that mobility. In Rodgers' repertoire, songs like "Train Whistle Blues," "Let Me Be Your Sidetrack," and "My Rough and Rowdy Ways" exist side-by-side with "Mother, The Queen of my Heart," "The Land of My Boyhood Dreams," and "Down the Old Road to Home."
Earnings from his recordings enabled Rodgers to build a large house for his family in Kerrville, Texas, a location chosen partly for health reasons. But it was not in Rodgers' make-up to stay still, and his constant touring and recording schedule only hurt his chances of recovering from TB. His recordings were phenomenally popular with rural Southern audiences, even in the depths of the Depression. In May 1933, with his health rapidly deteriorating, Rodgers traveled to New York City to make a long series of recordings over the course of eight days. He was so weak that the producer had to provide a cot in the studio, on which he rested between songs. The effort finally proved to be too much for him and Rodgers died in New York's Hotel Taft on May 26.
The list of those whom Rodgers influenced directly is very long and includes Gene Autry, Bill Monroe, Ernest Tubb, Hank Snow, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and many others. Rodgers' influence in the country field is inescapable, both in his singing and guitar style and in the repertoire of songs he wrote or popularized, including "Waiting For A Train," "Miss The Mississippi and You," "My Carolina Sunshine Gal," "Peach Picking Time In Georgia," and "He's In the Jailhouse Now," not to mention his Blue Yodels. His approach was to find later resonance in the bluegrass of Bill Monroe, whose biggest early hit was "Muleskinner Blues" (a reworking of Rodgers' "Blue Yodel #8"); in such Hank Williams tunes as "Honky Tonk Blues" and "Lovesick Blues" (on both of which Williams does a fair yodel himself); and, eventually, in Rock and Roll music, with its blending of white country and black blues traditions.
But Rodgers' claim on our attention doesn't consist solely, or even mainly, of his influence on later performers. Rodgers' voice and guitar itself, haunting and pure, strong yet vulnerable, rising out of recordings made nearly 70 years ago, still has the power to fascinate, to inspire, to excite and to calm, and to conjure an entire world in a few quick images.
Essay on Jimmie Rodgers
by Tom Piazza
Tom Piazza writes about American music and culture for The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, and many other publications. He is the author of the short-story collection Blues And Trouble (St. Martin's Press) and the recipient of a 1995-96 James Michener Fellowship for Fiction. His book The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz (University of Iowa Press) won the 1996 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. He lives in New Orleans, where he is at work on a novel.
My Time Ain't Long: Jimmie Rodgers Timeline
1897:
James Charles Rodgers is born on September 8 in Meridian,
Mississippi.
1903:
Jimmie's mother, Eliza Rodgers dies, leaving Jimmie's
upbringing in the hands of his often-absent, railroad-working
father and various relatives.
1911:
Jimmie wins first prize in an amateur talent contest at Meridian's
Elite Theater. Jimmie manages to convince a medicine show in
town to let him perform and leaves town with the show. In
December, Jimmie's career as a railroad man begins. He works
for various lines off and on until his precarious health forces him
to quit railroad work in 1925.
1917:
On May 1, after a brief courtship, Jimmie Rodgers marries
Stella Kelley. That autumn, Jimmie and Stella separate. Two
years later Jimmie will file for and be granted a divorce on the
basis of Stella's desertion.
1918:
Unbeknownst to Jimmie, Stella gives birth to a daughter,
Kathryn, on May 1.
1920:
On April 7, Jimmie marries Carrie Williamson.
1921:
On January 30, Carrie gives birth to a daughter, Carrie Anita.
1923:
This autumn Jimmie Rodgers makes his first professional
appearance with Billy Terrell's Comedians in Hattiesburg, MS.
Jimmie will leave the show after 8 weeks to return home to his
wife upon news of the death of his baby daughter, June
Rebecca.
1924:
In September, Jimmie is officially diagnosed with tuberculosis.
1925:
Jimmie Rodgers ends his on-again, off-again association with
the NO & NE railroad and goes west in search of whatever
work he can find.
1927:
Jimmie moves Carrie and baby Anita to Asheville, NC where
he works as a part-time cab driver and errand boy for the
police department. On February 21, Asheville's first radio
station WWNC goes on the air. Its initial broadcast is heard as
faraway as London, Ontario and Waco, Texas. On April 18,
Jimmie Rodgers offers a radio program on WWNC. In
August, Ralph Peer of the Victor Talking Machine Company
records Jimmie Rodgers in Bristol, TN. Also at that session,
another new "hillbilly" act, The Carter Family, makes its first
records. On October 7, Jimmie's first record "Sleep, Baby,
Sleep" is released to music stores. On November 30, Jimmie
records "Blue Yodel" ("T for Texas") in Camden, New Jersey.
1928:
In February, Peer records Rodgers at the Victor Studio in
Camden, New Jersey. In June, Rodgers returns to Camden for
another session. On August 4, Jimmie makes his first big-time
personal appearance at the Earle Theater in Washington, D.C.
That fall he tours with Loew's "Southern Time" Circuit from
Norfolk, VA to Houston, TX. On October 22, Jimmie records
"Waiting for a Train" in Atlanta, Georgia. By the end of this
year, Jimmie Rodgers will broadcast his own weekly radio
show from Washington, DC; headline a major vaudeville tour
through the South; and earn $2,000 per month in royalties.
1929:
Jimmie tours with Paul English Players this winter but his health
steadily deteriorates and Jimmie leaves the tour to record more
sides in New York. Later that year, Jimmie decides to settle
down with his wife and daughter in Kerrville, TX and begins
building a large home, "Blues Yodeler's Paradise" which will
end up costing $25,000. In August, Jimmie records in Dallas,
TX and in November he goes to New Orleans, LA and back
to Atlanta to record.
1930:
This winter "The Singing Brakeman," Jimmie's talking short,
which was filmed the previous December, is in national
distribution. In July, in Hollywood, CA, Jimmie records "Blue
Yodel No. 9" ("Standin' on the Corner") with accompaniment
by Louis Armstrong on trumpet and Armstrong's wife, Lilian,
on piano. Also that summer while touring with Swain's Follies,
Jimmie is reunited with his first wife Stella and is informed of
the existence of his daughter, Kathryn.
1931:
In February Jimmie is named in a paternity suit which will not
be resolved until June 1932 when the court orders Jimmie to
pay Kathryn $50 a month until she reaches the age of 18 for a
total sum of $2,650. On a more positive note, Jimmie is sworn
in as an honorary Texas Ranger and tours with Will Rogers
Red Cross Benefit Tour through Texas and Oklahoma. Also
that winter Jimmie records in San Antonio, TX. In June he goes
to Louisville, KY to record with the Carter Family and in the
fall travels to Camden to record.
1932:
Jimmie is in Dallas, TX in February and Camden, NJ in August
to record. His health continues to deteriorate.
1933:
On May 18 Jimmie records "Jimmie Rodgers' Last Blue
Yodel" in New York City. On May 24 he records his last side
"Years Ago" and on May 26, Jimmie Rodgers dies. A special
baggage car is added to the Southern Railroad's
Washington-New Orleans run to take Jimmie's body back to
Meridian, MS for his funeral on May 29.
Back to top