Jimmie Rodgers (country singer)

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For the singer of "Honeycomb", see Jimmie Rodgers (pop singer).
Jimmie Rodgers
Background information
Birth name James Charles Rodgers
Also known as The Singing Brakeman
The Blue Yodeler
Born September 8, 1897
Origin Meridian, Mississippi,
or Pine Springs, Mississippi
or Geiger, Alabama
Died May 26, 1933
Genre(s) Country, Blues
Instrument(s) Acoustic guitar
Years active 1923-1933
Label(s) RCA Records
Associated
acts		 The Tenneva Ramblers
The Ramblers
Louis Armstrong
Will Rogers
Website www.jimmierodgers.com

James Charles "Jimmie" Rodgers (September 8, 1897 -– May 26, 1933) was the first country music superstar. Rodgers, known as The Singing Brakeman, The Blue Yodeler, and The Yodeling Cowboy was born either at his maternal grandparents' home in Pine Springs, Mississippi, just north of Meridian, or at his parents' home in Geiger, Alabama.

Nevertheless, he considered his hometown to be Meridian, and spent most of his early life from boyhood accompanying his father on railroad jobs. He eventually became a railroad brakeman, an extremely dangerous and highly skilled job. In the days before air brakes, the brakeman had to stop the train by running on top of the moving train from car to car setting mechanical brakes on each one.

Contents

[edit] Life

Tuberculosis forced him to leave the railroad, and he undertook all sorts of work, ranging from police detective to blackface performer in minstrels and medicine shows. Before answering an advertisement from Ralph Peer of the Victor Talking Machine Company to audition as a performing artist. This audition in Bristol, Tennessee, on August 4, 1927 (two days after the Carter Family answered the same ad and recorded in the same hall) led to Rodgers' phenomenally successful recording career.

In 1929, as his popularity increased and his tuberculosis became worse, Jimmie and his wife moved to Kerrville, Texas seeking a drier climate. He built a $25,000 two-story brick mansion in Kerrville that he called his "Blue Yodeler's Paradise." But Kerrville was too quiet for Jimmie, and by the Fall of 1930 he had moved into a permanent suite at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, Texas. It was there that Jimmie petitioned Blue Bonnet Masonic Lodge for membership. On that application, he stated that his place of birth was Geiger, Alabama".

His musical career lasted only six years. His last recordings were made in New York, New York less than a week before his death. He had been bedridden for several years before this last session and had to rest on a cot between takes.

He died from tuberculosis on May 26, 1933 at the Taft Hotel, New York City, aged 35.

[edit] Legacy

Rodgers on a US stamp, 1978
Rodgers on a US stamp, 1978

When the Country Music Hall of Fame was established in 1961, Rodgers was one of the first three (with Fred Rose and Hank Williams) to be inducted. He was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 and, as an early influence, to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. His "Blue Yodel #9", featuring Louis Armstrong on trumpet, was selected as one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.

On May 24, 1978, the United States Postal Service issued a 13-cent commemorative stamp honoring Rodgers, the first in its long-running Performing Arts Series. The stamp was designed by Jim Sharpe (who did several others in this series), who depicted him with brakeman's outfit and guitar, giving his "two thumbs up", along with a locomotive in silhouette in the background.

[edit] Songs and Recordings
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His songs, many of which he wrote himself, many by other writers (his sister-in-law Elsie McWilliams had a hand in as many of 40 of them) were typically either sentimental songs about home, family and sweethearts, or tough takes on the lives of hoboes, "rounders", and his beloved railroads and railroaders, on his own hard life and happy marriage.

Each of his recordings captures the unique vocal quality that singles Rodgers out from the array of early country musicians. His voice is powerful and haunting. His yodels are unexpectedly complex in tone. Despite the many other artists he inspired, his performance style is unique and immediately identifiable. His influence is heard in the entire school of honky tonk country music.

A baker's dozen of his songs bear the generic title "Blue Yodel" with a number. The first, "Blue Yodel #1" is better known from its refrain, "T for Texas, T for Tennessee". Fundamentally, Rodgers was a white blues singer, singing traditional blues lyrics and accompanying himself on guitar and yodel, which was nothing like classic Swiss yodeling.

His yodeling was really vocalized falsetto blues licks, providing obbligatos and choruses that in other blues performances would have been provided by a lead instrument. His "Blue Yodels" were for the most part twelve-bar blues, but with the lyrics compressed into the first eight bars and the yodeling into the last four. Others are conventional twelve-bar blues, but with a four-bar yodel added at the end.

[edit] Annotated "Blue Yodels"

Although Rodgers simply numbered his "Blue Yodels", many of them have acquired de facto titles derived from their lyrics. Most of the lyrics consist of unconnected strings of traditional blues verses, but a couple of the songs have a narrative thread.

[edit] Other noted songs

Notable Rodgers titles include "Waiting for a Train" (1929), "In the Jailhouse Now" (1928, version 2 1930), "Jimmie the Kid" (1931), "Miss the Mississippi and You" (1932), "Looking for a New Mama" (1931), "Jimmie's Mean Mama Blues" (1931), and "Train Whistle Blues" (1930). The 113 songs he recorded have hardly ever been out of print.

[edit] External links

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