Jimmie Rodgers
| Jimmie Rodgers | |
|---|---|
| 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 great country music recording artist. Known as "The Singing Brakeman" and "The Blue Yodeler," Rogers' hometown to be Meridian. He spent most of his early life from boyhood accompanying his father on railroad jobs. He eventually became a railroad brakeman. 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.
Life
Early Years
James Charles Rodgers was born on September 8, 1897 in Meridian, Mississippi, the youngest of three sons. His mother died when he was very young, and Rodgers spent the next few years living with various relatives in southeast Mississippi and southwest Alabama. He eventually returned home to live with his father, Aaron Rodgers, a foreman on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, who had settled with a new wife in Meridian.
Performing career
Rodgers' affinity for entertaining came at an early age, and the lure of the road was irresistible to him. By age 13, he had twice organized and begun traveling shows, only to be brought home by his father. His father found Jimmie his first job working on the railroad, as a waterboy. This is where he learned the cries and moans of the blues and was taught to pick and strum by the rail workers and the hobos. A few years later, he became brakeman on the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad, a position secured by his oldest brother, Walter, a conductor on the line running between Meridian and New Orleans.
In 1924 at the age of 27, Rodgers contracted tuberculosis. The disease temporarily ended his railroad career. However, at the same time, it gave him the chance to get back to his first love, entertainment. He organized a traveling road show and performed across the southeast until he was forced home after a cyclone destroyed his tent. He returned to railroad work as a brakeman on the east coast of Florida at Miami, but eventually his illness cost him his job. He relocated to Tucson, Arizona and was employed as a switchman by the Southern Pacific. The job lasted less than a year, and the Rodgers family (which by then included wife Carrie and daughter Anita) had settled back in Meridian by early 1927.
Rodgers decided to travel to Asheville, North Carolina later that same year. On April 18 he and Otis Kuykendall performed for the first time on WWNC, Asheville’s first radio station. A few months later Jimmie recruited a backing group from Tennessee called the Tenneva Ramblers and secured a weekly slot on the station as the Jimmie Rodgers Entertainers.
The Tenneva Ramblers originally hailed from Bristol, Tennessee, and in late July 1927, Rodgers’ band-mates got word that Ralph Peer, a representative of the Victor Talking Machine Company, was coming to Bristol to audition and record area musicians. Rodgers and the group arrived in Bristol on August 3. Later that same day, they auditioned for Peer in an empty warehouse. Peer agreed to record them the next day. That night, as the band discussed how they would be billed on the record, an argument ensued and the band broke up, so that Rodgers arrived at the recording session alone. On August 4, Rodgers completed his first session for Victor. It yielded two songs: “the Soldier’s Sweetheart” and the lullaby “Sleep, Baby, Sleep.” For the test recordings, Rodgers received $100.
Recording artist
The recordings were released on October 7, 1927, to modest success. In November, Rodgers headed to New York City in an effort to arrange another session. Peer agreed to record him again, and the two met in Philadelphia before traveling to Camden, New Jersey, to the Victor studios. Songs recorded at this session, included “Blue Yodel,” better known as “T for Texas.” In the next two years, this recording sold nearly half a million copies propelled Rodgers into stardom, selling out shows whenever and wherever he played.
In the next few years, Rodgers was very busy. He did a movie short for Columbia Pictures, The Singing Brakeman, and made various recordings across the country. He toured with humorist Will Rogers as part of a Red Cross tour across the Midwest. In July 16 1930, he recorded “Blue Yodel No. 9” with jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong, whose wife, Lillian, played piano on the recording.
Final years
By the time of Rodgers' session in August 1932, it was clear that tuberculosis was getting the better of him. He had given up touring by that time but performed on his weekly radio show in San Antonio, Texas, where he had relocated because of the dyer climate from other souther states.
In May 1933, Rodgers traveled again to New York City for a group of sessions beginning May 17. He started these sessions recording alone and completed four songs on the first day. When he returned to the studio after a day’s rest, he had to record sitting down and soon retreated to his hotel in hopes of regaining enough energy to finish the songs he had been rehearsing. Other reports indicate that he needed to rest on a cot between sessions in order to gather strength.
The recording engineer hired two session musicians to back Rodgers when he came back to the studio a few days later. Together they recorded a few songs, including “Mississippi Delta Blues.” For his last song of the session, however, Rogers chose to perform alone, and as a matching bookend to his career, recorded “Years Ago” by himself.
Jimmie Rodgers died two days later on May 26, 1933. He was 35 years old.
Tuberculosis forced him to leave the railroad, and he undertook various 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 took place just two days after the Carter Family answered the same ad and recorded in the same hall. It led to Rodgers' phenomenally successful recording career.
In 1929, as Rogers' popularity increased and his tuberculosis became worse, he 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." However Kerrville was too quiet for Jimmie, and by the autumn of 1930 he had moved into a permanent suite at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio.
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.
Songs and Recordings
His songs, most of which he wrote himself, were typically either sentimental songs about home, family and sweethearts, or takes on the lives of hoboes, "rounders," and his beloved railroads and railroaders, on his own hard life and happy marriage.
His voice had a haunting quality, and hi yodels were unexpectedly complex in tone. His performance style is unique and immediately identifiable.
More than a dozen of his songs bear the generic title "Blue Yodel" with a number, following the classic 12-bar blues pattern, followed by Rodgers' trademark "blue yodel" turn-around at the end. Rodgers' yodeling consisted of vocalized falsetto country-blues licks, providing obbligatos and choruses that in other performances would have been provided by a lead instrument. The first, "Blue Yodel #1" is better known from its refrain, "T for Texas, T for Tennessee." Although traditionally known as the first great country artist, Rodgers can also be seen as fundamentally a white blues singer, singing traditional blues lyrics and accompanying himself on guitar.
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.
- "Blue Yodel #1" — "T for Texas" — November 30, 1927
- "Blue Yodel #2" — "My Lovin' Gal Lucille" — February 15, 1928
- "Blue Yodel #3" — "Evening Sun Yodel" — February 15, 1928
- Last verse is the first verse of "St. Louis Blues", "I hate to see that evening sun go down".
- "Blue Yodel #4" — "California Blues" — October 20, 1928
- Contains trumpet echos of the yodeling.
- "Blue Yodel #5" — "Ain't No Blackheaded Mama Can Make a Fool Out of Me" — February 23, 1929
- "Blue Yodel #6" — no alternate title — October 22, 1929
- "Blue Yodel #7" — "Anniversary Blue Yodel" — November 26, 1929
- So-called because it was recorded a year and two days after "#1".
- "Blue Yodel #8" — "Mule Skinner Blues" — July 11, 1930
- A mule-skinner seeks a job, with conventional blues lyrics at the end, "I smell yo bread a-burning', better turn yo damper down".
- "Blue Yodel #9" — "Standing on the Corner" — July 16, 1930
- With Louis Armstrong - tells a straight tale warning all the "rounders" in Memphis of the arrival a "Tennessee Hustler".
- "Blue Yodel #10" — "Hard Time Blues" — February 6, 1932
- "Blue Yodel #11" — no alternate title — November 27, 1929
- Note that this recording breaks the date order.
- "Blue Yodel #12" — "Barefoot Blues" — May 17, 1933
- "Jimmie Rodgers Last Blue Yodel" — May 18, 1933
- No number, but also called "Women Make a Fool Out of Me" and "Why Don't the Women Let Me Be".
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.
Legacy
His influence is heard in the entire school of honky tonk country music.
When the Country Music Hall of Fame was established in 1961, Rodgers was one of the first three to be inducted, together with Fred Rose and Hank Williams). 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 depicted him with brakeman's outfit and guitar, giving his "two thumbs up", along with a locomotive in silhouette in the background.
External links
- Official Site
- Ralph Peer Remembers Jimmie Rodgers
- Johnson City, Tennessee and Jimmie Rodgers
- geocities
- Nashville Songwriters Foundation
- Hall of Fame inductee
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