Jimmie Rodgers
Jimmie Rodgers Recording
In the Jailhouse Now
Jimmie Rodgers Performances
The Singing Brakeman Movie
Colorized
Blue Yodel No. 1 (T for Texas)
Waiting for a Train
Information Video
Jimmie Rodgers Biography
Reading
The American singer, songwriter, and guitarist Jimmie Rodgers is known as the “Father of Country Music.” In more than 110 recordings made between 1927 and 1933, he helped establish the country genre and influenced many country artists who followed.
James Charles Rodgers was born on September 8, 1897, in Pine Springs Community, near Meridian, Mississippi. His mother died when he was young, and Rodgers spent his childhood with various relatives before returning to his father, who worked as a railroad foreman. At thirteen he won an amateur talent contest and ran away with a traveling medicine show. Stranded far from home, he was retrieved by his father and put to work on the railroad. Rodgers held a number of jobs with the railroad, including brakeman. One of his nicknames, the “Singing Brakeman,” was inspired by his time as a railroad worker.
Life on the railroad provided Jimmie Rodgers lots of time to exercise his musical skills. He learned to play the guitar and banjo and developed what became his characteristic sound—a blend of traditional country, blues, and cowboy songs.
Jimmie Rodgers contracted tuberculosis, a disease which attacks the lungs and makes it hard to breathe, in 1924. Because of this, he was forced to stop working on the railroad. Rodgers began performing his music in traveling shows. In 1927 Rodgers moved to Asheville, North Carolina, where he and a group of Tennessee musicians called the Tenneva Ramblers performed on the radio. The group auditioned for Ralph Peer, a talent scout for the Victor Talking Machine Company, but a disagreement led the Ramblers to break away from Rodgers before they could record together. Peer recorded Rodgers as a solo artist instead.
Jimmie Rodgers' first recording, “Sleep, Baby, Sleep,” was moderately successful and earned him the chance to record again for Victor. This recording session produced the song “Blue Yodel,” also known as “T for Texas.” "Blue Yodel" sold a million copies and made Rodgers a national star. Some of his most famous songs include such classics as “Waiting for a Train,” “Daddy and Home,” “In the Jailhouse Now,” and the series of twelve sequels to “Blue Yodel” for which he was most famous. In 1929 Rodgers appeared in a movie, The Singing Brakeman, a fifteen-minute short made by Columbia.
Rodgers’s career reached its high point during the years 1928 to 1932. By late 1932 the Great Depression was causing record sales and concert attendance to decline, and Rodgers’s failing health made it impossible for him to pursue the movie projects and international tours he had planned. In May of 1933 he went to New York to fulfill his contract with RCA Victor for twelve more recordings. It took him a week to finish these sessions, resting between takes. Two days later, on May 26, he collapsed on the street and died a few hours later of tuberculosis.
In 1961 he became the first person inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. His influence on the development of rock music was recognized with his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. Jimmie Rodgers created a lasting musical style which made him immensely popular in his own time and a major influence on generations of musicians.