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Jimmie Rodgers
1897–1933 · 36 years
Six years of records, made by a dying railroad brakeman
His mother died in 1903, when he was six, and the family scattered him among relatives in Mississippi and Alabama. His father Aaron was a foreman on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, and by 13 the son had won a singing contest at Meridian's Elite Theater and gone off with a medicine show. Brought home, he went onto the line instead of into school — waterboy on his father's gang, then baggage handler, then brakeman. The Black gandy dancers who laid track beside him taught him the blues. In 1924 a doctor told him he had tuberculosis. The disease took the railroad from him by degrees — fewer runs, a foreman complaining about his absences — and in 1927 he left the line and went to work as a singer.
Ralph Peer came to Bristol, Tennessee, in August 1927 with a portable Victor recording rig, hunting unknown singers who had songs nobody already owned — original material a publisher could copyright and keep. He got the Carter Family that week, and on August 4 he got Rodgers, deserted by his band and recording alone with a guitar. A second session in Camden that November produced "Blue Yodel", T for Texas, which sold more than a million copies. In six years he cut more than 100 sides. Every country singer since works inside the form they fixed.
Tuberculosis paid for everything and took everything. It drove him off the railroad and onto a stage, and then it ate the career it had given him. In 1929 he earned about 75,000 dollars in royalties and built a house in Kerrville, Texas, in the dry hill country doctors recommended, and called it Blue Yodeler's Paradise. He sold it within two years — the Depression cut his sales, and he spent past what was left. He hired a Texas convict to help write "T.B. Blues" and recorded it in 1931. The music he sold was largely Black music. He learned the blues from the gandy dancers and recorded "Blue Yodel No. 9" in 1930 with Louis Armstrong on trumpet. He also played banjo in blackface in medicine shows and cut minstrel-stage songs, racial language intact, for Victor.
His casket went home to Meridian in a baggage car, on a train run by men he had worked with, and that could have been the end of it. It was not. Ernest Tubb got Rodgers' guitar from the widow and a career from the imitation. Gene Autry, Jimmie Davis and Hank Snow copied the yodel until imitation became a liability. In 1961 the Country Music Hall of Fame inducted its first three members, and he was one, with Hank Williams and Fred Rose. Missionaries had carried his records to Kenya, where the Kipsigis put him into a song recorded in 1950 as "Chemirocha". In 1997 Bob Dylan put together a tribute album. His standing has never needed defending.
Lifespan
Jimmie Rodgers's life against the full span of the corpus.
Notable works
-
The Soldier's Sweetheart
song
His first record, cut for Ralph Peer at Bristol on August 4, 1927 1927 -
Blue Yodel (T for Texas)
song
Recorded at Camden, New Jersey — more than a million copies sold in his lifetime 1927 -
In the Jailhouse Now
song
Cut with his backing band, the Jimmie Rodgers Southerners 1928 -
Waiting for a Train
song
His second best seller, at 365,000 copies — and a Depression song before the Depression 1928 -
Blue Yodel No. 9 (Standin' on the Corner)
song
Los Angeles, July 16, 1930, with Louis Armstrong on trumpet and Lil Hardin Armstrong on piano, both unbilled 1930 -
T.B. Blues
song
Written with Ray Hall, an inmate of the Texas State Penitentiary, after his usual collaborator refused the subject 1931
Life in brief
with age at each point- 1903 aged ~6 His mother dies and the six-year-old is sent to relatives Eliza Rodgers had stayed behind in Pine Springs rather than live in the railroad camps. He and his brother Talmage went to kin in Scooba, Mississippi, and then Geiger, Alabama.
- 1911 aged ~14 Wins a contest at Meridian's Elite Theater and leaves with a medicine show He was 13. His father brought him back and put him on the Mobile and Ohio line instead of in school.
- 1924 aged ~27 Diagnosed with tuberculosis at 27 He moved to Arizona and then Asheville on the medical advice of the day, which prescribed dry air and elevation.
- August 4, 1927 aged 29 Records alone at the Bristol sessions after his band walks out The Tenneva Ramblers quit over whose name went on the label. Peer recorded the same week as the Carter Family.
- November 30, 1927 aged 30 Cuts "Blue Yodel" at Victor's Camden studio He had gone to New York uninvited and telephoned Peer to say he was ready.
- April 1929 aged 31 Starts building Blue Yodeler's Paradise at Kerrville, Texas A 20,000-dollar house in a town full of tuberculosis sanatoriums. He sold it within two years.
- July 16, 1930 aged 32 Records "Blue Yodel No. 9" in Los Angeles with Louis Armstrong Armstrong and his wife Lil Hardin went uncredited because he was under contract to Okeh and the date was for Victor.
- May 24, 1933 aged 35 Records four songs in New York, lying on a cot between takes Peer had scheduled the session to build a backlog. Rodgers was helped into a cab afterward.
- May 26, 1933 aged 35 Dies at the Taft Hotel two days after the last session He hemorrhaged at midnight, the hotel doctor could not be found, and he fell into a coma. He was 35.
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