Jimmie Rodgers (country singer)

Early years

According to tradition, Rodgers' birthplace is usually listed as Meridian, Mississippi; however, in documents signed by Rodgers later in life, his birthplace was listed as Geiger, Alabama, the home of his paternal grandparents.^[2] Yet historians who have researched the circumstances of that document, including Nolan Porterfield and Barry Mazor, continue to identify Pine Springs, Mississippi, just north of Meridian, as his genuine birthplace. Rodgers' mother died when he was about six or seven years old, and Rodgers, the youngest of three sons, spent the next few years living with various relatives in southeast Mississippi and southwest Alabama, near Geiger. In the 1900 Census for Daleville, Lauderdale County, Mississippi, Jimmie's mother, Eliza [Bozeman] Rodgers, was listed as already having had seven children, with four of them still living at that date. Jimmie ["James" in the Census] was next to the youngest at that time, and was probably born sixth of the total of seven children. He eventually returned home to live with his father, Aaron Rodgers, a maintenance-of-way foreman on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, who had settled with a new wife in Meridian.

Rodgers' ancestral origins and heritage are uncertain, though records show his lineage to be of some measure of English American extraction.^[3]

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 Rodgers his first job working on the railroad as a water boy. Here he was further taught to pick and strum by rail workers and hobos. As a water boy, he would have been exposed to the work chants of the African American railroad workers known as gandy dancers.^[4] A few years later, he became a brakeman on the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad, a position formerly secured by his oldest brother, Walter, who had been promoted to conductor on the line running between Meridian and New Orleans.

In 1924 at age 27, Rodgers was diagnosed with tuberculosis. The disease temporarily ended his railroad career, but at the same time gave him the chance to get back to the entertainment industry. He organized a traveling road show and performed across the Southeastern United States until, once again, he was forced home after a cyclone destroyed his tent. He returned to railroad work as a brakeman in Miami, Florida, but eventually his illness cost him his job. He relocated to Tucson, Arizona, and was employed as a switchman by the Southern Pacific Railroad. He kept the job for less than a year, and the Rodgers family (which by then included wife Carrie and daughter Anita) settled back in Meridian in early 1927.

Success

Rodgers decided to travel to Asheville, North Carolina, later that same year. On April 18, 1927, at 9:30 pm, Jimmie, and Otis Kuykendall performed for the first time on WWNC, Asheville's first radio station. A few months later, Rodgers recruited a group from Bristol, Tennessee, called the Tenneva Ramblers and secured a weekly slot on the station listed as "The Jimmie Rodgers Entertainers".

In late July 1927, Rodgers' bandmates learned that Ralph Peer, a representative of the Victor Talking Machine Company, was coming to Bristol to hold an audition for local musicians. Rodgers and the group arrived in Bristol on August 3, 1927, and auditioned for Peer in an empty warehouse. Peer agreed to record them the next day. As the band discussed how they would be billed on the record, an argument ensued, the band broke up, and Rodgers arrived at the recording session the next morning alone, or, as later stated in an on-camera interview by Claude Grant of the Tenneva Ramblers, Rodgers had taken some guitars on consignment and sold them but did not pay back the music stores that had supplied the guitars, and that the band broke up because they did not agree with that. The interview BL-16 to 19 is listed here: On Wednesday, August 4, Jimmie Rodgers completed his first session for Victor in Camden, New Jersey. It lasted from 2:00 pm to 4:20 pm and yielded two songs: "The Soldier's Sweetheart" and "Sleep, Baby, Sleep". For the test recordings, Rodgers received $100.

The recordings were released on October 7, earning modest success. In November, Rodgers, determined more than ever to make it in entertainment, headed to New York City in an effort to arrange another session with Peer.

Rodgers requested that his sister-in-law, Elsie McWilliams, a musician, help him write some songs.^[5][6] She would become his most frequent "songwriting partner."^[7] She cowrote or wrote nearly 40 songs for Rodgers.^[8]

Rodgers returned to the Victor studios in Camden and recorded four more sides, including "Blue Yodel", better known as "T for Texas". In the next two years, this recording sold nearly half a million copies, rocketing Rodgers into stardom. After this, he got to determine when Peer and Victor would record him, and he sold out shows whenever and wherever he played.^[9]

Over the next few years, Rodgers was very busy. He did a movie short for Columbia Pictures, now under Sony, The Singing Brakeman (this is available on the DVD and VHS compilation "Times Ain't Like They Used To Be: Early Rural & Popular Music From Rare Original Film Masters 1928–35" ^[10] and on YouTube), and made various recordings across the country. He toured with humorist Will Rogers as part of a Red Cross tour across the Midwest. On July 16, 1930, he recorded "Blue Yodel No. 9" with Louis Armstrong on trumpet and his wife Lil Hardin Armstrong on piano.^[11]

A song written by Clayton McMichen and recorded as "Prohibition Has Done Me Wrong" was not issued, possibly because of copyright conflicts with Columbia. According to Juanita McMichen Lynch, Peer thought it was "too controversial for the times." The master was put aside and then accidentally lost.

Final years

Rodgers' next-to-last recordings were made in August 1932 in Camden, and the tuberculosis clearly was getting the better of him. He had given up touring by that time, but did have a weekly radio show in San Antonio, Texas, where he had relocated when "T for Texas" ("Blue Yodel Number 1") became a hit. Earnings from his recordings enabled Rodgers to build a great house for his family in Kerrville, Texas, a location chosen partly for health reasons. It was not in Rodgers' make-up to stay still, though, and his constant touring and recording schedule only hurt his chances of recovery.

With the country in the grip of the Great Depression, the practice of making field recordings was quickly fading, so 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 retired to his hotel in hopes of regaining enough energy to finish the songs he had been rehearsing. The recording engineer hired two session musicians to help 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, Rodgers chose to perform alone, and as a matching bookend to his career, recorded "Years Ago" by himself.

During his last recording session in New York City on May 24, after years of fighting the tuberculosis, Rodgers was so weakened that he needed to rest on a cot between songs.^[12]

Jimmie Rodgers died on May 26 from a pulmonary hemorrhage while staying at the Taft Hotel, aged 35. At the time of his death, Rodgers accounted for fully 10% of RCA Victor's sales in a drastically depressed record market.