(b Meridian, MS, 8 Sept 1897; d New York, 26 May 1933). American country music singer and songwriter. Sometimes called the ‘Father of Country Music’, the ‘Singing Brakeman’ and the ‘Blue Yodeler’, he learned the guitar and banjo as a child. At 14 he went to work on the railroad, but poor health led him to change to music. His songs owed as much to blues as to cowboy ballads, and his popularity grew through the Nashville radio show ‘Barn Dance’ (later ‘The Grand Old Opry’). In the late 1920s he recorded The Soldier's Sweetheart and the yodel song Sleep, baby, sleep, which brought him immediate success. He went to New York where he began work on the Blue Yodel series of records, which included the songs T for Texas and Waitin' for a Train.
Over six years Rodgers recorded more than 100 diverse songs and, in his lifetime, sold more than five million records. In taking country music out to a mass, city audience, Rodgers laid the foundation stones of the country music industry. The most imitated figure in country music, his style is discernible in work by Hank Williams, Bill Monroe and Gene Autry among others. He was the first to use Hawaiian bands, pedal steel guitars and dobros alongside the traditional country staples of guitar, banjo and fiddle: today, all are regarded as an essential part of country music's vernacular.
C. Rodgers: My Husband, Jimmie Rodgers (San Antonio, 1935; Nashville, TN, 2/1975, with introduction and chronology by N. Porterfield)
C. Comber and M. Paris: ‘Jimmie Rodgers’, Stars of Country Music, ed. B.C. Malone and J. McCulloh (Urbana, IL, 1975/R)
N. Porterfield: Jimmie Rodgers (Urbana, IL, 1979)
LIZ THOMSON