Jimmie Rodgers

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Jimmie Rodgers was born in 1897 in Meridian, Mississippi, the son of a railway worker. His mother died when he was six, and he grew up with relatives. As a boy he preferred going to vaudeville shows to going to school. At thirteen he won a singing competition and for a time travelled with a touring medicine show. He then worked for years on the railways, first as a water boy for Black work gangs and later as a brakeman. From those workers he learned work songs, blues and banjo playing.

Music and breakthrough

In 1924 he contracted tuberculosis, and in 1927 he left the railway to become a musician. That year he recorded for the producer Ralph Peer of the record label Victor, at the recording sessions in Bristol, Tennessee, where the Carter Family was also discovered. At a second session Blue Yodel No. 1 (T for Texas) came about, a success that made him known all over America. In his short career he recorded more than 120 songs. Rodgers sang blues with a guitar, and let his voice break into a yodel that became his trademark. That is why he was called The Singing Brakeman and America's Blue Yodeler.

Influence

Rodgers died in 1933 at the age of 35 of tuberculosis. Even so, he is regarded as the father of country music. He brought together the music of the countryside, the blues of the Black railroad workers and vaudeville, and so became one of the first stars of the genre.

Listening

• 
  Blue Yodel (T for Texas) · Jimmie Rodgers, 1928
  Apple Music ↗

In School of Rock

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• Mixtape 1: The Origins of Pop Music^NL Reader

Mentioned in other articles

• Country GenreRalph Peer's recordings in Bristol in 1927, with the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers, are regarded as the beginning; the Grand Ole Opry made Nashville the capital of the genre.