Jimmie Rodgers

b. James Charles Rodgers, 8 September 1897, Meridian, Mississippi, USA, d. 26 May 1933, New York, USA. The Singing Brakeman was, deservedly and unanimously, the first to be elected to Nashville's Country Music Hall Of Fame as virtually every C&W trend that has emerged since his death in 1933 has been traceable to his influence. Like his father, Rodgers was a blue-collar worker for the Mobile and Ohio Railroad but an inherited bronchial complaint (worsened by a bout of pneumonia in 1920) obliged him to seek a less strenuous livelihood. As he had entertained fellow employees by singing to his own banjo or guitar backing, a musical career seemed a viable option. With a wife and infant daughter to feed, he toured as a ‘nigger minstrel’ in a tent show before fronting his own trio for a North Carolina radio station residency in which he included a majority of his own compositions. Mostly incorporating his trademark ‘blue yodel’, Muleskinner Blues, T For Texas and much of his repertoire was couched in rural phrasing and imagery that owed as much to the blues as cowboy ballads.
Rodgers' national popularity was to grow largely from performances on "Barn Dance", an in-concert programme broadcast from Nashville and renamed GRAND OLE OPRY in 1927. In response to a feature in a Tennessee newspaper that same year, Rodgers auditioned for RCA talent scout Ralph Peer. A ‘field’ taping, The Soldier's Sweetheart/Sleep Baby Sleep was an immediate commercial success as was the less crudely-recorded follow-up, The Sailor's Plea. Next came the million-selling Blue Yodel, Brakeman's Blues and 1929's Yodelling Cowboy. In 1931, a session with the Carter Family produced mostly humorous items and The Wonderful City, the only sacred piece among the songs he committed to vinyl. His final 12 songs were completed in a New York studio two days before a tubercular haemorrhage killed him.