In 1960, long before the Beatles came along and Elvis had just entered his “post-army” phase of safe songs, top 40 radio was pretty bland and predictable. Suddenly the airwaves exploded with a strange record full of manic laughing, yodeling and weird lyrics about mules and water boys, all done by two guys with electric guitars. Mule Skinner Blues by The Fendermen is considered the last gasp of crazy, spontaneous, unpredictable rock ‘n’ roll that no record producer could have imagined; it could only come from the artists themselves goofing around at a live performance.
It was also the latest, but certainly not the last testament to the timeless legacy of the song’s writer, Jimmie Rodgers. Not the Jimmie Rodgers who was having folk-influenced pop hits at the time but the “original” Jimmie Rodgers who recorded between 1927 and 1933. Although he had been dead for 27 years and his crude, pre-war country recordings would never get radio play his influence was, and still is, pervasive. In fact if a popular musician’s importance is measured by his or her influence, then Jimmie Rodgers may be the most important American musician of all time. Original copies of those records, although not rare, still command a premium among dedicated collectors.
He was not a flashy or technically adept musician, his guitar playing was rudimentary and his vocal range was limited by his poor health but Rodgers had a way of singing directly to your heart. Bob Dylan is quoted as saying "Jimmie Rodgers … is one of the guiding lights of the Twentieth Century, whose way with song has always been an inspiration to those of us who have followed the path. He was a performer of force without precedent with a sound as lonesome and mystical as it was dynamic. He gives hope to the vanquished and humility to the mighty."
Rodgers was the first professional country musician and is known and honoured as The Father of Country Music; the genre as we know it would not exist without him. Elements of everything that ever happened in country music; the mournful storytelling, honky-tonk carousing, train songs, western swing, rock-a-billy, everything can be found or is hinted at in the 120 or so recordings he made in his brief career.
Before Rodgers came along, country, or hillbilly records were contrived, sentimental pieces about the old homestead in the hills that were recorded in New York or Los Angeles, often by singers who wouldn’t know one end of a plow from the other. The most popular, Vernon Dalhart, was an opera singer gone country. Rodgers was a real country boy who knew all about the hard times but he didn’t present himself as a hick, he had a refined, urban sensibility.
Rodgers’ true legacy lies in the fact that his music defies categorization; it includes, and later influenced, all genres. He has been posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, The Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame, a unique achievement.
He was born in Meridian, Mississippi in 1897. His father was a brakeman for the railroad, his mother died when he was only six so he spent his formative years being shuffled around to different relatives all over the south, eventually ending up back home with his father. He had a penchant for entertaining; occasionally running away from home to set up his own travelling tent shows but when he was old enough, his father got him a job on the railroad. This gave him opportunity to travel even more and to learn about music and guitar playing from the other, mostly black, railroad workers.
When he was 27 he suffered a hemorrhage in his lung and contacted the same disease that killed his mother, tuberculosis. No longer able to work on the trains, he took to entertaining full time. He formed a band and got a job playing on the radio in the picturesque mountain town of Asheville, North Carolina. In 1927, while staying with one of the band members in nearby Bristol, Tennessee he heard that Ralph Peer was auditioning local musicians for the Victor Talking Machine Company. If accepted, Peer would pay quite handsomely for a recording session right there in Bristol; $50 a song plus a royalty on sales, something unheard of at the time. The band passed the audition but then quarreled and broke up so Rodgers went to the makeshift studio alone.
The Bristol Sessions that week have been described by Johnny Cash as “The single most important event in the history of country music”. The trip came about because Peer realized that there was a strong demand for hillbilly music and with the recent invention of electric recording he could now go directly to the source and make good quality recordings. He travelled all over the south but hit the mother lode in Bristol, recording both the Carter Family and Rodgers. Rodgers’ Bristol recording did well enough for him to go to the Victor studio in Camden, New Jersey and make some more records and they sold very well.
The Carters were archetypal hill folk who had probably never seen a city as large as Bristol, much less travelled to New York. They sang the only type of music they knew, Appalachian folk songs (which they claimed to have written, but whatever). Rodgers on the other hand had a much wider experience and his music reflected that. Although he usually sang solo with his guitar, his subsequent records had diverse instrumentation such as a coronet, tuba or ukulele. His songs, which he wrote or co-wrote, were derived from older folk music but one of his most important influences didn’t come from the Blue Ridge Mountains but the Swiss Alps.
He had never been to Switzerland but somewhere along the way he saw a performance by a travelling group of Swiss Tyrolians. He was so impressed by their yodeling he decided to incorporate it into his act. His first recording of a Blue Yodel was a sensation and made him a star. It was really remarkable; a white railroad worker made a record combining deep blues with the whitest music imaginable, and it worked. No record producer or committee of executives could have dreamed that up.
He continued to make a series of Blue Yodel records, twelve in all, that were highly influential. Over in Oklahoma, another railroad worker who played guitar, Gene Autry, began his career as “Oklahoma’s Yodeling Cowboy”, basically sounding exactly like Rodgers. Up in Nova Scotia two singers, Hank Snow and Wilf Carter did virtually the same thing. Pretty well every country singer that followed owed something to Jimmie Rodgers but his influence didn’t stop there.
Back in Mississippi a young black kid who idolized Rodgers tried singing in his style but his gravelly voice wasn’t suited to yodeling so he decided to just howl instead. That’s how Chester Burnett acquired the nickname Howlin’ Wolf. He went on to become one of the greatest blues singers of all time. Muddy Waters also acknowledged Rodgers as a prime influence.
Louis Armstrong liked Rodgers so much he and his wife Lil played on one of his records, Blue Yodel No. 9. That record remains one of the most valuable for collectors though Blue Yodel No. 8, otherwise known as Mule Skinner Blues isn’t too far behind. Another favourite is the autobiographical TB Is Killing Me.
TB did kill him in 1933, just hours after his last recording session in New York. A few days earlier he had recorded Jimmie Rodgers’ Last Blue Yodel. You could say the disease cut his career short but if he hadn’t contracted TB he wouldn’t have had a music career. He would have stayed with the railroad, doing a job he loved and popular music would not be the same.