Travelin' Blues, the first modern C&W; recording. During the jazz and blues age of the 1920s, another distinctively American invention was emerging. Although few fans think of Country and Western being popular as remotely as the 1930s, it was during the depression years that C&W; became another popular music form. Jimmie Rodgers was born near Meridian, Mississippi in 1897. At age 14, he worked on the railroads in the southern U. S. learning blues music from black crew workers and practicing his trademark "3-chord pickin'". At age 24 the smoke and soot of the coal fired trains so weakened his lungs that he contracted TB. He could no longer work in the train yards and began devoting full time to his first love-blues music-billing himself as The Singing Brakeman. According to music historians "At a time when hillbilly music was emerging and consisted of old time music with a fiddler or guitar player, and singers who all sounded alike, Rodgers brought a distinctive, colorful personality and a rousing vocal style. He turned the public's attention away from rustic fiddles to popularize the free swinging, born to lose blues tradition of cheatin' hearts, faded love, whiskey rivers, and stoic endurance." He is honored as the first inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame as the man who started it all. Rodgers worked exclusively for Ralph Peer of Victor Records and cut 110 sides for the company during his short 1927-33 career. The most noteworthy of his compositions were his blue yodels. While other country artists were recording, superstar Jimmie was on the stage in Dallas and Houston one week and in rural towns like Sweetwater and Big Spring the next, rubbing elbows with the common folk and telling bawdy jokes with the locals. In his first stage appearance in DC, the more sophisticated urban audience demanded 16 curtain calls. Jimmie had been discovered by The Victor Talking Machine Company talent scout, Ralph Peer who was searching the south for new sounds to market. Rodgers and another group, the Carter Family, were discovered when they made their test records for Victor in 1927 in Bristol, Virginia. In 1929, Jimmie made a short film, The Singing Brakeman, for Columbia Victor Gems, parts of which can be seen on YT. During his career Rodgers recorded with artists as varied as the Carter Family in Louisville, KY to Louis Armstrong and Lil Hardin in Hollywood. He was born in Mississippi but his home was "The Yodelers Paradise", still standing on Main St. in Kerrville, Texas where the dry air helped him breathe easier. Jimmie achieved a great deal during his short 1927-33 career, possibly because he was always in a hurry-knowing that he would soon die of the Tuberculosis he had contracted in 1921, and for which there was no cure in the 1920s. He was the first cowboy superstar and first modern C&W; recording artist. His music drew from Appalachian Hill Ballads, Rural Blues, White Pop, Jazz, and Black Spirituals-all the basic ingredients for Rock & Roll. As a result of his work, Jimmie was also an early inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame-being honored in the same year as Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and Little Richard. Rodgers died during a recording session in New York in 1933-during which he was so weak that he was constantly attended by a nurse. Travelin Blues-music and lyrics by Shelly Lee Alley and Jimmie Rodgers. Pick up musician Shelly Lee Alley, who played fiddle for this recording, would later lead Alley and His Alleycats, a renowned western swing band in Texas during the 1930s-40s.

• published: 31 Mar 2009
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