Rodgers, Jimmie (James Charles
Rodgers), 1897–1933, American singer, guitarist, and songwriter often
called “the father of country music,” b. Meridian, Miss. The
son of a railroad foreman, he left school at 14 and worked various railroad
jobs, meanwhile learning the blues from his African-American fellow workers.
Known as the “Singing Brakeman,” he retired from the railroad
c.1924 due to the tuberculosis that eventually would take his life. Rodgers
soon became a full-time musician, signed (1927) and recorded with Victor
Records, and toured widely. He was extremely popular for his sweet, yodeling
tenor; his 12-bar, black-inflected country blues (“blue
yodels”); and his songs of railroad, hobo, and cowboy life. His
trademark songs include “Mississippi Delta Blues,”
“Waiting for a Train,” “In the Jailhouse Now,”
“Brakeman's Blues,” and “My Time Ain't Long.”
The first country musician to attain success in both rural and urban
America, Rodgers has had an enduring musical influence on later generations.
In 1961 he became the first singer named to the Country Music Hall of Fame
and in 1986 was the first country singer inducted into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame.
See biographies by his wife, C. Rodgers (1935, repr. 1995), B. C. Malone (1985), and N. Porterfield (1992); The Jimmie Rodgers Collection and The Jimmie Rodgers Memorial Songbook (both: 1999).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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