Jimmie Rodgers and The Blues
Jimmie Rodgers (1897 – 1933) is widely known as the "father of country music," but blues was a prominent element
of his music. The influence of his famous "blue yodels" can be heard in the music of Mississippi blues artists
including Howlin' Wolf, Mississippi John Hurt, Tommy Johnson, and the Mississippi Sheiks. His many songs
include the autobiographical "T.B. Blues," which addressed the tuberculosis that eventually took his life.
(Reverse text)
Jimmie Rodgers and The Blues
Meridian native Jimmie Rodgers (1897-1933) was the first major star of country
music and introduced the blues to a far wider audience than any other artist of his time, black or white. He was not
the first white performer to interpret the blues, but he was the most popular, establishing the blues as a foundation
of country music.
More than a third of Rodgers’s recordings were blues, which he encountered as a young man while working as a
railway brakeman and traveling musician. In 1927 he recorded the song "Blue Yodel" that sold over a million copies
and earned Rodgers the nickname "The Blue Yodeler." His distinctive style mixed blues, European yodeling, and
African American falsetto singing traditions. Before Rodgers, several African Americans, notably Charles Anderson,
had specialized in yodeling, and in 1923 blues singers Bessie Smith and Sara Martin recorded Clarence Williams’s
song, "Yodeling Blues."
Although most of Rodgers’s songs were original, some of his most popular were versions of blues classics.
"Frankie and Johnnie" was an African American ballad about a murder in St. Louis in 1899, and blues artists
including Jim Jackson from Hernando, Mississippi, had made earlier recordings of "In the Jailhouse Now." Rodgers
employed African American musicians in the studio, including Louis Armstrong, who, along with his pianist wife Lil,
backed Rodgers on "Blue Yodel No. 9." Other sessions featured blues guitarist Clifford Gibson and the Louisville
Jug Band.
In early 1929 Rodgers toured Mississippi with a vaudeville show that included blues singer Eva Thomas. Bluesmen
who claimed to have met, traveled, or performed with Rodgers included Hammie Nixon, Rubin Lacy, and Houston
Stackhouse, who recalled that he and Robert Nighthawk accompanied Rodgers in a show at the Edwards Hotel in
Jackson (c. 1931). Rodgers’s influence on African American musicians from Mississippi is evident in recordings by
the Mississippi Sheiks, Tommy Johnson, Furry Lewis, Scott Dunbar, and Mississippi John Hurt, whose song "Let
the Mermaids Flirt With Me" was based on Rodgers’s "Waiting For A Train." Howlin’ Wolf attributed his distinctive
singing style to Rodgers, explaining, "I couldn’t do no yodelin’, so I turned to howlin’. And it’s done me just fine."
Marker is on Front Street near 17th Avenue, on the right when traveling east.
Courtesy hmdb.org
