7 Jimmie Rodgers 7and cowboy songs—that ultimately earned him the nick-
name the “Singing Brakeman.”
After contracting tuberculosis, Rodgers was forced to
give up railroad work in 1924 or 1925 and began pursuing
a performing career, playing everything from tent shows
to street corners but with little success. He relocated to
Asheville, N.C., and began appearing on local radio in 1927,
backed by a string band. Following a disagreement with
the band, Rodgers recorded as a guitar-playing solo artist.
The popularity of his first recording, “Sleep, Baby, Sleep,”
sparked a long series of hits from among more than 110
recordings he would make in what proved to be a relatively
short career (1928–33) that coincided with the beginning
of the Great Depression. Rodgers toured widely in the
South (also playing the vaudeville circuit) and, seeking a
dry climate for his health, eventually settled in Texas.
Rodgers helped establish the template for country
music and the model for country singers, infusing his per-
formances and compositions with personality, humour,
and heightened emotion, delivered in a unique vocal style
at a time when “hillbilly music” consisted largely of old-time
instrumentalists and singers who sounded much the same.
Rodgers is perhaps best remembered for his distinctive
blue yodel; it was popularized in “Blue Yodel No. 1” and
was at the heart of some dozen other recorded versions.
He was affectionately called “America’s Blue Yodeler” by
many of his fans. Most of Rodgers’s original compositions
were written with a variety of collaborators, the most
prominent of whom was his sister-in-law, Elsie McWilliams.
His hits, which span the emotional gauntlet and incorpo-
rate elements of a wide variety of genres, include “Miss the
Mississippi and You,” “Daddy and Home,” “Waiting for a
Train,” “Brakeman’s Blues,” and “Mississippi River Blues,”
among others. Rodgers recorded right up to his premature
death, resting on a cot in the studio between takes during