Jimmy rodgers biography

Although his hometown of Meridian, Mississippi, was then known as a hotbed for traditional blues, Jimmie Rodgers emerged during the late 1920s as country music’s first singing star and was subsequently heralded as the ‘Father Of Country Music.’ The singing brakeman made his first recordings for Victor Records at the legendary 1927 sessions held in Bristol on the Virginia - Tennessee border, that also heralded the initial recordings of the famed Carter Family. His amalgam of blues, country, folk music and down-to-earth songs had instant appeal and throughout the depression era he became America’s biggest-selling recording artist. He went on to achieve world-wide appeal, becoming popular throughout Europe, Australia, Africa, Japan and even India. Rodgers’ warm, lazy style has since charmed generations of listeners. He abandoned the simple acoustic guitar accompaniments of his earliest recordings and turned to jazz, dance bands and even Hawaiian music for accompaniment—all in order to appeal to a more ‘uptown’ audience. Openly relieved to be past his parentally enforced days as a singing sometime-brakeman, Rodgers had scant enthusiasm for playing the ‘old-timey stuff’ which made seminal inroads in the 1920s as an early commercial country prototype. He preferred novelty numbers. T