Tag: RCA Victor

I’ll Meet You at the Station

May 25, 2020 / C R Burgan

“Take the last train to Clarksville
And I’ll meet you at the station
You can be there by 4:30
‘Cause I’ve made your reservation
Don’t be slow
Oh, no, no, no . . .” – Last Train to Clarksville (Boyce/Hart) © Sony/ATV Music

Clarksville is the county seat of Montgomery County, Tennessee. It is the fifth-largest city in the state, with an estimated population of 153,205 in 2017. The city was founded in 1785, incorporated in 1807, and named for General George Rogers Clark, frontier fighter and Revolutionary War hero, and brother of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Clarksville was designated as a town to be settled by soldiers from the disbanded Continental Army that served under General Washington during the Revolutionary War. At the end of the war, with the federal government lacking sufficient funds to repay the soldiers, the Legislature of North Carolina, designated the lands to the west of the state line as federal lands that could be used in the land grant program. As the area of Clarksville had been surveyed and sectioned into plots, the land was available to be settled by the families of eligible soldiers as repayment for service to their country.

Since its inception, the city of Clarksville has had close ties to the military. The city was developed by former Revolutionary War soldiers; during the Civil War a large number of its male population was depleted due to Union Army victories, with many Clarksville men interned at Union prisoner of war camps; Clarksville lost many men in World War I, and World War II saw the formation of Camp Campbell, later Fort Campbell, not far from the city center.

“’Cause I’m leaving in the morning
And I must see you again
We’ll have one more night together
‘Til the morning brings my train
And I must go
Oh, no, no, no . . .” – Last Train to Clarksville (Boyce/Hart)

Fort Campbell is a United States Army base that spans the Kentucky–Tennessee state line. It is located approximately 10 miles from the city center of Clarksville. Though the installation’s post office is in Kentucky, most of its acreage lies in Tennessee. The fort is named in honor of Union Army Brigadier General William Bowen Campbell, a former governor of Tennessee, and is home to the 101st Airborne Division and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

The site for Fort Campbell was selected in July of 1941, with the initial survey completed in November of that same year, about the same time the Japanese Imperial Fleet was leaving Japanese home waters for the attack on Pearl Harbor. Soldiers from Fort Campbell, Kentucky have deployed in every military campaign since the formation of the post.

The first 4,000 paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division arrived in Vietnam in July of 1965, landing at Cam Ranh Bay. Immediately after their arrival, they made a demonstration jump which was observed by Geneneral William Westmoreland and outgoing Ambassador (formerly General) Maxwell Taylor. Taylor and Westmoreland were both former commanders of the division, which was known as the “Screaming Eagles.” The remainder of the 101st would soon be deployed to Vietnam from Fort Campbell.

101st Airborne Division, “Screaming Eagles”

In May of 1966, due to the escalation of action in Vietnam, a Basic Combat Training Center was activated at Fort Campbell. Just weeks later the base received its first 220 newly inducted soldiers.

Side note #1:

In 1961, after a run-in with the law over stolen cars, young James Marshall Hendrix was given the choice to spend two years in prison or join the army. Choosing the army, Pvt. Hendrix was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and was stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. It was not long before Jimi proved himself wholly unsuited for military life, and although he had signed up for three years, Captain Gilbert Batchman had had enough after one year, and made the case for Hendrix to be discharged, as his problems were judged to not be treatable by “hospitalization or counseling.”

Pvt James Hendrix @ Ft. Campbell
Pvt Hendrix

“Take the last train to Clarksville
I’ll be waiting at the station
We’ll have time for coffee–flavored kisses
And a bit of conversation, oh
Oh, no, no, no . . .” – Last Train to Clarksville (Boyce/Hart)

As early as 1962, filmmaker Bob Rafelson had developed the idea for The Monkees, but was unable to sell the series. Later he teamed-up with Bert Schneider, whose father was the head of Screen Gems, the television unit of Columbia Pictures, and after seeing the success of The Beatles’ film, A Hard Day’s Night, the pair revived Rafelson’s idea of a show built around an aspiring rock band, and were successful in selling the series to Screen Gems Television.

Rafelson and Schneider’s original idea was to cast an existing New York folk rock group, The Lovin’ Spoonful, who were not widely known at the time. But John Sebastian had already signed the band to a record contract, which would have left Screen Gems unable to market music from the show. The idea then shifted to having actors portray the four band members, and while each of the four actors who were chosen to portray the The Monkees had some musical experience, it would initially be left to outside songwriters and musicians to provide the show’s musical soundtrack.

With The Monkees picked up as a series, Columbia-Screen Gems and RCA Victor entered into a joint venture called Colgems Records to distribute the show’s musical releases. Don Kirshner, Screen Gems’ head of music, was contacted to secure music for the show’s pilot. Kirshner would eventually enlist the talents of Neil Diamond, John Stewart, Carole King, and the duo of Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart, among others, to pen what would become the show’s familiar hits.

Neil Diamond
John Stewart
Carole King

“Take the last train to Clarksville
Now I must hang up the phone
I can’t hear you in this
Noisy railroad station
All alone, I’m feeling low
Oh, no, no, no . . .” – Last Train to Clarksville (Boyce/Hart)

“Last Train to Clarksville” was the show’s first single and first worldwide hit. The song was recorded in July of 1966, and released in August, just a few weeks prior to The Monkees September 12 broadcast debut on the NBC television network. The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 in November of 1966, and would later rank #6 for the year. It was featured in seven episodes of the band’s television series, the most for any Monkees song.

Written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, the song bears a striking resemblance to The Beatles’ “Paperback Writer”, which is the song that Hart claims inspired him to write “Last Train”. Hart has stated that having turned on the radio to hear the final bars of “Paperback Writer” he believed that Paul McCartney was singing “Take the last train”. Learning that McCartney was actually singing “Paperback writer”, he decided to use the line for his own song.

Knowing that The Monkees TV series was being pitched as a music/comedy series in the spirit of The Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night, Boyce & Hart set out to emulate the Fab Four as they recorded “Last Train to Clarksville” with their own band, Candy Store Prophets. Actor Mickey Dolenz later added his lead vocal track to the original recording.

About the title of the song Hart has explained, “We were just looking for a name that sounded good. There’s a little town in northern Arizona I used to go through in the summer on the way to Oak Creek Canyon called Clarkdale. We were throwing out names, and when we got to Clarkdale, we thought Clarksville sounded even better. We didn’t know it at the time, [but] there is an Army base near the town of Clarksville, Tennessee — which would have fit the bill fine for the storyline. We couldn’t be too direct with The Monkees. We couldn’t really make a protest song out of it — we kind of snuck it in.”

Side note #2:

In 1967, as The Monkees were about to embark on a US tour, Mickey Dolenz recommended hiring Jimi Hendrix to be their opening act, having recently witnessed his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival. Hendrix had characterized The Monkees’ music as “dishwater”, but his manager convinced him to sign on for the tour, for although he’d already had three hit singles in England, he was virtually unknown in the US. The Jimi Hendrix Experience played just eight of the 29 scheduled tour dates; then, on July 16, 1967, Jimi flipped the Forest Hills, Queens, New York, audience off, threw down his guitar and walked away from the tour.

“Take the last train to Clarksville,
And I’ll meet you at the station,
You can be here by four-thirty,
‘Cause I’ve made your reservation, don’t be slow,
Oh, no, no, no . . .

And I don’t know if I’m ever coming home” – Last Train to Clarksville (Boyce/Hart)

The 101st Airborne was the last Army division to leave Vietnam, returning to its home base of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. During the war, troopers from the 101st won 17 Medals of Honor for bravery in combat. The division suffered almost 20,000 soldiers killed or wounded in action in Vietnam, over twice as many as the 9,328 casualties it suffered in World War II.

Never Forget!

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarksville,_Tennessee

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Campbell

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/101st-airborne-division-arrives-in-vietnam

https://www.military.com/veteran-jobs/career-advice/military-transition/famous-veterans-jimi-hendrix.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Train_to_Clarksville

https://www.rhino.com/article/single-stories-the-monkees-last-train-to-clarksville

https://www.songfacts.com/facts/the-monkees/last-train-to-clarksville

All photos sourced through internet searches, none belong to the author.

Pardon Me, Boy

April 27, 2020 / C R Burgan

“Pardon me boy, is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo?
Track twenty nine, boy you can gimme a shine
I can afford to board a Chattanooga Choo Choo
I’ve got my fare and just a trifle to spare” – Chattanooga Choo Choo (Gordon/Warren) © Sony/ATV Music

The earliest inhabitants of the Chattanooga, Tennessee area were the Native Americans, with Cherokee occupation of the region dating from 1776. John Ross, who eventually became Principal Chief, established Ross’s Landing in 1816, located along what is now Broad Street. It would become a primary center for the Cherokee Nation, which extended into Georgia and Alabama.

In 1838 the U.S. government forced the Cherokee people, along with other Native American tribes, to relocate to the area designated as Indian Territory. The following year the community of Ross’s Landing would be incorporated as the city of Chattanooga.

Being ideally suited for waterborne commerce due to its situation beside the Tennessee River, the city quickly grew. When the railroad arrived in 1850, Chattanooga became a boomtown. The city’s location, where the fertile cotton growing lowlands of the Deep South meet the mountainous region of southern Appalachia, made it a natural gateway between north and south. This distinction would cause Chattanooga to see plenty of action during the American Civil War, when the city proved to be a transportation hub connecting half of the Confederacy’s arsenals.

The First Battle of Chattanooga was fought June 7-8, 1862. It was a minor artillery battle, precipitated when Maj. Gen. Ormsby M. Mitchel ordered Brig. Gen. James Negley, who commanded a small division, to lead an expedition to capture Chattanooga. The Union artillery shelled the city for a day and a half before withdrawing, and although the Confederate losses were minor, it served as a warning that the Union forces could attack deep within the enemy territory at will.

The Second Battle of Chattanooga began on August 21, 1863, when Col. John T. Wilder’s brigade marched to a location northeast of Chattanooga and ordered the 18th Indiana Light Artillery to begin shelling the town. Soldiers and civilians were caught off guard as many were in church observing a day of prayer and fasting. The shelling continued periodically over the next two weeks, allowing the Union army to surround the city to the south and west.

In the fall of that same year, Union forces withdrew to the city of Chattanooga after the Confederate victory at Chickamauga in September. The Confederate Army under Gen. Braxton Bragg quickly laid siege, cutting off the Federals’ supply lines. After being ordered by President Abraham Lincoln to end the siege at Chattanooga, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant opened the “Cracker Line” across the Tennessee River, allowing the Army of the Cumberland inside the city to be resupplied. In mid-November, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s Army of the Tennessee arrived in the city, as well.

From November 23 to November 25, 1863, Union forces fought Confederate troops at the battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. The Union victories at these locations drove the rebels back into Georgia. The siege was broken, and the path clear for Gen. Sherman’s march to Atlanta, and ultimately on to Savannah. The vital railroad hub of Chattanooga was securely in Union control and would remain so for the duration of the war.

“You leave the Pennsylvania station ’bout a quarter to four
Read a magazine and then you’re in Baltimore
Dinner in the diner, nothing could be finer
Than to have your ham ‘n’ eggs in Carolina” – Chattanooga Choo Choo (Gordon/Warren)

The reconstruction period following the Civil War found the city of Chattanooga retaining its prominence as a commercial hub, and as the “Gateway to the South”. The post-war decades found railroads rapidly expanding across the country, with the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, desiring a rail link to Southern cities & ports. In order to overcome legal obstacles, the Cincinnati Southern Railway was built with municipal funds and continues to be city-owned to this day, although the city leases its use to Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railway (CNO&TP), which is a subsidiary of Norfolk Southern.

On May 8, 1880, the first passenger train made the 337 mile trip from Cincinnati to Chattanooga, and the Chattanooga Choo Choo was born. Although the railroad never officially operated a train bearing that name, the “Choo Choo” moniker referred to a small wood burning 2-6-0 type locomotive, which was operated by the Cincinnati Southern, and is now a museum piece.

“When you hear the whistle blowin’ eight to the bar
Then you know that Tennessee is not very far
Shovel all the coal in, gotta keep it rollin’
Woo, woo, Chattanooga, there you are” – Chattanooga Choo Choo (Gordon/Warren)

The Birmingham Special was a passenger train operated jointly by the Southern Railway, Norfolk and Western Railway, and Pennsylvania Railroad. While making a journey upon this train, songwriters Mack Gordon & Harry Warren wrote their hit song, “Chattanooga Choo Choo”. In 1932 the Birmingham Special had been rerouted to include Chattanooga as a stop along its path from Pennsylvania Station in New York City, to Birmingham, Alabama. Although Pennsylvania Station never had a track 29, as the song states, Southern Railway designated the train as #29 in the southbound direction. Along with other references within the song’s lyrics, it’s apparent that the authors were exercising a degree of imagination & artistic license.

On May 7, 1941, Glenn Miller and his Orchestra recorded “Chattanooga Choo Choo” in Hollywood, California, as an extended production number for the 20th Century Fox film Sun Valley Serenade. Several months later it was released on RCA Victor’s Bluebird label as the B-side of a 78 rpm phonograph disc. Featuring the vocals of Tex Beneke, Paula Kelley, and the Modernaires, the song reached #1 on the Billboard Best Sellers chart on December 7, 1941, where it remained for nine weeks. In February 1942 the release was the first to be a certified gold record for sales of 1.2 million units. The song was also nominated for an Academy Award for its appearance in the film. The song’s huge success was deemed to be remarkable considering the fact that due to the ASCAP boycott the song had not been heard on the radio during 1941.

In the decades following Glenn Miller’s iconic recording the song has been recorded by dozens of artists, including: Beegie Adair, the Andrews Sisters, Ray Anthony, Asleep at the Wheel, BBC Big Band, George Benson, Regina Carter, Ray Charles, Harry Connick, Jr., Ray Conniff, John Denver, Ernie Fields, Stéphane Grappelli, Susannah McCorkle, Oscar Peterson, Hank Snow, Cab Calloway, Carmen Miranda, Floyd Cramer, Bill Haley and His Comets, Barry Manilow, Herb Alpert, Steve Lucky & the Rhumba Bums, and The Muppets. The song has also been featured in numerous movies and TV shows.

In 1996, Glenn Miller’s original 1941 recording of “Chattanooga Choo Choo” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

As with many of the songs that I have featured in this blog I gleaned a few new details while researching this recording with which I had felt quite familiar. Learning that the song reached the #1 position on the Billboard charts on what we now call Pearl Harbor Day caused me to reflect on what it meant to folks at the time. The fact that it stayed at #1 for nine weeks tells me that the song was in some way a medicine that helped a grieving population heal from tremendous wounds.

“There’s gonna be a certain party at the station
Satin and lace, I used to call funny face
She’s gonna cry until I tell her that I’ll never roam
So Chattanooga choo choo
Won’t you choo-choo me home?” – Chattanooga Choo Choo (Gordon/Warren)

Sources:

https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/battle-of-chattanooga

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/chattanooga

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chattanoogahttps:

//www.nps.gov/chch/learn/historyculture/battles-for-chattanooga.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattanooga,_Tennessee

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattanooga_Choo_Choo

https://www.american-rails.com/chattanooga.html

All photos sourced through internet searches, unless otherwise noted.

Listen to the Jingle

January 20, 2020 / C R Burgan

“Now listen to the jingle, and the rumble, and the roar,
As she dashes thro’ the woodland, and speeds along the shore,
See the mighty rushing engine, hear her merry bell ring out,
As they speed along in safety, on the Great Rock Island Route.” – J. A. Roff (1882)

“The Great Rock Island Route”, is an American folk song credited to J. A. Roff. Published in 1882, the song celebrates the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, which was incorporated in 1851. The line’s first trains began running in 1852, between Chicago & Joliet, with continued construction reaching Rock Island by February 1854, making the railroad the first to connect Chicago to the Mississippi River.

At the peak of its service, the Rock Island Line stretched across Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas. In the heyday of passenger rail travel, Rock Island operated the Golden State Limited (Chicago—Kansas City—Tucumcari—El Paso—Los Angeles) jointly with Southern Pacific Railroad.

But like many railroads, the Rock Island Line experienced waning profitability in the modern age of transportation, and in the 1970s bankruptcy loomed. After the railroad’s final train battled three days of snowdrifts to arrive in Denver on March 31, 1980, the insolvent company was liquidated. In 1984, after all assets were sold, and all debts were paid, the company found itself with a large amount of cash, changed its name to Chicago Pacific Corporation, and soon purchased the Hoover appliance company.

An interesting side note:
A spur of the Rock Island Railroad that ran beside a small hotel in Eldon, Missouri, was the inspiration for the popular 1960s television show Petticoat Junction. Ruth Henning, whose grandmother owned the hotel, was a co-creator of the show, along with her husband Paul, who also created The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres.

“Listen to the jingle, the rumble, and the roar
As she glides along the woodland o’er the hills and by the shore
Hear the mighty rush of the engine hear those lonesome hoboes call
Traveling through the jungle on the Wabash Cannonball” – William Kindt (1904)

Alvin Pleasant Delaney Carter was a musician and founding member of the Carter Family, one of the most influential performing groups in the history of American country music. Born in 1891 in Maces Springs, Virginia, Carter was known throughout his life simply as A.P. In 1927 he formed the Carter Family band, together with his wife, Sara, and her cousin Maybelle. A.P.’s employment as a salesman had him traveling extensively throughout Central Appalachia, where he set about collecting songs that he heard performed by Appalachian musicians, and at church services in isolated locales.

Towards the latter part of the 1920s, as RCA Victor’s Victrola record player was increasing in popularity, the company set about a search for more recorded content to sell to its quickly growing customer base. The company sent a mobile-recording team around the country, with one of the stops being in Bristol, Tennessee, just a few miles from Maces Springs. The Carter Family recorded several sides at the initial session, which soon became popular nation-wide.

As the Carter Family recordings continued to sell in even greater numbers, A.P. returned to the remote hills and hollows in search of more material for his group to record.

The Carter Family would make one of the first known recordings of “Wabash Cannonball” in 1929, though it would not be released until 1932. A.P. Carter and his group would become so identified with the song, that some sources list him as its composer.

“From the great Atlantic ocean to the wide Pacific shore
She climbs a flowery mountain o’er the hills and by the shore
She’s mighty tall and handsome she’s known quite well by all
She’s a regular combination on the Wabash Cannonball” – William Kindt

A rewritten version of “The Great Rock Island Route” appeared in 1904 under the title “Wabash Cannon Ball”; the song is credited to William Kindt. Retaining the “Rock Island” melody, as well as the main chorus structure, the song now told the story of a fictional train, traveling through the hobo jungles along its continental odyssey.

There are many theories as to the origin of “The Wabash Cannonball”. Labor organizer, folksinger and storyteller, Utah Phillips, believes that hobos imagined a mythical train called the Wabash Cannonball which was a “death coach” that appeared at the death of a hobo to carry his soul to its reward (like Vikings on their way to Valhalla). The song was then created to tell the legend in rhythm & rhyme.

Another theory for the train’s origin states that the song is based on a tall tale in which Cal S. Bunyan, Paul Bunyan’s brother, constructed a railroad known as the Ireland, Jerusalem, Australian & Southern Michigan Line. After two months of service, the 700-car train was traveling so fast that it arrived at its destination an hour before its departure. Finally, the train took off so fast that it rushed into outer space, and for all is known, it is still traveling through space. When the hobos learned of this train, they called her the Wabash Cannonball and said that every station in America had heard her whistle.

Wabash Cannonball by Roy Acuff record label

Country singer Roy Acuff recorded “Wabash Cannonball” in 1936. His version is reported to be one of the fewer than 40 all-time singles to have sold greater than 10 million physical copies.

“Wabash Cannonball” is a signature song of the Indiana State University Marching Sycamores and the Purdue All-American Marching Band. Both campuses are adjacent to the Mighty Wabash River. It is also associated with the Stephen F. Austin State University Lumberjack Marching Band, the Texas Tech University Goin’ Band from Raiderland, and the University of Texas Longhorn Band. “Wabash Cannonball” is known as the unofficial “second” fight song of Kansas State University, having been played since the late 1960s. It was the only piece of sheet music rescued from the KSU music department in a fire in 1968. It was also used as the theme song by USS Wabash.

What does this particular train song have to do with baseball? Here’s what: Baseball Hall of Famer, Jay Hanna “Dizzy” Dean, who had had a colorful career pitching for the St. Louis Cardinals, among other teams, often sang verses of the song while broadcasting the Major League Baseball Game of the Week in the 1950s and early 1960s.

“The Wabash Cannonball” is included on The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll list, and is the oldest song on that list.

The Wabash Cannonball was the name of a (now-defunct) roller coaster at Opry Land USA in Nashville.

And in what is truly a case of life imitating art: While there was never a real-life Wabash Cannonball, in the wake of the song’s popularity, the Wabash Railroad renamed its daytime express run between Detroit and St. Louis as the Wabash Cannon Ball in 1949, the only actual train to bear the name, which it carried until the creation of Amtrak in 1971.

Though the recollection is vague, I’m pretty sure the first time I heard the song was when “Cousin Ernie” (Tennessee Ernie Ford) came to visit the Ricardos in New York and performed a solo on their living room sofa during an episode of I Love Lucy.

“Listen to the jingle, the rumble and the roar”

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago,_Rock_Island_and_Pacific_Railroad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabash_Cannonball

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._P._Carter

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=wabash+cannonball+lyrics

All photos sourced from internet searches, none belong to the author.

The Singing Brakeman

October 10, 2019 / C R Burgan

“All around the water tank
Waiting for a train
A thousand miles away from home
Sleeping in the rain” – Waiting for a Train (Jimmie Rodgers) © Peermusic Publishing

Born on September 8, 1897, in Meridian, Mississippi, James Charles Rodgers has become known as “The Father of Country Music”. While he certainly didn’t invent the musical form, Rodgers, along with his contemporaries The Carter Family popularized the genre during the early days of radio and phonograph recordings. Though he also dabbled in folk, blues and jazz, it is for his accomplishments in bringing the traditional, nostalgic music of rural white people in the American South to the attention of a nation that would prove to have a huge appetite for this common strain of musical communication.

Rodgers’ mother died when he was six or seven, and he subsequently spent much of his youth living with various extended family in rural Mississippi & Alabama. Destined to be an entertainer, he had by the age of thirteen already spent time on the road organizing and performing in traveling shows, only to be tracked down and brought home by his father, Aaron Rodgers, a maintenance-of-way foreman on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad.

His father found young Jimmie his first job working on the railroad as a water boy. It was during this period that he was taught guitar technique by other rail workers and hoboes that he encountered on the job. As a water boy he would also have been exposed to the work chants of black gandy dancers. A few years later, through his older brother, Walter, he became a brakeman on the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad.

“I walked up to a brakeman gave him a line of talk
He said if you’ve got money boy I’ll see that you don’t walk
I haven’t got a nickel, not a penny can I show
Get off, get off you railroad bum and he slammed the boxcar door” – Waiting for a Train (Rodgers)

In 1924, at age 27, Rodgers was diagnosed with tuberculosis. After a period the disease would cause him to give up working for the railroad, and he eventually returned to entertaining.

By 1927 Rodgers had returned to Meridian, MS, where he settled in with his wife Carrie and daughter Anita. April of that year found him in Asheville, North Carolina, where he performed on that city’s first radio station, WWNC, which would eventually lead to a weekly radio show for him and a band that he had cobbled together. In July of ’27 Rodgers would make his first recordings for Ralph Peer, a representative of the Victor Talking Machine Company, in Camden, New Jersey. Though success from those initial recordings was modest, he would return to New Jersey in November, armed with original songs co-written with his sister-in-law, Elsie Williams, who would eventually become his most frequent collaborator, writing or co-writing 40 songs for Rodgers.

One of the sides cut during this second series of sessions was “Blue Yodel”, also known as “T for Texas”. Over the next two years it would sell nearly half a million copies, cementing his place as one of the top recording stars of that era.

The next few years found Rodgers continuing to cut new records. He made a movie short for Columbia Pictures, The Singing Brakeman, toured the Midwest with Will Rogers, even made a recording of “Blue Yodel No. 9”, accompanied by Louis Armstrong on trumpet, and his wife, Lil Harden Armstrong on piano.

“He put me off in Texas a state I dearly love
The wide-open spaces all around me the moon and stars up above
Nobody seems to want me or to lend me a helping hand
I’m on my way from Frisco going back to Dixie Land” – Waiting for a Train (Rodgers)

Rodgers died May 26, 1933, at the age of 35, from a pulmonary hemorrhage. At the time of his death his recordings accounted for fully 10% of RCA Victor’s sales, in a market that had been severely impacted by the Great Depression. When the Country Music Hall of Fame was established in 1961, Rodgers was one of the first three inductees, along with music publisher/songwriter Fred Rose and singer/songwriter Hank Williams. Rodgers was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 as an early influence, and inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2013. Merle Haggard recorded a tribute album, Same Train, A Different Time: Merle Haggard Sings The Great Songs of Jimmie Rodgers, while Lynyrd Skynyrd named both Haggard and Rodgers in their song “Railroad Song” (“I’m going to ride this train, Lord, until I find out, what Jimmie Rodgers and the Hag was all about”).

On Haggard’s album, Same Train, A Different Time, in a spoken introduction, the singer refers to Rodgers as “the most important man, who ever sang a country song”.

On May 24, 1978, the United States Postal Service issued a 13-cent commemorative stamp honoring Rodgers, the first in its long-running Performing Arts Series. The stamp depicted him in brakeman’s outfit and guitar, giving his “two thumbs up” (as in one of the famous photos of him), along with a locomotive in silhouette in the background.

Chester Arthur Burnett, better known as Howlin’ Wolf, tried to emulate Rodgers’s yodel, but found that his efforts sounded more like a growl or a howl. “I couldn’t do no yodelin’,” Barry Gifford quoted him as saying in Rolling Stone, “so I turned to howlin’. And it’s done me just fine.”

Bob Dylan wrote in the liner notes to a 1997 tribute album: “Jimmie Rodgers, of course, is one of the guiding lights of the twentieth century, whose way with song has always been an inspiration to those of us who have followed the path. … He was a performer of force without precedent with a sound as lonesome and mystical as it was dynamic. He gives hope to the vanquished and humility to the mighty.”

The professional recording & performing career for which Jimmie Rodgers is remembered and revered lasted barely six years, and yet his influence is still felt nearly a century later by those who remain inspired by his musical legacy, and feel driven to pay tribute to the “Singing Brakeman” in their own personal way.

“Though my pocketbook is empty
And my heart is full of pain
I’m a thousand miles away from home
Just a-waiting for a train” – Waiting for a Train (Jimmie Rodgers) © Peermusic Publishing

Sources:

http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/articles/39/jimmie-rodgers-the-father-of-country-music

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Jimmie+Rodgers+%28country+singer%29+%E2%80%93+Wikipedia

All photos sourced through internet searches, unless otherwise noted