Tag: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

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.

You Don’t Need No Ticket

December 9, 2019 / C R Burgan

“People get ready
For the train to Jordan
Picking up passengers
From coast to coast” – People Get Ready (Mayfield) © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner/Chappell Music

“In the slave period here, one of the things that was prominent was the song – how the songs extolled the glory of God . . . You know that. They needed it. Some people were so low that they had to look up to see the ground. Where were they living? On the other side of the tracks. But what will God do? God will build a bridge over the tracks for me to get across”. – Rev Earnest Palmer – Deep South, by Paul Theroux

Curtis Mayfield was born on June 3, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois. One of five children, Mayfield’s father left the family when Curtis was five. His mother (and maternal grandmother) moved the family into several Chicago public housing projects before settling into Cabrini–Green during his teen years. His mother taught him to play piano, and he was encouraged by his mother and grandmother to embrace gospel music. One of his earliest experiences performing was with the Northern Jubilee Gospel Singers at this aunt’s church.

In 1956, Mayfield joined his high school friend Jerry Butler’s group, The Roosters, to which he contributed his own original compositions. Two years later the group became The Impressions. With a varying lineup of members, The Impressions had a number of hits in the early 1960s, including their recording of “Amen”, an updated version of the old gospel tune, which was included on the soundtrack of the Sidney Poitier film, Lilies of the Field. The Impressions would reach the height of their popularity in the mid–to- late 60s with a string of Mayfield compositions that included “Keep On Pushing”, “It’s All Right”, the up-tempo “Talking about My Baby”, “Woman’s Got Soul” and “People Get Ready”.

“People, get ready
There’s a train a-coming
You don’t need no baggage
You just get on board” – People Get Ready (Mayfield)

“People Get Ready”, the title track of The Impressions’ album, People Get Ready, eventually became the group’s biggest hit. Released in 1965, it peaked at number 3 on the Billboard R&B Chart and number 14 on the Billboard Pop Chart. Mayfield said he originally wrote the song in response to both the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the deadly church bombing of Bloody Sunday in Birmingham. Martin Luther King Jr. chose “People Get Ready” as the unofficial anthem of the Civil Rights Movement and often used the song to get people marching or to calm and comfort them.

Robert F. Darden, a contributor to the Dallas News, comments about Mayfield’s song: “The allusion to the railroad is no accident. It immediately resonates not just with the spirituals, but with older blues songs as well, where references to trains quickly show up in the lyrics. A host of writers have noted, during the Civil War and Reconstruction, railroads still evoked awe and wonder among African Americans in the South. The unofficial pathways to freedom in the North were called the Underground Railroad, where passengers were summoned by the spiritual ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’. And when freedom did come, those still-magical vehicles enabled the formerly enslaved people to join in the Great Migration north”.

“All you need is faith
To hear the diesels humming
Don’t need no ticket
You just thank the Lord” – People Get Ready (Mayfield)

According to Curtis Mayfield’s son Todd, their ancestors had been enslaved in Louisiana and carried their stories with them on the Illinois Central Railroad to the South Side projects of Chicago. Mayfield’s grandmother, Annie Bell, was a devoutly religious woman and encouraged her grandson’s love of music, especially gospel. Mayfield himself says that “People Get Ready” probably came from the subconscious “preachings of my grandmothers and most ministers when they reflect from the Bible.”

Social commentator Juan Williams has been quoted as saying, “The train that is coming in the song speaks to a chance for redemption – the long sought chance to rise above racism, to stand apart from despair and any desire for retaliation – an end to the cycle of pain.”

Music critic Stanley Crouch wrote, “by saying, ‘There’s a train a-comin’, get ready,’ that was like saying, OK, so regardless of what happens, get yourself together for this because you are going to get a chance. Your chance is coming.”

“Faith is the key
Open the doors and board them
There’s hope for all
Among those loved the most” – People Get Ready (Mayfield)

Robert F. Darden also writes, “’People Get Ready’ has been interpreted as both an allusion to the religious apocalypse known as the second coming in many Christian denominations and as a warning to those who oppose equality and civil rights in the modern day. And, as is the case with the best songwriters, both interpretations can be right”.

“There ain’t no room
For the hopeless sinner
Who would hurt all mankind
Just to save his own

“Have pity on those
Whose chances are thinner
‘Cause there’s no hiding place
From the kingdom’s throne” – People Get Ready (Mayfield)

Curtis Mayfield’s song has stood the test of time. In 2000 it was chosen by a panel of 20 songwriters – including Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson – as among the top 10 songs of all time. They ranked it at number nine. In 2004, Rolling Stone placed it at number 24 in its 500 greatest hits of all time, and also placed it at number 20 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks. The song was included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. “People Get Ready” was named as one of the Top 10 Best Songs of All Time by Mojo music magazine, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2016, the song was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry due to its “cultural, historic, or artistic significance”. It has been recorded and performed by dozens of artists.

Singer Curtis Mayfield (L) poses with the first annual Soul Train Quincy Jones Award for outstanding career achievement. /Photo by Fred Prouser REUTERS REUTERS

In August 1990, Curtis Mayfield was injured when lighting equipment fell on him during an outdoor concert in Brooklyn. Paralyzed from the neck down, and no longer able to play the guitar, he continued composing, singing and recording music. He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995 and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in of March 1999. He died from complications of type 2 diabetes on December 26, 1999.

Todd Mayfield, who is his father’s biographer, writes, “Though he isn’t here, my father is still part of that fight. His music speaks as powerfully to the times we live in as it did to his own. His songs remain vital, uncompromising, and true. His message endures — a message he refused to abandon even in the darkest of times. If he were alive today, he’d urge us to keep on pushing, to never give up, to get ready for something better. He wouldn’t be able to help himself.”

“So people get ready
For the train a-comin‘
You don’t need no ticket
You just get on board” – People Get Ready (Mayfield) © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner/Chappell Music

Sources:

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_(music)

https://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/brown/folkexpression.htm –

https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2015/08/folklore-of-trains-in-usa-part-two/

https://www.hopechannel.com/au/read/people-get-ready

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

Train I Ride

October 28, 2019 / C R Burgan

“Train, train, comin’ down, down the line
Train, train, comin’ down, down the line
Well, it’s bringin’ my baby ’cause she’s mine, all mine” – Mystery Train (Herman Parker Jr. / Sam Phillips) © Sony/ATV Music

Born on his parents’ 200 acre farm near Florence, Alabama, the youngest of eight children, Sam Phillips was no stranger to hard work. Though his parents owned their farm, it was heavily mortgaged, and everyone in the family was expected to do their share to keep the enterprise solvent. It was in the fields that young Sam was first exposed to the work songs of the black laborers, leaving a lasting impression on his mind.

Music was always a part of Sam’s life. He played sousaphone, trombone and drums in high school, where he conducted the school’s marching band; yet he never imagined that music would be his vocation. He has been quoted as saying that as a youth he desired to be a criminal defense lawyer, “because I saw so many people, especially black people, railroaded”.

A defining moment in Phillip’s life came in 1939, when the family was travelling together to Dallas, and made a stop in Memphis. Arriving in the middle of the night, in a pouring rain, 16 year old Sam was able to sneak away to Beale Street, where he was captivated by the lights and music, finding the street alive with people. It was this experience that would prove to be a foreshadowing of his life’s work.

Beale Street yesterday
. . . and today

Bankrupted by the Great Depression, Sam Phillip’s father died in 1941, forcing Sam to leave school to care for his mother and aunt. He worked a succession of jobs, including as a disc jockey at radio station WLAY in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where he met his future wife, Rebecca Burns. Sam married “Becky” in 1943 – a union that would produce two children – and remained married for 60 years, until his death in 2003.

The impression that Memphis had left upon Phillips as a teenager would eventually draw him and his wife to the city in the mid 1940s, where he would spend four years working as an announcer and sound engineer at radio station WREC. It was there that Sam began experimenting with microphone placement and other new recording techniques to enhance the sound of live performances that the station would record for future broadcast. This experience would prove consequential in Sam’s future recording endeavors.

On January 3, 1950, Sam Phillips opened the Memphis Recording Service in a former auto repair shop located at 706 Union Ave. Getting started was a challenge for the aspiring entrepreneur, and to bring in business he was known to record conventions, weddings, choirs, funerals, or anything else that created revenue. He operated the venture with an open door policy, allowing anyone to, for a small fee, make their own record. The studio’s slogan was, “We Record Anything, Anywhere, Anytime.”

B B King
Junior Parker
Howlin’ Wolf

His willingness to work with amateurs enabled Phillips to make the first recordings of artists such as B. B. King, Junior Parker and Howlin’ Wolf. While he recorded many different styles of music, his first love was the blues. He was quoted as saying, “The blues, it got people—black and white—to think about life, how difficult, yet also how good it can be. They would sing about it; they would pray about it; they would preach about it. This is how they relieved the burden of what existed day in and day out.”

Sun Records — 706 Union Ave, Memphis, TN

At the time, recordings by black artists had only recently begun being referred to as “rhythm & blues” releases, as opposed to “race” records, and while there were some artists who were known for their ability to cross over to the pop charts, it was more common for white artists to record their own versions of black hits. Sam Phillips felt that this practice left most of the songs sounding bland and watered down.

Marion Keisker, Phillips’ receptionist stated, “Over and over I remember Sam saying, ‘If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.'” In his book, Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘N’ Roll, author Peter Gurlanick writes, “[Phillips] didn’t believe in luck necessarily, but the moon had to be in the right place, the wind had to be blowing in the right direction. . . . He just hoped he would still be in business when that day finally arrived.”

That day finally arrived for Phillips in 1953, when a young Elvis Presley – barely eighteen years old – walked through the doors of Memphis Recording Service, ready to pay his four dollars to record a song or two for his mother. Phillips saw (and heard) in Presley, exactly what he had been searching for. Elvis was listening to all the stuff that Phillips was recording: B. B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, Ike Turner; and he believed that with a little coaching Elvis could be that crossover artist who could bring African-American music to a white audience. Signing Elvis Presley to a recording contract for his Sun Records label, Phillips cut a number of sides for the singer during the period 1954 -55, one of those tracks being “Mystery Train”, which was originally released as the “B” side of Elvis’ version of “I Forgot to Remember to Forget”.

“Train I ride, sixteen coaches long
Train I ride, sixteen coaches long
Well, that long black train got my baby and gone” – Mystery Train

Written by Junior Parker, “Mystery Train” had been recorded & produced by Sam Phillips in 1953, and released by Sun Records as a single for Little Junior’s Blue Flames. Performed by Parker in the style of a rhythm & blues number, the song featured lyrics similar to those found in the Carter Family’s “Worried Man Blues”, which was based on an old Celtic ballad.

Sam Phillips, Elvis, Marion Keisker
Sam & Elvis

Presley’s Sun Records recording of “Mystery Train” – featuring Elvis on vocals & rhythm guitar, Scotty Moore on lead guitar, and Bill Black on bass – went on to become an early rockabilly standard, with Moore claiming to have borrowed the guitar riff from Junior Parker’s “Love My Baby” (the “B” side to Parker’s recording of “Mystery Train”).

Having acquired the song with the purchase of Presley’s contract, RCA Victor re-released the recording in November of 1955, when it peaked at number 11 on Billboard’s Country Chart, making Elvis a nationally-known country music star. Now considered an “enduring classic”, the song has been ranked by Rolling Stone Magazine at #77 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time; ranked the third most acclaimed song of 1955, by Acclaimed Music; inspired Jim Jarmusch’s 1989 independent film Mystery Train, as well as Greil Marcus’ widely lauded book Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music.

Note: In 1986 Sam Phillips was part of the first group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and his pioneering contribution to the genre has been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. He was the first non-performer inducted. In 1987, he was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. He received a Grammy Trustees Award for lifetime achievement in 1991. In 1998, he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame; in October 2001 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame; and in 2012 he was inducted into the inaugural class of the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.

“Train, train, comin’ ‘round the bend
Train, train, comin’ ‘round the bend
Well, it took my baby, but it never will again . . .” – Mystery Train

Sources:

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2016/januaryfebruary/statement/the-birth-rock-%E2%80%98n%E2%80%99-roll-found-sam-phillips%E2%80%99s-sun-records

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

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

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