In the nearly eight decades since his death from tuberculosis at
age thirty-five, singer-songwriter Jimmie Rodgers has been an
inspiration for numerous top performers--from Woody Guthrie, Lead
Belly, Bill Monroe and Hank Williams to Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash,
Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan, and Beck. How did this Mississippi-born
vaudevillian, a former railroad worker who performed so briefly so
long ago, produce tones, tunes, and themes that have had such broad
influence and made him the model for the way American roots music
stars could become popular heroes?
In Meeting Jimmie Rodgers, the first book to explore the deep
legacy of "The Singing Brakeman" from a twenty-first century
perspective, Barry Mazor offers a lively look at Rodgers' career,
tracing his rise from working-class obscurity to the pinnacle of
renown that came with such hits as "Blue Yodel" and "In the
Jailhouse Now." As Mazor shows, Rodgers brought emotional clarity
and a unique sense of narrative drama to every song he performed,
whether tough or sentimental, comic or sad. His wistful singing,
falsetto yodels, bold flat-picking guitar style, and sometimes
censorable themes---sex, crime, and other edgy topics--set him
apart from most of his contemporaries. But more than anything else,
Mazor suggests, it was Rodgers' shape-shifting ability to assume
many public personas--working stiff, decked-out cowboy, suave
ladies' man--that connected him to such a broad public and set the
stage for the stars who followed him.
Mazor goes beyond Rodgers's own life to map the varied places his
music has gone, forever changing not just country music but also
rock and roll, blues, jazz, bluegrass, Western, commercial folk,
and muchmore. In reconstructing this far-flung legacy, Mazor
enables readers to meet Rodgers and his music anew--not as an
historical figure, but as a vibrant, immediate force.
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