Elsie McWilliams

Before Jimmie Rodgers was famous, Elsie McWilliams played piano and sang in his dance band. When he won a recording contract in the 1920s he turned to her for songs. He could not read music, so she worked out the tunes at the keyboard and he learned them by ear, and she traveled to sessions to help. She let others take the credit, partly so the money went to Rodgers and his family. After he died in 1933 she turned to family and church, and in 1938 she and her sister Carrie, his widow, made recordings in his memory.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience — steps away
  Meridian's two-level museum of Mississippi artists and entertainers, opened in 2018, with a Hall of Fame and a Walk of Fame that leads to it from the Riley Center.
• Meridian Civil Rights Trail — 0.3 mi
  An 18-stop self-guided trail through Meridian, from the Black business district and the 1964 Freedom Summer office to Wechsler School, the federal courthouse and James Chaney's grave.
• Jimmie Rodgers Museum — 0.3 mi
  The museum in Meridian that holds the guitar of the Singing Brakeman, Jimmie Rodgers, the first inductee of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
• Highland Park Dentzel Carousel — 1.4 mi
  The last two-row stationary Dentzel menagerie in the world, in its original carousel house in Meridian's Highland Park, a National Historic Landmark since 1987.

More markers nearby

• Moe Bandy — steps away
• Meridian — steps away
• Meridian Rhythm & Blues and Soul Music — 0.2 mi
• Temple Theater — 0.2 mi