Jimmie Rodgers was born outside Meridian on September 8, 1897, the son of a Mobile and Ohio Railroad worker. His mother died when he was five or six, and he grew up on the move. From the age of fourteen he worked as a brakeman or flagman on lines across the South and Southwest, until tuberculosis made railroad work hard on his lungs. He turned to vaudeville and medicine shows in 1924, and in 1927 he recorded his first songs at Bristol, Virginia. He made records for only six years, more than a hundred songs, and died in New York on May 26, 1933, less than thirty-six hours after his last session.
Rodgers is called the Father of Country Music, the Singing Brakeman and America's Blue Yodeler. The blue yodel was his signature: blues verses in the AAB form with a yodel between them, thirteen recorded, beginning with "T for Texas." He drew on Tin Pan Alley, the blues and jazz, and as a Mississippian he likely heard more African American music than most early country musicians. The Country Music Hall of Fame made him its first inductee in 1961. The Jimmie Rodgers Memorial Museum opened in Meridian in 1976 and later moved from Highland Park to 22nd Avenue.
Today the museum shows Rodgers's original guitar and other memorabilia of his life and career and railroad equipment from the steam era. Tours are by appointment during the week. The Jimmie Rodgers Foundation also runs the Jimmie Rodgers Music Festival, which began in 1953 as Jimmie Rodgers' Day.
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