1) Jimmi… Read Full Bio ↴There is more than one artist by the name 'Jimmie Rodgers'.
1) Jimmie Rodgers (James Charles Rodgers, September 8, 1897 – May 26, 1933) was an American country singer in the early 20th century, known most widely for his rhythmic yodeling. Among the first country music superstars and pioneers, Rodgers was also known as "The Singing Brakeman", "The Blue Yodeler", and "The Father of Country Music". The Bristol sessions are considered the "Big Bang" of modern country music. They were held in 1927 in Bristol, Tennessee by Victor Talking Machine Company company producer Ralph Peer. They marked the commercial debut of Jimmie Rodgers.
Rodgers' traditional birthplace is usually given as Meridian, Mississippi; however, in documents signed by Rodgers later in life, his birthplace was listed as Geiger, Alabama, the home of his paternal grandparents. Historians who have researched the circumstances of that document, however, including Nolan Porterfield and Barry Mazor, continue to identify Pine Springs, Mississippi, just north of Meridian, as his genuine birthplace. Rodgers' mother died when he was about six or seven years old, and Rodgers, the youngest of three sons, spent the next few years living with various relatives in southeast Mississippi and southwest Alabama, near Geiger. In the 1900 Census for Daleville, Lauderdale County, Mississippi, Jimmie's mother, Eliza [Bozeman] Rodgers, was listed as already having had seven children, with four of them still living at that date. Jimmie ["James" in the Census] was next to the youngest at that time, and was probably born sixth of the total of seven children. He eventually returned home to live with his father, Aaron Rodgers, a Maintenance-of-Way foreman on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, who had settled with a new wife in Meridian.
Rodgers' affinity for entertaining came at an early age, and the lure of the road was irresistible to him. By age 13, he had twice organized and begun traveling shows, only to be brought home by his father. His father found Rodgers his first job working on the railroad as a water boy. Here he was further taught to pick and strum by rail workers and hobos. As a water boy, he would have been exposed to the work chants of the African American railroad workers known as gandy dancers. A few years later, he became a brakeman on the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad, a position formerly secured by his oldest brother, Walter, a conductor on the line running between Meridian and New Orleans.
In 1924 at age 27, Rodgers contracted tuberculosis. The disease temporarily ended his railroad career, but at the same time gave him the chance to get back to the entertainment industry. He organized a traveling road show and performed across the Southeastern United States until, once again, he was forced home after a cyclone destroyed his tent. He returned to railroad work as a brakeman in Miami, Florida, but eventually his illness cost him his job. He relocated to Tucson, Arizona and was employed as a switchman by the Southern Pacific Railroad. He kept the job for less than a year, and the Rodgers family (which by then included wife Carrie and daughter Anita) settled back in Meridian in early 1927.
Rodgers decided to travel to Asheville, North Carolina, later that same year. On April 18, at 9:30 p.m., Jimmie, and Otis Kuykendall performed for the first time on WWNC, Asheville’s first radio station. A few months later Rodgers recruited a group from Bristol, Tennessee called the Tenneva Ramblers and secured a weekly slot on the station listed as "The Jimmie Rodgers Entertainers."
In late July 1927, Rodgers' bandmates learned that Ralph Peer, a representative of the Victor Talking Machine Company, was coming to Bristol to hold an audition for local musicians. Rodgers and the group arrived in Bristol on August 3, 1927, and auditioned for Peer in an empty warehouse. Peer agreed to record them the next day. That night, as the band discussed how they would be billed on the record, an argument ensued, the band broke up, and Rodgers arrived at the recording session the next morning alone. However, in a videotaped interview, Claude Grant of the Tenneva Ramblers gave a totally different reason for the band's breakup. Rodgers had taken some guitars on consignment. He sold them but did not pay back the music stores which supplied the guitars. Grant said that the band broke up because they did not agree with that. On Wednesday, August 4, 1927 Jimmie Rodgers completed his first session for Victor. It lasted from 2:00 p.m. to 4:20 p.m. and yielded two songs: "The Soldier's Sweetheart" and "Sleep, Baby, Sleep". For the test recordings, Rodgers received $100.
The recordings were released on October 7 earning modest success. In November, Rodgers, determined more than ever to make it in entertainment, headed to New York City in an effort to arrange another session with Peer. Peer agreed to record him again, and the two met in Philadelphia before traveling to Camden, New Jersey, to the Victor studios. Four songs made it out of this session, including "Blue Yodel", better known as "T for Texas". In the next two years, this recording sold nearly half a million copies, rocketing Rodgers into stardom. After this, he got to determine when Peer and Victor would record him, and he sold out shows whenever and wherever he played.
Over the next few years, Rodgers was very busy. He did a movie short for Columbia Pictures, The Singing Brakeman (this is available on the DVD and VHS compilation "Times Ain't Like They Used To Be: Early Rural & Popular Music From Rare Original Film Masters 1928-35" and on YouTube), and made various recordings across the country. He toured with humorist Will Rogers as part of a Red Cross tour across the Midwest. On July 16, 1930, he recorded "Blue Yodel No. 9" with Louis Armstrong on trumpet and his wife Lil Hardin Armstrong on piano.
A song written by Clayton McMichen and recorded as “Prohibition Has Done Me Wrong” was not issued, possibly because of copyright conflicts with Columbia. According to Juanita McMichen Lynch, Peer thought it was "too controversial for the times." The master was put aside and then accidentally lost.
Rodgers' next-to-last recordings were made in August 1932 in Camden, and it was clear that the tuberculosis was getting the better of him. He had given up touring by that time, but did have a weekly radio show in San Antonio, Texas, where he had relocated when "T for Texas" became a hit. Earnings from his recordings enabled Rodgers to build a large house for his family in Kerrville, Texas, a location chosen partly for health reasons. But it was not in Rodgers' make-up to stay still, and his constant touring and recording schedule only hurt his chances of recovering from TB.
With the country in the grip of the Depression, the practice of making field recordings was quickly fading, so in May 1933, Rodgers traveled again to New York City for a group of sessions beginning May 17, 1933. He started these sessions recording alone and completed four songs on the first day. When he returned to the studio after a day's rest, he had to record sitting down and soon retired to his hotel in hopes of regaining enough energy to finish the songs he had been rehearsing. The recording engineer hired two session musicians to help Rodgers when he came back to the studio a few days later. Together they recorded a few songs, including "Mississippi Delta Blues". For his last song of the session, however, Jimmie chose to perform alone, and as a matching bookend to his career, recorded "Years Ago" by himself.
During his last recording session in New York City on May 24, 1933, after years of fighting the tuberculosis, Rodgers was so weakened that he needed to rest on a cot between songs. Jimmie Rodgers died two days later on May 26, 1933 from a pulmonary hemorrhage while staying at the Taft Hotel; he was only 35 years old.
When the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum was established in 1961, Rodgers was one of the first three (the others were music publisher and songwriter Fred Rose and singer-songwriter Hank Williams) to be inducted. Rodgers was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 and, as an early influence, to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. "Blue Yodel No. 9" was selected as one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. Rodgers was ranked No. 33 on CMT's 40 Greatest Men of Country Music in 2003.
Since 1953, Meridian's Jimmie Rodgers Memorial Festival has been held annually during May to honor the anniversary of Rodgers' death. The first festival was on May 26, 1953.
Both Gene Autry and future Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis (author of "You Are My Sunshine") began their careers as Jimmie Rodgers copyists, and Merle Haggard, Hank Snow, and Lefty Frizzell later did tribute albums. In 1997 Bob Dylan put together a tribute compilation of major artists covering Rodgers' songs, "The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers, A Tribute" (Sony – ASIN: B000002BLD). The artists included Bono, Alison Krauss & Union Station, Jerry Garcia, Dickey Betts, Dwight Yoakam, Aaron Neville, John Mellencamp, Willie Nelson and others. Dylan had earlier once remarked, "The songs were different than the norm. They had more of an individual nature and an elevated conscience... I was drawn to their power."
In 1969, country singer Merle Haggard released Same Train, A Different Time: Merle Haggard Sings The Great Songs Of Jimmie Rodgers. Haggard also covered "No Hard Times" and "T.B. Blues" on his best-selling live albums "Okie From Muskogee" (1969) and "Fightin' Side of Me" (1970). "Blue Yodel No. 1 (T for Texas)" was covered by Lynyrd Skynyrd (sometimes announced as "(Gimme A) T For Texas (T For Tennessee)" later on) on their live album One More from the Road. Ronnie has also been quoted from a July 13, 1977 concert intermission in Asbury Park, New Jersey as saying that they've "always been interested in old country music" like Jimmie Rodgers and Merle Haggard before launching into playing "T For Texas".[10] Lynyrd Skynyrd has also 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") Tompall Glaser has also covered a version that was included on country music's first million-selling album, Wanted! The Outlaws.
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 was designed by Jim Sharpe (who did several others in this series), who depicted him with brakeman's outfit and guitar, giving his "two thumbs up", along with a locomotive in silhouette in the background.
Rodgers' legacy and influence is not limited to country music. The 2009 book "Meeting Jimmie Rodgers: How America's Original Roots Music Hero Changed the Pop Sounds of a Century" tracks Rodgers influence through a broad range of musical genres, internationally. He was influential to Ozark poet Frank Stanford, who composed a series of "blue yodel" poems, and a number of later blues artists. Rodgers was one of the biggest stars of American music between 1927 and 1933, arguably doing more to popularize blues than any other performer of his time.[8] Rodgers influenced many later blues artists, among them Muddy Waters, Big Bill Broonzy, and Chester Arthur Burnett, better known as Howlin' Wolf. Jimmie Rodgers was Wolf's childhood idol. 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."
Rodgers' influence can also be heard in artists including Tommy Johnson, the Mississippi Sheiks, and Mississippi John Hurt, whose "Let the Mermaids Flirt With Me" is based on Rodgers’ hit "Waiting On A Train". Elvis Presley has also been quoted as mentioning Jimmie Rodgers as an important influence and stating that he was a big fan. Jerry Lee Lewis listed Rodgers as a major stylist and covered many of his songs. Moon Mullican, Tommy Duncan and many other western swing singers also were influenced by him. Gene Autry's earlier material largely copied Rodgers' blues records.
The 1982 film, Honkytonk Man, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood was loosely based on Rodgers' life.
In "Cleaning Windows," Van Morrison sings about listening to Rodgers, but this is more likely to refer to Jimmy Rogers, the blues singer as Morrison is singing about other blues singers in the same song, and does not mention any other Country and Western singers.
In the book, Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music, the song "T.B. Blues" is presented as one the first truly autobiographical songs.
On May 28, 2010, Slim Bryant, the last surviving singer to have made a recording with Rodgers, died at the age of 101. They recorded Bryant's song "Mother, the Queen of My Heart" in 1932. The Union, a collaborative album between Elton John and Leon Russell, featured a song entitled "Jimmie Rodgers' Dream", which was a tribute to Rodgers.
In May 2010, a second marker, on the Mississippi Country Music Trail, was erected near Rodgers' gravesite, marking his role as The Father of Country Music.
In 2013, Rodgers was posthumously inducted to the Blues Hall of Fame.
2) James Frederick "Jimmie" Rodgers is also an American pop/rock & roll singer, incidentally born September 18, 1933 (year of death of the country musician above) in Camas, Washington, United States. He had number of hits in the 1950's, including versions of "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine", "Honeycomb","Oh Oh I'm Fallin' In Love Again", Woman from Liberia" and, particularly in the UK "English Country Garden".
Rodgers was taught music by his mother, learned to play the piano and guitar, and joined a band called "The Melodies" started by violinist Phil Clark, while he served in the United States Air Force in Korea.
Child Of Clay
Jimmie Rodgers Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Jimmie Rodgers
Into the darkness he was sent by parents'
Who were ignorant hm, hm
Tied down to his mother's strings
Unable to be anything hm, hm
Puzzled by the things he hears
Ain't got the time to quench a thirst
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Once he was a child, a beautiful child
A child of clay shaped and molded
Into what he is today
But who is to blame for this child of clay
Going out into the street at night
The answers he may meet hm hm
With sick and twisted minds
He shares the searching questions
His heart bears hm hm
And from the dregs
The answers find their way into his supple mind
In time the planted seeds will grow
Into a twisted vine below
No, no, no, no, no, no, no,
No, no, no, no, no, no, no,
And now his aimless days begin
To drift into sordid sin hm, hm
And soon his dislike turns to hate
As the stamp of life seals his fate hm, hm
And so the night conceals his name
And the days sleep off his shame
Deprived of love and wrought by fear
A feeling that the end is near
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
No, no, no, no, no, no, no,
The song “Child of Clay” by Jimmie Rodgers describes the struggles of a person who was shaped by the circumstances of their upbringing. The first stanza highlights the role of parents in shaping their child’s personality. The child was sent into darkness by ignorant parents who were too tied down by societal standards to give their child the nurture and love they needed. The child grows up in confusion and wonders about the world around them, but their father prioritizes work over spending quality time with their child.
The second stanza describes the child's journey to find answers outside of their family. The child goes into the street and meets people with "sick and twisted minds." They discuss their searching questions and find answers that shape their perspective. The child becomes more and more disillusioned as time passes by and their thoughts become more twisted. They become a person filled with hate, which ultimately leads to sordid sin. The child becomes deprived of love and wrought by fear.
Overall, the song speaks to the role of nurturing in forming a person's character. It highlights how a lack of love, attention, and support can lead to a distorted perspective on life, ultimately shaping the person into something different than what they could have been.
Line by Line Meaning
Child of clay
This song is about a person who is molded and shaped by their environment, unable to escape their circumstances.
Into the darkness he was sent by parents',
The person in the song was sent into a negative environment by their parents, who were not aware of the harm that it may cause.
Who were ignorant hm, hm
The parents did not realize the impact of their actions and how the environment may have affected their child.
Tied down to his mother's strings,
The person in the song was limited by their relationship with their mother and unable to be themselves.
Unable to be anything hm, hm
Due to their circumstances, the person in the song felt trapped and unable to reach their potential.
Puzzled by the things he hears
The person in the song was confused by the negative things they heard from their environment and did not understand why they were happening.
The father thinking work comes first
The father in the song prioritized work over family and was not present in their child's life.
Ain't got the time to quench a thirst
The father did not have time to satisfy the emotional needs of their child.
Once he was a child, a beautiful child
The person in the song used to have potential and be innocent, but their environment changed them.
A child of clay shaped and molded
The person in the song was heavily influenced and changed by their environment, like a piece of clay that can be shaped.
Into what he is today
The person in the song is who they are today due to the impact of their environment on them as a child.
But who is to blame for this child of clay
The song asks who is responsible for the negative impact of one's environment on them as a child.
Going out into the street at night
The person in the song seeks answers to their questions outside of their usual surroundings.
The answers he may meet hm hm
The person in the song may find answers to their questions when they look in different places than they are used to.
With sick and twisted minds
The people the person encounters are not positive influences and have a bad mindset.
He shares the searching questions
The person in the song shares their questions and concerns with the people they meet outside of their normal surroundings.
His heart bears hm hm
The person in the song is carrying some emotional burden in their heart.
And from the dregs
The person in the song encounters people who are at the bottom of society and living difficult lives.
The answers find their way into his supple mind
The answers the person in the song receives infiltrate their thoughts and emotions.
In time the planted seeds will grow
The ideas that the person in the song is exposed to will develop more over time.
Into a twisted vine below
The ideas the person in the song is exposed to will grow into a negative influence on their life.
And now his aimless days begin
The person in the song starts to lose direction and purpose in their life.
To drift into sordid sin hm, hm
The person in the song starts engaging in immoral or unethical behavior due to the negative influences in their life.
And soon his dislike turns to hate
The person in the song starts feeling more strongly negative emotions towards their environment and the people in it.
As the stamp of life seals his fate hm, hm
The person in the song cannot escape their circumstances and the negative impact their environment had on them.
And so the night conceals his name
The person in the song continues to hide or feel ashamed about their identity and their actions.
And the days sleep off his shame
The person in the song uses distractions in order to avoid the shame or negative feelings they are experiencing.
Deprived of love and wrought by fear
The person in the song did not receive love or support in their upbringing, leading to fear and uncertainty in their life.
A feeling that the end is near
The person in the song feels like their life may be coming to an end soon or that they are on a negative path.
Contributed by Gianna Y. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
@deniseleveille8134
Not just answers but a hug , a warm look , inviting arms and so much more . Childhood is such a small amount of times but yet it is our springboard into the rest of our life .
@helenmarshall7785
Always loved Jimmie Rodgers songs especially, The World I Used To Know, Someplace Green, Secretly, Kisses Sweeter Than Wine & Honeycomb. I'm not sure I've heard this before but it was great to hear it. His voice is distinctive and I still play his songs. Thanks for posting.
@djbof
As a young Gay teenager I heard this song and could relate to the words so much. It just fit in to the time back then for me. Some may think I read more into it then I should have, however it really fit in to those days in the 60`s when some of us were going from being a child to an adult and realizing we had no choice because we were a Child Of Clay, shaped and molded into what we were today.
@CaballeroIdem
bonsoir merci beaucoup pour cette magnifique vidéo et pour ce beau partage j'adore amitié
@TheTennisTitan
Such a meaningful song in this day and age of great parental neglect
@Henry09
Just heard this song on Satellite Radio 60's station this weekend, loved it & played again this evening on my phone. I am sure I heard it before however I can't remember. I was in the Army when it was released.
@jeanniepryor1378
A Message all Parents should take to heart!! setting good family examples,enjoying each other, is a guard against the troubling times in which we all live!!!
@bundiniy
Just heard this for the first time this weekend on the 60s Satellite Survey on Sirius/XM.
@ajamesmen9941
What a beautiful song,i remember hearing it many years ago,and it almost makes me cry..very compassionate.!!
@robertharrison2.055
very good tune ''