By Matt Chaney, for ChaneysBlog.com<\/p>\n
Posted Thursday, August 15, 2019<\/p>\n
Copyright\u00a0\u00a92019 for original content and historical arrangement by Matthew L. Chaney, Four Walls Publishing<\/em><\/p>\n Issues confronted star musician Jimmie Rodgers at San Antonio in late 1932.<\/p>\n Rodgers, 35, someday known as Father of Country Music, faced waning record sales, property loss, marital discord and lethal disease. The yodeling string player was forced to hock his mansion and move wife and child into an apartment. Likewise he was losing to tuberculosis, often bedridden with breathing difficulty, bloody mucus and body pain.<\/p>\n Rodgers took off from Texas<\/a> by Cadillac, anyway, pursuing cash work, show dates of any sort amidst Depression economy. He was bound for the Mississippi River Valley at behest of old friend Billy Terrell, for an interstate music tour to be his last.<\/p>\n That much we’ve known of James Charles Rodgers, retrospectively, and now additional details emerge through electronic search of historic newspapers in Missouri, Mississippi and Alabama.<\/p>\n Advertisements, reports and witness accounts of Jimmie Rodgers in 1932 \u2014long buried within miles of microfilm\u2014are becoming readily retrievable as e-search opens old news-pages. Advent of cyber search, in fact, already spurs revisions in so-called history,\u00a0edits<\/a> and corrections<\/a>, for topics like American football.<\/p>\n Recently uncovered in music are portions of Rodgers\u2019 farewell loop through western Mississippi, southeast Missouri and northeast Arkansas. Imagery is vivid when considering Rodgers in the delta, given new information to complement the biographical\u00a0Jimmy Rodgers: The Life and Times of America\u2019s Blue Yodeler\u00a0<\/em>[1979], by Nolan Porterfield, a college instructor of mine at Southeast Missouri State.<\/p>\n Early November, 1932, Jimmie and Carrie Rodgers reached his father’s house in Alabama. Aaron W. Rodgers was a railroad man retired at Geiger, his native community just inside the state line. Two decades previous, over in Mississippi, Aaron had secured son Jimmie\u2019s job with the Mobile & Ohio at Meridian. The boy was 14, quitting school to labor around trains and track, and so marked was the art of Jimmy Rodgers. His music and performance oozed railroad culture, ranging from lyrics and visuals to his whistle imitations and a second stage name, The Singing Brakeman<\/a>.<\/p>\n Jimmie and Carrie traveled on to hometown Meridian, where her three married sisters lived in the same block. They drove west from the Mississippi hills, down into the delta from Greenwood to Indianola, where he booked gigs at familiar venues. \u201cJimmie Rodgers has been visiting over his home state between his recording and regular theatre engagements,\u201d reported the Indianola Enterprise<\/em>, cheerily. \u201cJimmie takes his vacation by getting out and playing the dances in the towns among the people he knows and loves.\u201d<\/p>\n In truth Rodgers suffered on that trip, badly as anytime since TB unleashed a lung hemorrhage eight years before. He\u2019d been a hearty young man to that point, standing 5-foot-10 and 165 pounds, but subsequent, recurring\u00a0 illness diminished his frame and fortitude.<\/p>\n Rodgers arrived at southeast Missouri in December 1932, resembling \u201ca walking skeleton\u201d for his first and only performances in the Bootheel. The visit began with ice and snow whipping over the bald, deforested flatland. \u201cA strong north wind was blowing that seemed to drive the cold right into your bones,\u201d recalled Robert E. Legan, writing decades later for the Malden Press-Merit<\/em>.<\/p>\n Legan was 21, clerking in Miller\u2019s Store at Malden on Dec. 10, 1932, a Saturday, when the living legend appeared about noon. \u201cJimmie Rodgers came in, bundled up in an overcoat with a hunter\u2019s cap pulled down over his ears. He was shivering and said he could not get warm,\u201d Legan recounted. \u201cBecause of the weather we were all standing around without very much to do and I think we all helped to wait on Jimmy. We sold him a pair of overshoes, a heavy sweater and a muffler. He put them all on.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBefore he left I told him how much I liked his singing and his songs\u2014especially Waiting For A Train<\/em>. He thanked me and started out. He hesitated a moment and looked out through the glass door at the terrible weather outside. Then he shrugged his shoulders, turned up his coat collar and went out into the cold\u2026 \u201d<\/p>\n Seeing Rodgers go, his splaying legs and bony hips didn’t fill the trousers. \u201cTime was running out,\u201d Porterfield noted of the TB stage. \u201cFor him there was no long-range anything, as he knew all too well.\u201d<\/p>\n Rodgers was in Malden with showman Billy Terrell, veteran Missouri talent and proprietor of popular comedy companies. Terrell once hired Rodgers for the Blue Yodeler\u2019s first tour, straight out of Meridian. At Malden, Rodgers picked guitar and sang during matinee and night shows for Terrell\u00a0under canvas<\/em>, winter elements be damned.<\/p>\n \u201cBilly had a big coal stove on each side of the tent, with the stovepipes going out under the tent flaps,\u201d wrote Legan, who had adored and followed Terrell since boyhood. But Legan also grasped the dire context for famed Jimmie Rodgers, \u201cdown to traveling with a tent show.\u201d<\/p>\n Packed houses savored the entertainment, stirred by Rodgers, renowned for his overriding optimism amidst hard times\u2014embodying the essence of blues theme. \u201cHe could still sing,\u201d Legan recalled in 1978. \u201cHis songs were of a natural melancholy nature and the sight of this emaciated, doleful creature, singing his heart out with his shining eyes, glowing away back in their sockets, just naturally drew compassion from the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI will never forget him or his songs that somehow took hold of the common people.\u201d<\/p>\n The tour of Jimmie Rodgers continued through southeast Missouri and northeast Arkansas. Scheduled performances are now documented at the Malone Theatre in Sikeston [Dec. 15-16, 1932] and the Ritz in Blytheville [Dec. 18-19], per news texts recently retrieved.\u00a0The vintage advertisements and reports don\u2019t mention Terrell, indicating Rodgers booked dates and provided promotional copy himself.<\/p>\n The Sikeston Standard<\/em> reported \u201cthousands of country folks have developed a taste for Jimmie\u2019s particular talent, and his record of \u2018packing \u2019em in\u2019 is well-known wherever he has appeared in theatres outside of the large cities.\u201d And this from the Steele Enterprise<\/em>: \u201cJimmie is that same likeable fellow that he was when he sat high in the [train caboose], strumming the guitar and singing the songs that made him famous on both continents.\u201d<\/p>\n Note that presently only a fraction of the region\u2019s historic news-pages are available for electronic search. Rodgers possibly appeared elsewhere locally, with evidence yet uncovered. Anyone can review newspapers on microfilm for the month of Rodgers\u2019 visit, representing localities like Poplar Bluff, Dexter, Chaffee, Cape Girardeau, Illmo-Fornfelt, Benton, Charleston, New Madrid, Portageville and Kennett in Missouri; Cairo in Illinois; and Blytheville in Arkansas. A host of indexes and microfilm editions are available through The State Historical Society of Missouri, website shsmo.org.<\/p>\n Regarding December 1932 in southeast Missouri, the news-pages available for modern search were published at Malden, Sikeston, Caruthersville, Hayti and Steele. See newspapers.com and maldenmuseum.com for more information.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Jimmie and Carrie Rodgers apparently returned to Texas by outset of 1933, where Porterfield picked up their trail again in his research. That January Rodgers played the Joy Theatre in Dallas then started a tour of Texas towns with showman J. Doug Morgan. \u201cBut Jimmie had ignored the elements and jeopardized his health once too often,\u201d Porterfield observed. \u201cWhile they were playing Lufkin during the second week of February, he collapsed and was rushed to Methodist Hospital in Houston.\u201d<\/p>\n Family members traveled to his side. \u201cLittle, if any, hope is held for the recovery of Jimmie Rodgers,\u201d reported the Chocktaw Plaindealer<\/em> in Mississippi. After a month hospitalized, however, Rodgers rose again from sick bed, seeking work. \u201cMoney did not mean much to him personally\u2026\u201d Porterfield stated, \u201cbut now he was increasingly anxious about those he would leave behind, especially twelve-year-old [daughter] Anita.\u201d<\/p>\n Rodgers scheduled recording sessions in New York for a $3,000 advance at completion. He boarded an ocean liner at Galveston, accompanied by personal nurse, and arrived in Manhattan on May 14. Rodgers cut some 10 songs in studio but his lungs hemorrhaged catastrophically at a hotel. He fell comatose and succumbed in his room on May 26, 1933.<\/p>\n \u201cJimmie Rodgers had not quite literally died alone, but it was very much the same thing,\u201d Porterfield remarked. \u201cTo his family and friends, his death had been imminent for years, yet all of them were far away when the time came.\u201d<\/p>\n Writer and consultant Matt Chaney is compiling companion books on Southern music. Tentative titles are\u00a0<\/em>River Shows, Jazz and Country Music in the Northern Delta: Legends of Song, Dance and Circus;\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Rockabillies in the Missouri Delta. See Chaney’s page\u00a0<\/em>Stories from River Music to Rock in the Northern Delta<\/a>. For more information, including\u00a0<\/em>Chaney\u2019s previous books, visit\u00a0<\/em>www.fourwallspublishing.com<\/a>.\u00a0 Email:<\/em>\u00a0mattchaney@fourwallspublishing.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Select References<\/strong><\/p>\n Do You Suffer From Painful Feet? (1928, March 2). [Advertisement.] Malden Merit<\/em> MO, p. 5.<\/p>\n From Railway Boxcar To Stardom Overnight. (1932, Dec. 15). Steele Enterprise<\/em> MO, p. 3.<\/p>\n Geiger, Panol And Gainesville Voters. (1928, May 2). Our Southern Home<\/em>, Livingston AL, p. 4.<\/p>\n Ice And Cold On Weather Menu. (1932, Dec. 13). Sikeston Standard<\/em> MO, p. 5.<\/p>\n Jimmie Rodgers, \u201cBlue Yodeler,\u201d To Be Stage Attraction Dec. 15-16. (1932, Dec. 9). Sikeston Standard<\/em> MO, p. 1.<\/p>\n Jimmie Rodgers, Famous Singer, Coming. (1932, Nov. 24). Indianola Enterprise<\/em> MS, p. 1.<\/p>\n Jimmie Rodgers, Yodeling Brakeman, Dies in New York. (1933, June 1). Kerrville Mountain Sun<\/em> TX, p. 1.<\/p>\n Legan, R.E. (1978, April 27). Things I Remember About Malden: \u2018Toby\u2019 shows and Jimmy Rodgers. Malden Press-Merit MO<\/em>, p. 74.<\/p>\n Like Your Music “Grand Ole Opry” Style? (1953, April 19). [Advertisement.] Nashville Tennessean<\/em> TN, p. 71.<\/p>\n Little Hope Held For Recovery Of Jimmie Rodgers. (1933, Feb. 24). Chocktaw Plaindealer<\/em>, Ackerman MS, p. 4.<\/p>\n Look Who\u2019s Coming! (1932, Dec. 13). [Advertisement.] Sikeston Standard<\/em> MO, p. 2.<\/p>\n Look Who\u2019s Coming! (1932, Dec. 16). [Advertisement.] Sikeston Standard<\/em> MO, p. 7.<\/p>\n Over The County. (1932, Nov. 9). Our Southern Home<\/em>, Livingston AL, p. 1.<\/p>\n Over The County. (1933, March 1). Our Southern Home<\/em>, Livingston AL, p. 1.<\/p>\n Peterson Purchases Home In Westland. (1933, March 23). Kerrville Mountain Sun<\/em> TX, p. 1.<\/p>\n Porterfield, N. (1979). Jimmie Rodgers: The life and times of America\u2019s Blue Yodeler.<\/em> University of Illinois Press: Urbana and Chicago IL.<\/p>\n Ritz Theatre. (1932, Dec. 15). [Advertisement.] Steele Enterprise<\/em> MO, p. 4.<\/p>\n Skelton, B. (1972, May 23). Meridian\u2019s Jimmie Rodgers father of country music. Jackson Clarion-Ledger<\/em> MS, pp. 27, 30.<\/p>\n Smith, B. [Dir.] (1930). Jimmie Rogers in The Singing Brakeman<\/em>. Columbia Pictures Corporation: Hollywood CA.<\/p>\n Society. (1932, Nov. 28). Greenwood Commonwealth<\/em> MS, p. 3.<\/p>\n Some Relief From Weather. (1932, Dec. 15). Caruthersville Republican<\/em> MO, p. 1.<\/p>\n The Tactless Texan. (1933, June 6). Amarillo Globe-Times<\/em> TX, p. 2.<\/p>\n Worst Ice And Sleet Storm In Years Visits This Area. (1932, Dec. 16). Malden Merit<\/em> MO, p. 8.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Details Surface of Lost Shows in Missouri and Arkansas By Matt Chaney, for ChaneysBlog.com Posted Thursday, August 15, 2019 Copyright\u00a0\u00a92019 for original content and historical arrangement by Matthew L. Chaney, Four Walls Publishing Issues confronted star musician Jimmie Rodgers at San Antonio in late 1932. Rodgers, 35, someday known as Father of Country Music, faced … Continue reading 1932: Final Tour For Jimmie Rodgers, Father Of Country Music<\/span>