Description

Here is the first book to explore the legacy of Jimmie Rodgers, offering a lively look at Rodgers’ career, tracing his rise from working-class obscurity to the pinnacle of renown. As Mazor shows, Rodgers brought emotional clarity and a unique sense of narrative drama to every song he performed. But more than anything else, Mazor suggests, it was Rodgers’ shape-shifting ability to assume many public personas that connected him to a broad public and set the stage for the stars who followed.

CONTENTS

Table of Contents
Introduction: Meeting Jimmie Rodgers HalfWay
1. The Man Who Walked Into Southern Show Business
2. Close to the Ground: The Singing Brakeman
3. America’s Blue Yodeler No. 1: This White Guy Sings Blues, Too
4. America’s Blue Yodeler No. 2: Instigator of Blue Yodelmania
5. International Multimedia Star
6. Doomed Singer-Songwriter with Guitar
7. Aftermath: The Late, Great Jimmie Rodgers
8. South by Southwest: An Easterner in a Cowboy Hat
9. Back East: The Hillbilly Echo, 1933-1947
10. Some Sort of Folksinger?
11. The Father of Country Music
12. Rough and Rowdy Ways: To the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
13. Sentiments in Context: The Return of Vaudeville Jimmie
14. High-Powered Mamas: Women & the Music of Jimmie
15. Down the Old Road to Home
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Credits
Index