Meeting Jimmie Rodgers

How America's Original Roots Music Hero Changed the Pop Sounds of a Century
Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-0-19-989186-3
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 386 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 656 g

In the nearly eight decades since his death at age thirty-five, singer-songwriter Jimmie Rodgers has been an inspiration for numerous top performers--from Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and Hank Williams to Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and Beck. How did this Mississippi-born vaudevillian, a former railroad worker who performed so briefly so long ago, come to be the model for how American roots music stars could become popular heroes? In Meeting Jimmie Rodgers, the first book to explore the legacy of "The Singing Brakeman" from a twenty-first century perspective, Barry Mazor offers a lively look at Rodgers' career, tracing his rise from working-class obscurity to the pinnacle of renown that came with such hits as "Blue Yodel" and "In the Jailhouse Now." As Mazor shows, Rodgers brought emotional clarity and a unique sense of narrative drama to every song he performed, whether tough or sentimental, comic or sad. But more than anything else, Mazor suggests, it was Rodgers' shape-shifting ability to assume many public personas that connected him to such a broad public and set the stage for the stars who followed him.

Zielgruppe

Readers with particular interest in American music (particularly coutnry music, rock and roll, fold and pop), and pop culture and Americana. Rodgers and the artists who have furthered and changed his music are discussed prominently (and in many cases interviewed) in the book--Bob Dylan, Jerry Lee Lewis, Merle Haggard, Bill Monroe, etc.--ranging across these popular genres.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mazor, Barry

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikgattungen Volksmusik
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikgattungen Geistliche Musik, Religiöse Musik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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

Über Autor(innen)

Mazor, Barry
Barry Mazor has been writing about American music since the 1970s. He won the 2010 Belmont Book Award for the Best Book on Country Music for Meeting Jimmie Rodgers.