From KUTX:
On Nov. 3, 1961, the Country Music Hall of Fame inducted its first class, and singer Jimmie Rodgers was at the front of it, alongside Hank Williams and Fred Rose.
Jimmie Rodgers, widely known as the “Father of Country Music,” made sense as the first inductee. He was born in Meridian, Miss., the son of a railroad foreman, and Rodgers himself grew up working the rails. He rambled far and wide across the South, picking up blues and country influences along the way.
After contracting tuberculosis in 1924, Rodgers dedicated his full energy to making music and settled in Asheville, NC, where he performed regularly on radio station WWNC.
In 1927, Rodgers traveled to Bristol, Tenn., to make his first recordings in what is often called the “Big Bang” of country music. His style of “blue yodels”— first introduced in a song that began with the lyric “T for Texas, T for Tennessee”—launched Rodgers to stardom, the first country artist with a sustained, national crossover audience.
So why is this a Texas story, apart from that Texas lyric? Well, once he became a star, in 1929 Rodgers relocated to Kerrville, building a dream home he dubbed “Yodeler’s Paradise.”
His doctors had advised the Texas Hill Country’s salutary climate as Rodgers continued to struggle with tuberculosis, and he based the rest of his life and career in the Lone Star State. He even began to adopt a cowboy stage persona alongside his traditional railway worker’s image.
Rodgers’ artistic success continued apace, but his health declined, forcing a move to San Antonio in his final months. He passed in 1933, but not before establishing the image of the outlaw rambler with a train song at the ready, cementing the influence of African American blues in early country, and validating Texas’s place in the early country music firmament.
