Blue Yodel # 2 · The Brakeman’s Blues (Yodeling the Blues Away)

Jimmie Rodgers was born in Meridian, Mississippi, in 1897 and worked for years on the railroads, mostly as a brakeman, before tuberculosis, diagnosed in 1924, pushed him toward music. Every record he made was for Victor, starting with the field sessions Ralph Peer held in Bristol, Tennessee. On 4 August 1927, in the Taylor-Christian Hat Factory on State Street, he recorded alone with his guitar, because the Tenneva Ramblers, the band he had brought, had walked out over how the record would be billed. The two sides, “The Soldier’s Sweetheart” and “Sleep, Baby, Sleep,” came out that October. At Victor’s studio in Camden, New Jersey, on 30 November 1927 he recorded “Blue Yodel,” later sold as “Blue Yodel No. 1 (T for Texas),” which sold more than a million copies in his lifetime.

He was back in Camden in February 1928. On the 14th, with Julian Ninde on guitar and Ellsworth Cozzens on banjo, he cut “The Brakeman’s Blues (Yodeling the Blues Away),” and the next day, with Cozzens, “Blue Yodel No. 2 (My Lovin’ Gal Lucille)” and “In the Jailhouse Now.” Victor paired “Blue Yodel No. 2” with “The Brakeman’s Blues” in May 1928. The numbered blue yodels continued to No. 12, and his sister-in-law Elsie McWilliams wrote most of them.

Until 1932, Peer also recorded him on field trips. In Atlanta, in October 1928, a small band with cornet and clarinet backed “Waiting for a Train.” In Dallas, in August 1929, Billy Burkes played guitar and Joe Kaipo steel. In Los Angeles in June and July 1930 he recorded at Hollywood Recording Studios, with Lani McIntire’s Hawaiians on several sides, and on 16 July Louis Armstrong on cornet and Lil Armstrong on piano played on “Blue Yodel No. 9.” “T.B. Blues” was recorded in San Antonio in January 1931. In Louisville that June he made duets with Sara Carter, two sides with the Carter Family, and one with the Louisville Jug Band.

In August 1932 he recorded in Camden with Clayton McMichen on fiddle, Slim Bryant on guitar and Oddie McWinders on banjo. “Whippin’ That Old T.B.” came from the session of 11 August and “No Hard Times” from 15 August, and Victor issued them together in January 1933. His last sessions were at Victor’s studio on East 24th Street in New York, from 17 to 24 May 1933. He recorded sitting in an easy chair, propped up with pillows to reach the microphone. Most of those sides are just his voice and guitar, among them “Blue Yodel No. 12” and “Jimmie Rodgers’ Last Blue Yodel.” He died of tuberculosis in New York on 26 May 1933, two days after the final session. Victor and its Bluebird label kept issuing new sides through the rest of the year, the last being “Fifteen Years Ago Today” in December 1933. In 1961 he was one of the first members elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.