Jimmie Skinner
Musician
Jimmie Skinner was a country and bluegrass singer-songwriter whose sparse, hard-edged early recordings influenced Johnny Cash and whose “Doin’ My Time” became a bluegrass standard via Flatt & Scruggs. From his Cincinnati base he ran the mail-order Jimmie Skinner Music Center — one of the most influential country and bluegrass record stores of the 1950s and ’60s — while writing the songs that worked their way into the canon.
Assisted by AI.
Spot something off? Help us fix it.
- Born April 27, 1909, in Blue Lick, near Berea, Kentucky; moved with his family to Hamilton, Ohio in his teens and began performing on local radio.
- Recorded distinctive early sides backed mostly by electric mandolinist Ray Lunsford — an unusual sound that bridged country and proto-bluegrass.
- Wrote “Doin’ My Time” (a chain-gang song); Johnny Cash covered it for Sun Records, and Flatt & Scruggs cut it on Mercury — their version became the bluegrass standard.
- Other compositions that entered the country and bluegrass repertoires: “Will You Be Satisfied That Way,” “Don’t Give Your Heart to a Rambler,” “You Don’t Know My Mind.”
- Recorded for Capitol (1950–53), Decca (1953–56), and Mercury (1957–61), where he had his most successful chart run.
- Opened the Jimmie Skinner Music Center in Cincinnati in the early 1950s — a retail and mail-order record store advertised heavily on WCKY-AM. Skinner hosted a one-hour DJ broadcast from the storefront window; the shop became a national clearing house for hard-to-find country and bluegrass records.
- Moved to Nashville in 1974; continued to write and play festivals until his death from a heart attack on October 28, 1979, in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
