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
5: International Multimedia Star
6: Doomed Singer-Songwriter with Guitar
7: The Late, Great Jimmie Rodgers
8: South by Southwest: An Easterner in a Cowboy Hat
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 Rodgers
15: Down the Old Road to Home

About the Author

Barry Mazor has been writing about American music since the 1970s. A long-time senior editor for the roots and pop music magazine and website No Depression, he writes frequently on country and pop music for The Wall Street Journal. Recent winner of the Charlie Lamb Award for Excellence in Country Music Journalism. He lives in Nashville, TN.

Reviews

"The story of [Rodgers'] enormous influence, bursting with names of stars, stalwarts, and one-hit wonders, and featuring discographical endnotes for most chapters, is the immensely piquant and satisfying meat of one of the most intelligent, fascinating, and cogent pop-music histories ever."--BookList (Starred Review)
"Nashville writer Mazor has fashioned a superb book, not only celebrating Rodgers' life, but illustrating the manner in which the man's wares have influenced American popular music for over 80 years.. Mazor's book does much in keeping the legend alive."--MOJO Magazine(5-star review)
"Excellent, highly readable." -- Douglas Brinkley
"A book I heartily recommend." -C. Eric Banister, Music Tomes
"Barry Mazor's Meeting Jimmie Rodgers is a superb book, superbly written, and indispensable to anyone who wants to understand the legacy of Jimmie Rodgers and why his music has endured for over eighty years."--Nolan Porterfield, Author of Jimmie Rodgers: The Life and Times of America's Blue Yodeler
"A shrewd, hard-headed look at the great Mississippi singer's influence on country, rock and roll and folk music. Mazor adeptly combines solid research, musical savvy and a stubborn refusal to accept received wisdom about popular music that Jimmy Rodgers helped invent." --American Songwriter
"Until I read this book, I had assumed that the last word had been written on Jimmie Rodgers, the great country blues musician. But, buoyed by Barry Mazor's keen insights, innovative research, and felicitous writing style, I have become aware of new dimensions of the Singing Brakeman's influence on American popular music. While Rodgers drew upon a wide array of styles and genres to build his own career, it has been his legacy to shape the sounds and styles of
generations of musicians, both in and outside of country music, right on up to our own time."-Bill C. Malone
"Barry Mazor's expertly researched and elegantly written book... is a valid history of Rodgers success...Meeting Jimmie Rodgers finds his influence in nearly every American music idiom, and does so with critical acumen and brilliant flashes of insight." --The Shepherd Express
"If you write about music, you should read this book. If you are a fan of American music, you should read this book."--Nashville Scene
"A great new book... Barry lets us see anew a musician/artist/entertainer/man who many perhaps thought we'd already seen more than enough of... Barry liberates Rodgers from dehumanizing single-vision tropes like "authenticity," arguing instead for a worldview more bittersweet and fine, more like life."--Living In Stereo
"This is a fine addition to the literature on Rodgers. This carefully researched, well-written book provides something special."--Choice
"Extremely well-researched..."--Dirty Linen
"Revelatory."--Tuscaloosa News
"Barry Mazor has done a superb research job on this music legend."--Steve Ramm, In the Groove
"Full of interviews and documentation, this volume crosses musical borders just as Rodgers did in his recordings."--In The Groove
"Mazor is a lively writer (I read most of this book in one sitting) as he engagingly traces the rise of the Mississippi-born and medicine show-bred Rodgers from working-class obscurity to famed songsmith while exploring the legacy that his tones, tunes and themes have left on popular music of a variety of genres..."--Gary von Tersch, Sing Out!
"Mazor challenges the rigid distinctions between folk and popular music, debunking scholarly claims of folk music's aesthetic purity." --Oxford American