Jimmie Rodgers

T for Texas, T for Tennessee

T for Texas, T for Tennessee

T for Thelma
That gal that made a wreck out of me

(Yodels)

I'm gonna buy me a pistol just as long as I'm tall

I'm gonna buy me a pistol just as long as I'm tall

I'm gonna shoot poor Thelma
Just to see her jump and fall

(Yodels)

From his "Blue Yodel No. 1."

Jimmie "The Singing Brakeman" Rodgers -- the first country-music superstar -- was born on this date in 1897 near Meridien, Mississippi.  

Rodgers recorded "Blue Yodel No. 1" in 1927.  According to one historian, the song became "a national phenomenon and generated an excitement and record-buying frenzy that no one could have predicted."  Nearly half a million copies of the record were sold over the next two years.

Rodgers was already suffering from tuberculosis when "Blue Yodel No. 1" became a hit.  He died of a lung hemorrhage in 1933 at the Taft Hotel in New York City, only two days after his final recording session.  He was 35 years old.

(The summer after I graduated from college, I taped a version of this song for my girlfriend Rhonda -- "R for Rhode Island, R for Arkansas -- R for Rhonda," etc.)