| It is no exaggeration to describe Jimmie Rodgers as "legendary," for even in his own lifetime he had been elevated to something of a folk-hero, and the cultural deification of America's Blue Yodeler has continued over the years, undiminished by time or true revelation. |
| Jimmie Rodgers's life has been particularly susceptible to romanticizing, marked as it was by his humble origins, sudden success, fame and wealth, his early, tragic deathall the things which appeal to our sense of drama and destiny, the stuff out of which we spin our popular gods and goddesses, our Bixes, our Marilyns, our Scotts and Zeldas, our James Deans and Hank Williamses. But while the lives of the great and famous are invariably subject to distortion, rarely has the truth suffered more from our natural compulsion to mythologize our heroes than in the case of James Charles Rodgers, The Singing Brakeman, America's Blue Yodeler, pride of Meridian, Mississippi, "father" of country music. |
| There are many reasons for the fables and fabrications. One was Jimmie himself; in his own genial, harmless way, he originated or let stand endless stories about his life and career, and it mattered little to him if they depicted him as saint or sinner, so long as they caught the flavor of his own self-image and added to his notoriety. Then, too, his appeal was largely to an audience whose literary tradition was oral rather than written, people who told stories rather than read them. Their respect for what may be called "literature," their deep and abiding involvement with the annals of human experience, was no less great than that of a sophisticated city audience, but it took different forms, with different, often paradoxical consequences. It meant, for one thing, that while they cherished the most extravagant stories and rumors about their idols, they were at the same time uneasy with, if not downright distrustful of, books; of anything which "published" the story or event, made it public, fixed it with the weight of authority or scholarship. |
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