Radio Recorders Studios 7000 Santa Monica Boulevard Los
Angeles, July 16, 1930.
"Well
today is a big day for me and no mistake. I got another record session for
Mister Ralph Peer of the Victor Talking Record Company. This is my sixty third
side for the company and I think it’s gonna be kinda’ special for me.
I guess you could say I bin’ kinda’ lucky. I was born in 1897 in Geiger Alabama, didn’t have much in the way of schoolin’ and ended up a brakeman for the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad. In 1927 I got tuberculosis; which meant I had to quit that job. I’d always sung and fooled around on the geetar and in December I heard Victor were looking for talent and the auditions were in Bristol Tennessee where I was livin’ at the time. Well what do you know? Mister Peer signed me up to the Victor Talking Record Company.
We’re at the start of the
Great Depression and almost from the first cut I’m selling a million records on
most every release at a cool 75 cents apiece. Jimmie Rodgers the Singing
Brakeman sure got an even break huh? I guess I’ve really hit that old jackpot.
Here we are one
hot July afternoon at Radio Recorders in LA and Mister Peer has just introduced
me to my new band for the session and some band it is and no mistake. I got
Mister and Mrs. Louis Armstrong on trumpet and piano. The great Satchelmouth
and his lovely wife Lil, they sure are my kind of people.
Only thing is, I feel a sorta’ bashful about my end
of the deal. I’m just a hick from the sticks, even with my millions of sales. I
ain’t much on the geetar, and my timing is a kinda’ wayward, but I guess I sure
do sound like myself. Guess that’s why the folks like me.
Then over by the piano we got Mister Louis
Armstrong the greatest jazzman of all time and the inventor of scat singing.
The creator of the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, West End Blues, Cornet Chop
Suey, Weatherbird and Stardust, to name just a few! He
sure can blow that horn – he’ll charm the birds outa’ the trees and then make
the walls come tumblin’ down!
Anyways Lil asked me to play geetar, to help her
out on the rhythm side. I said sorry ma’am; the old axe gotta stay in its case.
She looked a little sad but I weren’t gonna play no geetar with the one and
only Satchelmouth in the room. I surely know when I’m outclassed.
We got some sort of balance between my croakin’ and
hollerin’ and Louis’ trumpet and Lil’s piano after a lot of trial and error.
Lil said she’d give me an eight bar intro. She started playing and then I
started singing. They both kind of looked at me funny at that and that made me
nervous so I stopped singing - seems like I’d come in two bars early.
Well the rehearsal went on and on and I kept
screwing up the timing.
I’m kinda’ famous for my yodeling but I weren’t
doin’ it in the right place or the right length and the song just kept falling
apart. Mister Peer had been listening in the control room and he came out and
said Lil can’t you just follow Jimmie? He just does what he feels, when he
feels it and I said yeah, I ain’t been to no music college. Anyways we got some
sort of a routine organised. We kept the six bar intro, verse, yodel, verse,
yodel, trumpet solo, verse, yodel, and finish. Lil nailed down the rhythm and
chased me round the verses.
Louis, well what can you say? He made the whole
darn record. The man is a stone genius. We got it down cold third take. Then I
started coughing."
Jimmie Rogers died in 1933 at the age of 36 of a
pulmonary hemorrhage induced by overwork and chronic tuberculosis. He is
considered to be the father of Country music. In his six-year career he sold
over ten million records.
In all there are twelve Blue Yodels.
Gerry Richardson
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