David Ball is on the Bob Dylan tribute album to Jimmie and sings the song "Miss The Mississippi and You"... In addition we plan to cast him in the JimmieRodgersSaga doumentary and he will have a cameo in the Rodgers' Biopic THE MAN THAT STARTED IT ALL...David was part of the great band in the Armadillo days of Austin... The great Uncle Walt's Band.
Slim Bryant, Norm Stephens and Merle Haggard
I spent 7 months in Medellin, Columbia South America... writing the manuScript to be used to write the script for the Jimmie Rodgers Chronicle # I & # II movie. A magic city high in the Andes Mountains. Sidenote: The one and only Hunter S. Thompson created his style of writing in Columbia that would come to be known as Gonzo Journalism. Best Coffee and most beautiful women in the world and Hunter will back me up on it.
A BRIEF PITCH OF THE JIMMIE RODGERS SAGA
The second interview I set up for Merle Haggard, who was helping me with the Rodgers Saga, after seven months of his management team vetting me, in that Merle did not just let anybody film him. It was a historic interview and he was all on board and excited to meet Slim Bryant, who is on the left, and was as excited to meet Haggard. Merle had also recorded one of the songs that he recorded with Jimmie plus Willie Nelson and many others. The song was "Mother, Queen of My Heart." Slim was the only man living at the time that had actually recorded (1932) with Jimmie Rodgers. The session (#32) was in RCA's studio in Camden, New Jersey. Slim and Merle are playing the song in this picture is Norm Stephens, the great guitarist, and lead guitar for Hank Thompson, Lefty Frizzell and was in Merle's band at the time. Merle released the song on his tribute album to Rodgers, "Same Train, A Different Time" that went to Number One on the Billboard Charts and was a two album concept album.
Side note: Les Paul, who I also introduced Merle to, told me that Bryant was the man that inspired him to play the guitar and that Les had gone to recording session where Slim was recording with Jimmie Rodgers. I have an interview with Less with more details.
Like a locomotive,Jimmie Rodgers came into this world with a force that is still strong over one hundred years later. And like the trains that crisscrossed the country, Jimmie Rodgers’ legacy crosses over every aspect of the American music scene. His music echoes in tunes we hear today as his memory is enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Country Music Hall of Fame, where on his plaque it states, “The Man That Started It All.” Known as “The Father of Country Music”, he has garnished the W.C. Handy Blues Award and is in the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Songwriter Hall of Fame. No other entertainer in history can list these accomplishments.
The Jimmie Rodgers Saga will follow the musical trail blazed by this pioneer of the entertainment business. From the Minstrel and Medicine Shows of yesteryear, which traveled the roads by wagon to Bob Dylan’s Tribute to Jimmie Rodgers’ by way of the Internet—Jimmie’s presence is a legacy. In the Dylan liner notes of THE SONGS OF JIMMIE RODGERS: A TRIBUTE, he says, “Jimmie Rodgers of course is one of the guiding lights of the 20th Century whose way with song has always been an inspiration to those of us who have followed the path. A blazing star whose sound was and remains the raw essence of individuality in a sea of conformity, par excellence with no equal”.
Born September 8, 1897, it is a time when Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull traveled with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, and trains, nearing 80 miles an hour began to connect the western territories with the populous eastern cities. Moving faster than the train, the technological inventions of the day such as the phonograph (talking machines), the radio (the wireless), and the big silver screen (flickers and talkies) would not only spur along Jimmie Rodgers’ career, but would give rise to the Entertainment Industry itself. James Charles Rodgers was three years old when the century became nineteen hundred. Three years later his mother would die, and the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.
As the new century began there was only ten miles of pavement in the country, oil was discovered in Texas and the U.S. Steel Corp. was formed. Gibson began to make guitars and the first movie with a plot, “The Great Train Robbery” is released. At 13 years of age Jimmie Rodgers joined a Medicine Show. “Memphis Blues” had just become the first blues song written down and published, and Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Rag Time Band” was the popular tune. We will see how the years Jimmie spent in the south playing music on the railroads, with ex-slaves and hobos effected the course of his music.
The year 1927, would become a big year in the life of Jimmie Rodgers. It'd become the year that he would make his first recording in Bristol Va-Tenn, where Ralph Peer had gone to record some of the new “race music”, also being called “hillbilly music” for Victor. August 4th became a historic day in the history of music in this country when Mr. Rodgers first recorded, two days prior The Carter Family did their first recording. Also, that year we saw sound brought to the movies with the release of "The Jazz Singer."
Soon Jimmie’s “T For Texas” sells over a million copies—a blockbuster even by today's standards. In 1929, Columbia/Victor Gem brings him to Camden, NJ to make a movie, then called a “short”. In 1930, he goes out to Hollywood and records some of his big hits. While there he becomes the first white man to record with a black man, when he records with Louis Armstrong. The 1930’s bring the Great Depression and Jimmie has hit a chord with the common man, even against the odds of times he rises to heights known by no entertainer before him, some say he became the "first superstar."
Jimmie Rodgers’ final years came all to quickly. He spends them in the Texas Hill Country—becoming an honorary Texas Ranger and touring with Will Rogers. The cowboy life in Texas begins to influence his music, and his disease is taking him further away from his stardom. In 1933 this young troubadour passes away at thirty-six.
His legend only grows. We will explore the innovative styles in music that he inspired from Gene Autry to Tanya Tucker, from Earnest Tubb to Jerry Lee Lewis, from Jerry Garcia to Bob Dylan and Merle Haggard and on and on...
The JIMMIE RODGERS SAGA is about a man and his influence, and it is
about a man and his dream, who was riding histories music train...