Jimmie Rodgers, ‘The Blue Yodeler,’ is renowned as the father of country music, but his strong ties to the blues have earned him a place in blues history as well. The blues element in Rodgers’ music was evident throughout his short but spectacular recording career from 1927 to 1933 when he cut the classics ‘Blue Yodel (T for Texas),’ ‘In the Jailhouse Now,’ and ‘Waiting for a Train.’ His reworkings of the blues not only helped popularize the music with white audiences but were also performed by many singers from the African American community that produced the blues that inspired Rodgers in the first place. James Charles Rodgers was born on September 8, 1897, in Pine Springs, Mississippi, near Meridian, where the Jimmie Rodgers Memorial Museum was founded in 1976. Growing up in Mississippi and Alabama and spending his young adult years working as a railroad brakeman and traveling musician gave him plenty of opportunities to hear blues performers, and he would later structure more than 30 of his recordings in a blues format, including 13 Blue Yodels. Among the blues artists reported to have known or played with Rodgers, either as guests on his shows or as fellow travelers or workers on the railroad, were Robert Nighthawk, Houston Stackhouse, Hammie Nixon, Rubin Lacy, Ishmon Bracey, and a popular Mississippian whose influential falsetto was sometimes compared to Rodgers’ yodel, Tommy Johnson. Rodgers even recorded with black musicians, including Louis Armstrong, blues guitarist Clifford Gibson and Clifford Hayes’ Louisville Jug Band. Rodgers, one of America’s most beloved entertainers, was featured in a 1929 film short, ‘The Singing Brakeman,’ and sold millions of records. As evidence of his widespread influence and his place in American music history, he is the only artist to be inducted into the halls of fame of country music, songwriters, rock ‘n’ roll, and, now, blues, as well as the Mississippi and Alabama Music Halls of Fame. Rodgers, who spent his last few years in Kerrville, Texas, died in New York City on May 26, 1933, two days after recording ‘Mississippi Delta Blues” at his final session. Rodgers joins the similarly named Jimmy Rogers, a Mississippi-born Chicago bluesman, in the Blues Hall of Fame.