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  • The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers: A Legacy in Country Music
  • Gary R. Boye
The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers: A Legacy in Country Music. By Jocelyn R. Neal. (Profiles in Popular Music.) Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009. [xviii, 318 p. ISBN 9780253353153 (hardcover), $55; ISBN 9780253220820 (paperback), $21.95.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, discography, index.

I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, "denigrate" means "to put down."

—Bob Newhart

Whether this quotation satirizes country music fans or anti-country music snobs, or both, it points out a significant problem faced by the modern country music scholar: the tension between an academic world that often disparages or ignores the music and an industry and fan base with a deep distrust of any academic attempt aimed at penetrating its boundaries. Most of the existing literature about country music ranges rather narrowly from hagiographic biographies to shallow celebrations of "stars" and "hit" records. There are, of course, notable exceptions and fine examples of scholarly writing by Charles Wolfe, Nolan Porterfield, Bill Malone, and others, but even here the work lacks penetrating analyses of any real musical substance. Performers or performances are related simply by stating that they sound similar, are influenced by an earlier recording, or combine elements of this and that. There seems to be an underlying assumption that either the music will not bear close analysis or that such analysis is irrelevant. Jocelyn Neal's new book, The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers: A Legacy in Country Music, adds a significantly different perspective to country music studies. It will inspire and encourage some, it may bewilder others, and it may be rejected out of hand by those who see it merely as another academic attempt to explain the unexplainable. But taken on its own terms, it is an enlightening and fascinating look not at the well-trodden path of the life of Jimmie Rodgers (1897–1933), but at how his songs have been used and altered in the decades since his death.

When Rodgers died of tuberculosis in 1933, there were no headlines proclaiming that the "Father of Country Music" had [End Page 768] passed. In fact, there were relatively few notices about his death in the contemporary press at all and even the term "Country Music" would have had little meaning at the time. Rodgers' paternal role came only after the fact, as performers began at first to emulate and later to innovate based on the various threads of his music, including central themes such as trains, cowboys, drifters, and hobos. Perhaps the key element that Rodgers contributed to country music was the idea of the singer/songwriter as someone who had lived his songs; a personal approach where the performer, lyricist, and composer meld into one. Rodgers seems to sing of railways he has travelled, canyons he has ridden through on horseback, women who have wronged him—often in railroad brakeman or cowboy stage costumes. The latter remains the primary signifier for country performers today, however much their music (and personal life) may veer away from a rural Western existence. The important fact in all of this becomes not so much what Jimmie Rodgers did in his life to become the Father of Country Music, but how his music became part of the core of what it meant to be a country performer or, even more tellingly, a country music fan. It is to these last points that Neal's book makes its most significant contributions.

Contrary to the title, not all of Rodgers' songs are discussed, but only three very important ones: "Muleskinner Blues," "In the Jailhouse Now," and "T for Texas." That many of these songs were collected and patched together from existing sources will come as no surprise to scholars in the field, whereas fans may feel uncomfortable learning that the "Jimmie Rodgers song" they grew up hearing or singing originated in earlier recorded or, most shockingly, print sources (sheet music), as Neal points out in her discussion of "In the Jailhouse Now" (pp. 108–93). She then traces the cover versions of these songs to show how...

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