CUT TO: Jimmie, Lefty, Merle, and me...

The thread of my story hangin' and rollin' with Haggard was music history. From Emmett Miller to Jimmie Rodgers to Earnest Tubb to Bob Willis to Lefty Frizzell to Ray Price, Les Paul, Johnny Cash, Waylon, Kristofferson, and back to his story.  Merle on the drop of a dime, would rather talk about the old boys he knew and were influenced by than about than himself, the news or the weather.  Yet the circle of the story was Jimmie, Bob, Lefty, to him and he loved to hear any story that I knew about the past.   He loved that I took notes, pictures and that at the drop of a hat get some- thing down on film or picture the show it to him later.  If he was not on tour he would call me to come up to his ranch and let's do some shooting.  Tell me usually get a room in Redding or the 3-wheeler camper was there and could bunk down on the ranch.  These were such special times for me and in my other book I am able to spend much more time telling about these times we had on his ranch...

 

Fate and Destiny had given me this Saga to create by connecting the dots and/or tracks along the evolution of music in America.

Then I started noticing that this Jimmie Rodgers dot kept showing up on the track.  So I started to dig into the Singing Brakeman,

and found a relative unknown story by the masses at large, especially the guys in Hollywood.  For in Hollywood if a big shot or if

two people in the room do not know what you are talking about...you are the stupid one.  For the fast moving young demographic

that most of Hollywood was trying to target it had to be off the hook, sex, girls and guns and violence, preferably in the same movie.

 

Meanwhile I was discovering this incredible man who, was so influential that he showed up when going across names like Gene

Autry, Earnest Tubb, Bob Wills, Hank Snow, Lefty Frizzell, Les Paul, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard,  then from Kenneth

Threadgill to Janis Joplin, Dylan to Kacey Musgraves. and and on and own down the track that Jimmie Rodgers had laid.

 

Slim Bryant, Norm Stephens, Merle Haggard are playing the Bryant penned "Mother Queen of my Heart", that was a hit for Jimmie Rodgers and Merle Haggard, and became one of Merle's favorite Rodgers' songs

Merle was playing in Wheeling West Virginia and I flew there and hired a camera crew to film a interview I set up with Merle and Slim. My saddle pal Dan Sasu Weh Jones directed the historic shoot.

 

Thomas Hoyt Bryant was born December 7, 1908, and died May 29, 2010, known as Slim he died at 102 years old.  Through my

research I had found Slim and got him on the phone.  He was 96 at the time, and was sharp as a tack, funny as hell and very

humble man.  Slim came across my radar in that he was the only man living who had played and/or recorded with Jimmie.  Soon

as I told Merle that I had found him he said,  "Get me too him..."   It took Frank and I a year or so to put all the logistics together to

get these two legends together.  At Slim's age we could not take a chance putting him on a jet, and Haggard does not like to fly on

commercial jets so we waited till he was touring near where Slim lived in Pennsylvania.

 

I would call Slim from time to time to just tell him we were working on getting them together.  Both men were as excited to each

meet each other.  Then one day Frank called telling me that Merle was booked for a show in the old Capitol Theater in Wheeling

West Virginia.  It was only 4 hours from Slim.   After the call from Frank I called Slim and told him that the meeting with him and

Haggard was coming together.  I told him the show was going to be at the ole Capitol Theater in Wheeling West Virginia where

the WWVA Jamboree radio show was produced, and Slim said to me, "I played there before Radio.  I thought WOW... It was in

the year BR..."Before Radio."  LOL

 

 

THE MAN THAT STARTED IT ALL is a true story about the life of the music legend Jimmie Rodgers, where on his plaque at the Country Music Hall of Fame, where he was one of the first inductees along with Hank Williams, it says "The man that started it all."   James Charles Rodgers is born September 8, 1897, it's 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. Jimmie Rodgers was three years old when the century became nineteen hundred   Some may remember him as the “Blue Yodeler” or “The Singing Brakeman”.  He's AKA “The Father of  Country Music”.  This February 2017, he received the LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT GRAMMY AWARD in Hollywood, where the Grammy Trustees gave a Trustee Grammy to Ralph Peer, the man who discovered Jimmie Rodgers.  Rodgers is a member of the Country, Rock and Roll, Grammy,  Nashville Songwriter, and Blues Halls of Fame, in addition to post-humously receiving a W.C. Handy Blues Award.  It is a fact that no other entertainer in history has garnished such accomplishments.  He was also the first entertainer honored with a commemorative postage stamp from the U.S. Postal Service and many say the first big superstar of radio and records, that took it all to the road shortly after his first record.   As a tribute to the music trail he blazed we find a long list of tribute records and songs from the likes of Earnest Tubb, Gene Autry, Patsy Montana, Bob Wills, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Lefty Frizzell, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Merle Haggard, Bob Dylan, Elton John, Leon Russell,  and others.  It is said that Merle Haggard's, Lefty's and Dylan's tribute passed on Jimmie's music legacy to entire new generations.  Merle's allegiance to Jimmie lasted from his years as a teen when he discovered Jimmie via Lefty singing a Rodgers' song on the radio.

Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard release their new album DJANGO AND JIMMIE a tribute to Django Reindhart and Jimmie Rodgers we covered the tour and have interviews with these icons. "A young singing brakeman and a jazz playing gypsy, might not have been a Merle or a Willie If not for a Django and Jimmie."

As the new century began there was only ten miles of pavement in the country, oil was discovered in Texas and 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 being discovered by Ralph Peer who had gone to Bristol Tennessee to record some of the new “race music”, also being called “hillbilly music”. 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."  Sound had come to film and Jimmie found out he had tuberculosis.   Soon Jimmie’s “T For Texas” sells over a million copies—a blockbuster even by today's standards.  In 1929, he goes to Hollywood and records with Louie Armstrong in a studio that in the 1950tys Elvis would record many of his big hits.  The next year Columbia Pictures teams up with RCA and record a 3 song "short" as one of their early ventures into the "talkies", and what might be one of the early music videos, and you could say the beginning of Sony.   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 in a a lonely hotel room in New York recording his last music.

Buck Page and Aaron Neville after filming interview at Radio Recorders in Hollywood where Jimmie recorded back in 1930.   Toby Keith from interview that is in the Jimmie Rodgers Saga

Ramblin' Jack Ellitott, Frank Mull and Ralph Peer, Jr., who's dad discovered Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family in 1927.

Ramblin' Jack, by the way, did a tribute album to Jimmie Rodgers and Woody Gutherie in 1959.  Loved bringing Jack into the Haggard circle.  Made me proud to make the historical connect between these two great men and admirers of the ole Singing Brakeman.   I love ole Ramblin' Jack, have got to work with him, travel with him and hang with him, toke and drink with him, and produced some wonderful events with him, and we were just good friends... miss not seeing him the past couple of years.   It is the synergy with Jimmie Rodgers that ties me and Merle and me and Jack, and I brought Jack to a few shows to hang out so he and Hag could spend time sharing stories.

 

It was special to get to introduce Noel Haggard to Jack and Jack loved meeting the sons.

RAMBLIN' JACK ELLIOTT   Have some great Ramblin' Jack, Merle Haggard and Jimmie Rodgers stories to tell...Got ole Jack in to see and meet Merle on a couple of occasions and both had a great respect for each other. Jack recorded a tribute album to Jimmie Rodgers and Woody Guthrie in 1959, and Merle love to talk to him about music history, and funny how shy Jack was around the great Merle Haggard, the legend that he is and how high a regard Jack shows for other great men.

Thank you whomever took this pic for me with my cam on that special day with Jack and the Merle Haggard gang... somewhere in Nothern California

Ole Ramblin' Jack thought it was the cat's meow that I knew and ran with Haggard.  So I started working the dance to get them together. I had been working with Jack for a couple of years on the Pioneer Troubadours Project.  And, as usual floored that I was becoming saddle pals working with and hanging out with the legend Ramblin' Jack Elliott.  Every month or so he would stop by the house in Paso and we drink coffee, he would stay a day or two and we talk and walk and drink and smoke.  We both enjoyed

telling tales and cooking up a pot of beans and jalapeño cornbread a good Paso wine and some local weed. 

 

Another shot with Ralph Peer, Jr. who I brought on Merle's bus to meet him for the first time and was a great talk, and dang did not have film rolling this day and missed the great talk on Jimmie.

Willie and Merle on the Django and Jimmie tour 2015, more in the eBook for sure...

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