A Word on Words; 3824; Barry Mazor

fb liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades this is word on workers with jobs don johnson developed welcome once again to word on words my guest today is often music journalist barry mazer meeting jimmie rodgers is a captivating look at one of music's true findings known as the father of companies engineer on the earliest experiments in american

roots music son apart it almost on part in a unique sense of narrative drama of the songs you performed barrett so nice to have your own words thank you so much for coming in and thank you for the book on jimmie rodgers it's been so all since anybody has taken a really serious thought an in depth look at the life of the man who indeed is the father of the music of the country and the thing that comes out of me over finished the book is howell his very brief life had such a great and lasting impact on so many performances yeah i and i looked at that very fact all of those records all of those songs and they're all in print and somebody is recording them somewhere to date and you know influence by the style of them and some weird that it all happened in such a short time and that was almost that was almost a towering point of the book to the job was which it was like how could that

be that was it treated animals like the mistress felt it that way which is that the influence is so long and and the reach of the music is so wide so you know how did that happen and the question of how it happens is is interesting because when you think about who he was i mean you know you think about that metaphor of breaking me it really wasn't much of a brakeman for very long but with the railroad and was part of the culture of his times and played such a fascinating part is amazing i mean i think yeah it's exactly what wanna wanna one of the ways contemporary musicians who read the book relate to it is this understanding got into the railroads in the first place wanting to be in show business as his father was in railroads it was a section that intersection ahead we just tracked people's it's the tracks and he wanted to see his son have some kind of a difference their kids sent it on the thing that you tell your time african religion that he loses

motherly yes very high his father was on the road summer and so i don't see much of him a twelve thirties performing already yeah that's where is hard was but as you say coming from that kind of place in meridian mississippi and its that set the time or in that were in there you know was born at ninety seven so we're in world war one period of mastery is growing up and dad wouldn't have a clue when he was a young man in his twenties how to get anywhere in show business with it which was common so it's going to take a while you open the book was saying the fascinating scenario here we are nineteen seventy johnny cash on national star that void in the country away from with those weekly show and opinions on international and here

is with a guest of all people such will get who was on fuel your dad you talk about that scene and then tell me why you and uses both with yet with that region retreated recounting of the daily show yeah i mean the scene was from the standpoint of the producers of the test so that the networks are wanting a wider variety of artists on the show an ipad country stars that day he'd had rock and rollers and into folk singers in cash had always sort of interesting friends but jazz horns and general anything from the actor it was where the producers of the show considered may be a step too far little out there we put ourselves in nineteen seventy and musical horns atlanta one frame and roots music was trends is kind of another in the twain have that much but in the louis armstrong case he'd actually

recorded with jimmy rogers and that was kind of a passport of a show he'd made an album of country songs of cowboy jack clement just before which was the connection to cash in la are on the show and they recreate blue yodel number nine standard on the corner which is the number hit record the region a nagging you believe several movies strong winds up with cash with music be informed how many years before well there's forty forty or thirty to nineteen seventies so it admits it's a well but tell me why i got that coincidence was so great idea and it says something not only about also but also about cash yes i chose the same because of an eye i was privileged to get to hear the rehearsal tape for that and you watch it talk about it i heard it and i don't think though ever be released johnny cash fan of a pack rat than any and they turned out of these

audio i've heard that forty five minutes of them working up the number and an end for jazz historian was always louis armstrong even remember working with that hillbilly you know that and you hear this in his coaching journey cashes ledge in the kansas standards live the work about the rhythms he remembered very well an end the moment when lili doesn't oh yes and g n n n n and caskets gets to the yodel and they come together to me summoning of that you know it's not a verbal it's not something you can write a doctoral thesis about what is the core of what i want to talk about in the book which is which is that spirit and physicality and love of the performing which was centrifuge and jimmie rodgers was so in that moment i see it as a kind of a summoning and as the book you know if three hundred seventy five pages doesn't have as well as they didn't add two seconds on please

yes they could reach other man eleven songs i'm now about forty of the other collaborator his sister are doing and so i've tried to be give her due in some ways it's a long lasting this one was in ohio and she did you know they didn't but the reach is from the gene autry to bob dylan yeah talk about that that's right that that's the that's the kind of a journey that do in the book to me on a night and in you know and i've interviewed over eighteen musicians it's performers who get to speak here have been doing a lot of the talk in the course of this but that's where you have the girl it became evident to me really early if i was gonna follow the life story of the music which is kind of a concept rather than an autobiography of the man who's is a great one but no one point of all that you know so that's not needed but but this question of how did this happen that we're going to

follow the story of the music and yet you know in his own time it was always already spring hollywood cowboy music and he did that kind of thing it started a craze of his blue yodels which is basically void though are balloons saying it was surreal ghost bustin there were tables of that he performed on stages singing prison songs about his own life with a guitar which is kind of the genesis of the singer songwriter telling you that crime stories are you won't find one before that it always suffered from tuberculosis and he writes about it yeah he laid it out there and and and i was a kind of an admission that the time it wasn't something a middle class person was you know likely to talk about and people were flipped afflicted from every quarter saw and there is that there was an article almost a sense of you know and he's saying to the tv room

yellen would bedevil tv and he would just do it and that quality of him is the kind of thing that i'm given to people brought them closer you know they knew where that was coming from and an end and you know that's a letter to this business of the roots music hero and in the end and that's the title of the book which is that he was the first person and kind of set the parameters for us it's show business success and there's no question about that but in the course of doing it he never let go of where it came from that mississippi accent is on the record he rise barrel and outbound that option and now he sings about war you know where is god that run their own entity that there would be a barrel and get out of the city in the balance you know in the book there is a logical for marty stuart in which he says

he was mississippi and mississippi all and and suggests that somaliland has to it has to do with obama's adherence yeah yeah and it's an interesting point because it was already the music of that place in the in in those times had so many ingredients in it and was it was sick to be you know to just say one of the reasons its debts is because it was so much part of jimmy rogers and one of the reasons it was so much part of jimmie rodgers is that he came from that time and place and i think that's what worries dressing area yeah i think it is and if you look at just talk about the blues for the blues and he is the blues man of his time in yemen today we think of the blues and you're most likely it turned out the american music ever truthful but he's with blew them anything and the blows and he's singing the blues you know it was certainly it was certainly an unease about was

originated among african americans and their work other hillbilly singers who sang kind of a blues form you were people i needed to make a comment on the back of twelve bar blues that was around and jimmy wasn't diverse you know white singer to do that either but he inhabited lived with it in a way that was that was knew he had fans among african americans is as much as any other blues singer in illinois interview as we talk to a great blues singer like helen will permit ask them you know who who matter to you who is you know who had who was with a new pattern itself after years ago i learned guitar from charley patton and robert johnson in that list those and he would bring up but the one i really dug was jimmie rodgers it his urine turned it into well so that's how much inside the blues jelly worms and i think in you know as he is the father free music but there was no such word him even though he was in

country music you know what he did is a vacancy in the end in his own time if you said anybody in mississippi a national anywhere else all over the world those records recess trillions of having his own wife is a wealthy they probably said he was you know that vaudevillian sings a lot of blows talk about rocky or his relationship with world it's a pretty interesting one arm in oak here was the man that first a long country music terms by way of the bristol sessions in an others he found jimmie rodgers and the carter family come register but they beat you first record of them in the same twenty four hours he was even look at records and then rca and he was out recording in different areas all through the south and he picked up a lot of losing those other countries are very important in establishing know i'm in establishing li xian reside ideas that we live with ever since which is basically you identify an audience an

economy is that they are like a new gig selling the music that they like which is what all really comes the marketing yeah absolutely and branding and the whole thing and he had a militia and rogers of those people in the guy who's ever worked with fats waller one day and it has a bit of the top of the carmichael a couple years later and is in iraq there's also and the carter family or or fiddling john force in a very wide variety of artist to jimmy heath and he seems to have a unique relationship or nissan has become papa compiled a collaborator you know jimmy pretty much as his own songs along the copper item which is already are as interested is a publishing event it had a new terror was a new song that was good he didn't win outright repetitions that aside you know jimmy to do what he wanted in terms of picking the cheerio al pierson didn't need anybody to help with that but together they worked out as wide variety of styles of

these recordings are hidden in their homes the physical distance but such a race and not only geographically but you know what partially emotionally and here was an immigrant shopkeepers some from kansas from independence missouri harry truman years but he had you know risen into social circles it was a quite sophisticated man his life would take him in that direction but there was a there was a connection there we said he said you know look to me was a hillbilly boogie was a different kind of hillbilly he could sing anything so you know we're in a recording with jazz bands with hawaiian dancers slide guitar still before anybody to steal a country record you know and it was it went on and on and all kinds of materials so jimmy rogers isn't just sing about water and they also record everybody does it and why imagine the right message at a failure someone says you know it's to heal a mixer close fought is that is that a country record well it's a bad is much exaggerated as the everybody doesn't align with

you just and a lot of wood all about our major about his latest book meeting jimmie rodgers and beyond we know it we grew up in the city and with the opry and as part of our editor at through as i am it's always been there it's gone from among those hillbillies to sophisticated an uprising which the chamber commerce takes notes the university's take note of what country music is is about his life was so short now has that contributed to that i mean new orleans is life was so short usually rises is life was so

short and if you look at a country music those two names both those writers and before was somehow leave off the page i did ja ja get it there is no doubt that moving from the star of the day into a sock into really a legend arm you know but i think first of all have to do with his roots music heroes and because it was such a strong emotional connection with those performers in country music they loom you know above anybody will perform as elsewhere roots music that had that kind of did that had that i never listen to people need another dolly parton has the field select somebody like sam cooke out of gospel into his community have that kind of poor a bob marley and reggae music in jamaica been larger there's a bigger thing than being a star if i have an un elected representative of the people you come from and they love to see you doing well in macon of money and haven't a big flashy cars that elvis presley was nothing if not in the know that

and photographs but isn't the but yes actually this tragedy the jimmie rogers knew he was dying he was diagnosed with would probably favor a tv before he ever made a record the whole time he was recording that was lying out there does that affect the way sings the blues probably but it's a short life and went you know and i think that death it was the first one where there were dozens of memorial records about missing jimmy one had died there were records about the two of them meeting in heaven and i don't i think it's a coincidence at all that the establishment of jimmy is the father of country music a phrase you will not hear before nineteen fifty three just a few months after hank die i think the community here was looking for you know what is the issue are we maybe nobody even asked was the father of country music

in nineteen fifty three but as a cat came to its modern identity country music which is going to reach out and be international in global and modernizing jimmie rodgers look like the perfect person to pick in the process went on in the very your hand dyed and i don't think that's a coincidence i think it's what one life and career brought people back to thinking about the earlier one you know i think about ted chapin where you began with that and it was it was the dynamic i think armstrong and cash to jail or going back but then there was that cash connection through the region and the carter family talk a little bit about jimi and at my balancer yeah well they haven't really known each other before they did those sessions together everybody when the cha i mean they're funny they're kind of comedy records as a vaudevillian jimmy is famously sort of very

comparable to know the kind of jive well he and one of the interesting things about the records is that he is already presented as being sort of the west and i even hear you are in texas are there cowboy hat said where he'd moved to from mississippi and and those records are kind of presented a sort of country meets west and for one thing is that he was also a palestinian teen who was their use of comedy and all this kind of stuff on stage and it was it was a little bit of a push for that for that for the court of them would stand up but german i think ap was with him in his own way in a different part of the field let's say going and doing the same thing finding signs and modernizing them in a kind of a more connected to the home important church promised out which is another part of country music as we have there the irony that the father of country music in which the year the dredge element is such a big party did not too much of that was not much involved in gospel music himself jimmy rogers and an end but the

cars were certainly weren't affected gather they do were they doing gospel song one of the records that at the end of the chapter they're resilient i am a section in which your shadow the new recommendations on some tracks elections yeah i was fascinated by and found most of cordon on some of repetition of the most of reading it again again i discovered that what did you feel what prompted you to do it that way each chapter go sit here are these records and films and all these different versions of music aye aye want the book as probably dedicated to the reader's own ears this is i wanted him in writing this book to bring jimmie rodgers back whole and alive to people in a way doing all this history is to get all the different a waxy obit buildup of history out of the ways and maybe we can hear him directly

all these records are a way to hear that music their way into the music whether it's a blues record a rock n roll music of folk record of hardcore honky tonk record in earnest all of this are wasted music they're all valid i wanted to show people that but they're all routes to the same place and i think there's nothing like experiencing and finally just listening to jimmy's records to get a hold of what a manager at one point there is the intersection was woody and are low in pc you're on that laughter our core aspect of modern folk music on the page he was frail a woman was he doesn't go politically bayer no no he he doesn't just saying is is it somebody at the roots music you're kind of figure would be potentially in a position to do that in a way

lifetime friends of jimmy rogers and jimmie davis are you going to texas and no one's you did on that standpoint in the music you know that really isn't and was used in i think jimmie rodgers woman to lead anybody anywhere unless the first i don't think he had much of a political body on the worst things he did they're connected him to the people that we would look at his political now at the time of the first the early onset of the dust bowl and this is part of the connection that somebody like us are you would have been introduced to writers music and may well then i'm in texas but in those in the in those in that context i knew there was starvation hit in arkansas oklahoma northern texas of all panhandle area in nineteen thirty one and jimi joined will rogers account of riches of movie stars here get together and went into town after town after town and raised tons of money for those people the government was not doing anything and jack and will rogers said let's not wait will just go do this

and on behalf of the red cross i went to those towns and i think they gave seeds to farmers to grow their own again you know student that kind of thing sticks with people that front of this you know you can call them political it was certainly it's just really was we wanted to do some people use that politically some of the songs that came out of those experiences guy is what he's in the peace and those people wanted to do with it because a guy go a generation later just one of the points to it and then lacing that are located breaking up wood is much as i think as he could get a gimmick here is that they're you know i mean he he went i mean i know he said to me and he was also one of the musicians was really articulate an interesting about li's about these matters and you know sort of nineteen seventies eighties version of it that have to do with this music he says stephen foster jimmy rogers and and and and woody guthrie of the few public ownership

to aisle that if i listened to him a kind of mixture of ingredients and jimmy certainly sounds really central to be i mean no i had the same kind of one of the other great commentators and one of my favorite interpreters around his music with jerry lee lewis a very different direction you'd only difference but as always tell people for fifty years you know the people that mattered to me you're cal jillson jimmie rodgers hank williams and well himself the flu could maybe you know there's nothing that kind of energy related itself with jimmy sensenbrenner jimmy elam jerry lee put it in every single so i think it would've been impressed that you know exactly said to sign the thing to remember is not taken another demerit but that he's still a hawk to love as we have

when you think about now for i feel you know the wall street journal that i got my journalism and i was had something going but i've been looking at emily's thinking about in this may happen but i'm you know and i'm inclined to apartment i'm inclined to telling histories and n n n and a profiles of people who've come across the line by years of no depression magazine where a lot of the safe haven of mixture of poppies roots music and this kind of thing so this was no accident and i'm looking at it may be that the next thing i need to look at this route clearance self unpack what were coming every other end of this century of music where all the definitions and channels of marketing and and the styles of music are changing it may be that the next thing i need to do is go back to the beginning and an aunt and that they have that on that set up in the first contest well if you do that i mean you're talking about religion or bargains on you know one of the duo was a year it was a bit wilder will say is that i think he would

come in with my pleasure truly like all of you for watching and dancing and oliver word on words