Jesse Rodgers

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Jesse Otto Rodgers (March 5, 1911 - December 14, 1973) was an American guitarist, songwriter and singing cowboy when that image was at its height of popularity, from 1938 through 1944 Jesse recorded western songs for the Sonora and Varsity labels, the labels now spelling his name “Jesse Rogers”. Born on his parents’ farm near Waynesboro, Rodgers’ father, F.G. (“Eff”) Rodgers, gave up farming not long after Jesse’s birth to work on the Illinois Central Railroad along with his brother Aaron, the father of celebrated Singing Brakeman-to-be Jimmie Rodgers. Jesse would recall being taught his first guitar chords by first cousin Jimmie, who was thirteen years older. After his mother died in 1923, Jesse spent some time with relatives in Texas, but was back in Mississippi, married and beginning a family by 1928, working on his in-laws’ farm in Perry County. Pulled toward a musical career, inspired by Jimmie’s extraordinary success, Jesse began work on the Texas-Mexican border-based “border blaster” radio stations XERA and XERN in 1932, as both performer and announcer. When Jimmie Rodgers died in 1933, RCA Victor’s Bluebird label signed Jesse as a potential successor who would record similar material. Jesse could sound remarkably like his cousin, and such songs as “Yodelling the Railroad Blues,” and the use of musicians Jimmie had worked with, such as Hawaiian Charles Kama, accented the connection. Between 1934 and ’37, forty Jesse Rodgers records in this mode were released by Blueb

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