Jimmie Got Life Go Smack Him Again
Jimmie Rodgers, Who Sang 'Honeycomb' and Other Hits, Dies at 87
His crossover appeal landed him on the charts ofttimes in the 1950s and '60s, but a violent incident in 1967 batty his career.
Jimmie Rodgers, whose smooth vocalism straddled the line between pop and state and brought him a string of hits — none bigger than his first record, "Honeycomb," in 1957 — died on Jan. xviii in Palm Desert, Calif. He was 87.
His daughter Michele Rodgers said that the cause was kidney affliction and that he had likewise tested positive for Covid-19.
Mr. Rodgers was a regular presence on the pop, country, R&B and easy listening charts for a decade after "Honeycomb," with records that included "Oh-Oh, I'thousand Falling in Dearest Again" (1958) and "Child of Clay" (1967), both of which were nominated for Grammy Awards.
He might have continued that run of success but for an ugly incident in December 1967, when he was pulled over past a man who, he later said, was an off-duty Los Angeles police officer and vanquish him severely.
Three brain surgeries followed, and he was left with a metal plate in his caput. He eventually resumed performing, and fifty-fifty briefly had his own television show, only he faced abiding difficulties. For a time he was sidelined because he started having seizures during concerts.
"One time discussion gets out that you're having seizures onstage, you tin can't work," he told The News Scout of Knoxville, Tenn., in 1998. "People won't rent you."
Mr. Rodgers was found to have spasmodic dysphonia, a disorder characterized by spasms in the muscles of the vocalism box, a condition he attributed to his brain injury. However he later settled into a comfortable niche as a performer and producer in Branson, Mo., the state music mecca, where he had his own theater for several years before retiring to California in 2002.
James Frederick Rodgers was born on Sept. 18, 1933, in Camas, Launder., in the southwest function of the country. (Four months earlier, a more famous Jimmie Rodgers, the singer known equally the male parent of state music, had died; the 2 were unrelated.) His mother, Mary (Schick) Rodgers, was a piano teacher, and his father, Archie, worked in a paper mill. Jimmie started out singing in church building and school groups.
After graduating from high school, he briefly attended Clark College in Washington Country but left to enlist in the Air Force, serving in Korea during the Korean War. In a 2016 interview with The Spectrum, a Utah newspaper, he recalled one particular evening nigh Christmas 1953.
"I bought a beat-up sometime guitar from a guy for $10 and started playing and singing one night and all the guys joined in," he said. "We were sitting on the flooring with only candles for light, and these tough soldiers had tears running downwards their cheeks. I realized if my music could have that effect, that'southward what I wanted to do with my life."
Back in the States and stationed near Nashville, he started performing in a nightclub for $10 a night and free drinks before returning to Washington subsequently mustering out. In 1957 he traveled to New York to perform on a Telly talent show and also snagged an audition for Roulette Records, singing "Honeycomb," a Bob Merrill song he had learned off a recording past Georgie Shaw and had been performing in the Nashville club.
"They basically said, 'Don't go any further, that's dandy,'" he said in an interview with Gary James for classicbands.com.
Epitome
Mr. Rodgers was taken to a studio to record what he idea would be a demo with musicians he had simply just met.
"They brought in four players and iii singers and we recorded it in about two hours — no charts, no music," he said in a 2010 oral history for the National Spasmodic Dysphonia Association.
A week or two later, he was surprised to hear the vocal on the radio. It reached the tiptop of the Billboard popular and R&B charts.
Later that yr he had another success with his version of a vocal that had been a hit for the Weavers, "Kisses Sweeter Than Vino," giving it an upwardly-tempo kick and injecting key changes like to what he had used in "Honeycomb."
"I was told that they won't sell — records that alter keys, people tin't sing along with them," Mr. Rodgers recalled in an oral history recorded in 2002 for the National Association of Music Merchants. The public disagreed.
His early songs, released as Elvis Presley was shaking up the music scene, were a sort of comfort nutrient, jaunty nevertheless melodic and not too earthshaking. In 1959 his quick popularity earned him his ain television variety bear witness, which ran for one season.
"If his singing style calls for more emphasis on beat than lilt," Jack Gould wrote of its premiere in The New York Times, "at least information technology has the virtue of being well this side of rock 'n' roll."
Epitome
Mr. Rodgers dabbled in interim in the 1960s, including a leading role in "Back Door to Hell," a 1964 war movie whose cast likewise included Jack Nicholson. In 1965, "Honeycomb" found new life when Post introduced a cereal past that name, repurposing the song to advertise it, the jingle sung by Mr. Rodgers. He too sang a SpaghettiOs jingle that riffed on his "Oh-Oh, I'one thousand Falling in Honey Over again."
Mr. Rodgers said he was under consideration for a featured function in the 1968 motion picture musical "Finian's Rainbow" when the see on the freeway derailed his career. In his telling, he was driving habitation belatedly at night when the driver behind him flashed his lights. He idea information technology was his conductor, who was also driving to Mr. Rodgers's business firm, and pulled over.
"I rolled the window down to ask what was the matter," he told The Toronto Star in 1987. "That's the last thing I think."
He ended up with a fractured skull and broken arm. He said the off-duty officer who had pulled him over called two on-duty officers to the scene, merely all three scattered when his conductor, who went looking for Mr. Rodgers when he hadn't arrived home, collection up.
The constabulary told a different story: They said Mr. Rodgers had been drunk and had injured himself when he fell. Mr. Rodgers sued the Los Angeles Police Department, prompting a countersuit; the matter was settled out of courtroom in his favor to the melody of $200,000.
During his long recovery Mr. Rodgers got another shot at a Tv series, a summer replacement multifariousness evidence in 1969.
"I looked like a ghost," he admitted in a 2004 interview.
His marriages to Colleen McClatchy and Trudy Ann Cadet ended in divorce. In 1978, he married Mary Louise Biggerstaff. She survives him.
In addition to her and his girl Michele, he is survived by a son, Michael, from his offset wedlock; two sons from his 2nd union, Casey and Logan; a girl from his third wedlock, Katrine Rodgers; 5 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/arts/music/jimmie-rodgers-dead.html