Which singer is called the “Father of Country Music” and “The Singing Brakeman”?

Jimmie Rodgers worked as a railroad brakeman in Mississippi before tuberculosis forced him off the trains. He turned to music, blending blues, folk and his famous yodel.

In August 1927, record producer Ralph Peer held recording sessions in Bristol, on the Tennessee–Virginia line. Both Rodgers and the Carter Family made their first records there. The Bristol Sessions are often called the “Big Bang” of country music.

Rodgers recorded more than a hundred songs before tuberculosis took his life in 1933 at age thirty-five. He was among the first three inductees into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1961.