Jesse Otto Rodgers (1911-1973), born near Waynesboro and a first cousin of Jimmie Rodgers, began singing on Mexican border radio stations after relocating to Texas. He wrote songs and recorded for Bluebird Records in the mid-1930s, briefly as a blue yodeler similar to Jimmie, but soon in his own Western style. Born March 5, 1911, on his parents’ farm near Waynesboro, Jesse’s father, F. G. (“Eff”) Rodgers, left farming soon after Jesse’s birth to work on the Illinois Central Railroad alongside his brother Aaron, Jimmie Rodgers’s father. Jesse later recalled learning his first guitar chords from Jimmie, who was thirteen years older. After his mother died in 1923, Jesse spent time with relatives in Texas, but by 1928 he was back in Mississippi, married, starting a family, and working on his in-laws’ farm in Perry County. Drawn to music and inspired by Jimmie’s success, he went to work in 1932 on the Texas-Mexican border radio stations XERA and XERN as both performer and announcer. After Jimmie Rodgers died in 1933, RCA Victor’s Bluebird label signed Jesse as a possible successor recording similar material. He could sound strikingly like his cousin, and songs such as “Yodelling the Railroad Blues,” along with the use of musicians who had worked with Jimmie, including Hawaiian Charles Kama, reinforced that connection. Between 1934 and 1937, forty Jesse Rodgers records in that style were released by Bluebird, Montgomery Ward, and Australia’s Regal Zonophone. As he emerged as a talented guitarist and songwriter in his own right, he adopted the popular singing cowboy image, and from 1938 through 1944 recorded western songs for the Sonora and Varsity labels, which now spelled his name “Rogers,” likely to suggest similarity to Roy Rogers, while he worked for radio stations in Dallas, Kansas City, and St. Louis as an on-air performer and announcer, including a stint on Chicago’s WLS National Barn Dance. He became a popular live attraction in the regions where he broadcast. After moving to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1945, his national career revived through a local daily show on WFIL radio and then as a cast member of “Hayloft Hoedown,” heard nationally each morning on ABC radio. Signed again by RCA Victor, he found success with singles including “Blue Christmas” and “Hadacol Boogie,” backed by his band the ’49ers. In 1949 he starred in the live television western “The Western Balladeer,” which led to his role as singing cowboy adventurer “Ranger Joe” on a filmed network action series for children that featured his trained horse Topaz. He continued to modernize musically on the MGM, Cowboy, and Arcade labels with boogie and rockabilly recordings such as “Jukebox Cannonball” before emphysema forced his retirement in 1963.
