In the summer of 1927, Ralph Peer came to Bristol seeking singers whose personalities would stand out on Victor Records' new electrically amplified Orthophonic recordings, and he found a powerful new country music voice in Mississippi-born Jimmie Rodgers. Arriving on August 4 with his group, intended for recording as The Jimmie Rodgers Entertainers, Rodgers auditioned amid a dispute over billing that helped Peer recognize a distinction between the band's hoedown fiddle music and Rodgers's own emerging style, rooted in Mississippi blues, roaming bluesman imagery, cheeky performance, contemporary and even jazzy songs, and distinctive yodels. Peer recorded the rest of the group as the Tenneva Ramblers, while Rodgers cut “Sleep Baby Sleep” and “The Soldier's Sweetheart,” recordings that spoke directly to the people he came from. At his next session, the Blue Yodel “T for Texas” became one of the era's best sellers and made him a star. Rodgers's Mississippi-bred music and style helped set the pattern for country music's good-time Saturday night side and for its lasting closeness to the emotional force and fortitude of the blues. Even as success brought him wealth and fame, he retained his Mississippi accent and grounded references, becoming a widely embraced representative of country music's audience during his five years as a recording artist before dying of tuberculosis in May 1933. His Mississippi-rooted qualities, talents, and model of stardom remained strongly evident in later Mississippi country stars including Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Charley Pride, Bobbie Gentry, and Tammy Wynette, continuing a tradition linked to the Bristol sessions and the Big Bang of Country Music.
