Elsie Williamson McWilliams (1896-1985), a Meridian housewife, mother, and Sunday school music teacher who grew up in Harperville in Scott County, became the first woman to sustain a successful career as a country songwriter. The sister of Carrie, Jimmie Rodgers's second wife, she wrote or contributed music and lyrics to thirty-nine songs that Rodgers performed or recorded, though she never received full credit for her work. After Carrie married Jimmie Rodgers in 1920, Rodgers turned to his music-reading, songwriting sister-in-law for help supplying new songs as his popularity grew and his manager and publisher Ralph Peer pressed him for a steady stream of material. McWilliams modestly credited songs only to Rodgers, but Rodgers, his publisher, and Victor saw that her name appeared as co-writer or lyric writer on nineteen recorded songs, and by her own later estimate she contributed to about twenty others. Her lyrics were sometimes inspired by her own life, as with “My Little Lady,” inspired by a neighbor named “Hadie,” and sometimes by Rodgers's life, as with “You and My Old Guitar,” based on a comment he made to Mrs. Rodgers. Her work included sentimental domestic songs such as “Daddy and Home,” “Lullaby Yodel,” “Home Call,” “Mississippi Moon,” and Rodgers's single gospel song, “The Wonderful City,” as well as lively songs including the risqué “Everybody Does It in Hawaii” and “My Little Lady,” broken marriage songs such as “I’m Lonely and Blue” and “Never No Mo’ Blues,” and a contribution to the “rounder” song “My Rough and Rowdy Ways.” After Rodgers's early death, she continued writing verse and songs throughout her life, including several for Ernest Tubb. She also performed, playing piano and singing in Jimmie Rodgers's first pop-oriented dance band trio in 1923 and appearing occasionally at clubs and festivals in the last ten years of her life. She was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1979.
