YEAR
1986
INDUCTED BY
Jerry Wexler
CATEGORY
Early Influences
The Father of Country Music.
Rock and roll owes an immeasurable debt to Jimmie Rodgers. Although he was a country artist, his fusion of blues, Appalachian ballads and spirituals was an early framework for rock and roll. He has influenced everyone from Bob Dylan to Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Jimmie Rodgers
HALL OF FAME
ESSAY
By Michael Hill
If Jimmie Rodgers is generally thought of as the Father of Country Music, he must be rock’s great-grandfather.
In the six years that preceded Rodgers’ death, from 1927 to 1933, he was a major part of the fledgling phonograph-music industry. Whether singing tales of the railroad, celebrating the West, bringing the blues around to a new folk form or touching on more pop elements, his yodel has come down to us as the seminal influence, the touchstone, where it all began.
