How old was Jimmie Rodgers?
He was about thirty years old when he auditioned for Speir. You got to remember, Jimmie Rodgers’s first record for Victor was “Sleep Baby Sleep,” and it sold iust enough copies that Victor brought him back in the studio and he made “Blue Yodel.” And “Blue Yodel” started selling like hotcakes, and he was set from then on as a big recording star. So Jimmie Rodgers probably heard about Speir the same way as the other guys did. So would you say, on a small scale, Speir in ]ackson was kind of like Nashville today? He was. He told me people would write the companies saying they wanted to get on record and they were a good talent, and the companies would write them back and say either write Mr. H. C. Speir in Jackson, Mississippi, or go there. He said he actually had people from out of state come to his store to audition. And he would tell them, “Go home, work some more, and come back someday when you’ve got some more songs.” He said the main reason most people didn’t get recorded was because
