As a water boy, he would have been exposed to the work chants of the African-American railroad workers, known as gandy dancers. Here he was further taught to pick and strum by rail workers and hobos. His father found Rodgers his first job working on the railroad, as a water boy. By age 13, he had twice organized and begun traveling shows, only to be brought home by his father. Rodgers' affinity for entertaining came at an early age, and the lure of the road was irresistible to him. Rodgers' ancestral origins and heritage are uncertain, though records and his mother's maiden name show his lineage to include some measure of English and probably German or Dutch ancestry.
He eventually returned home to live with his father, Aaron Rodgers, a maintenance-of-way foreman on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, who had settled with a new wife in Meridian. Jimmie (called "James" in the census) was probably born sixth of the seven children. In the 1900 Census for Daleville, Lauderdale County, Mississippi, Jimmie's mother, Eliza (Bozeman) Rodgers, was listed as already having had seven children, with four of them still living at that date. Rodgers' mother died when he was about six or seven years old, and Rodgers, the youngest of three sons, spent the next few years living with various relatives in southeast Mississippi and southwest Alabama, near Geiger. Yet historians who have researched the circumstances of that document, including Nolan Porterfield and Barry Mazor, continue to identify Pine Springs, Mississippi, just north of Meridian, as his genuine birthplace. Marker in Meridian, Mississippi Early life Īccording to tradition, Rodgers' birthplace is usually listed as Meridian, Mississippi however, in documents Rodgers signed later in life, his birthplace was listed as Geiger, Alabama, the home of his paternal grandparents.
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