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R E C E N T L Y

Ben Folds Five
Naked Baby Photos
Caroline
(01/12/98)

Philip Glass
Kundun: Music from the Original Soundtrack
Nonesuch
(01/08/98)

Zombie Heaven
The Zombies
Big Beat
(01/08/98)

Cloudberry Jam
Providing the Atmosphere
Day Behavior
Adored
Ray Wonder
Good Music
North of No South
(01/07/98)

Free Kitten
Sentimental Education
Kill Rock Stars
(01/06/98)

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V O W E L L

Sound Salvation
By Sarah Vowell
Truckin' down to Deadland, Inc.
What a long, stupid trip it's gonna be
(01/09/98)

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F E A T U R E

High notes
By Cynthia Joyce
Salon contributors answer the question: what was your most significant musical moment of 1997?
(12/24/97)

jimmy Rogers__________
The Complete Chess Recordings - - - > MCA_____

By the time of his death last month, it seemed most newspapers had all but used up an annual allotment of space for obits with that strangely mandatory headline: John Doe, Bluesman. The Washington Post gave him 83 words.

Even in his adopted home of Chicago, a city that might have given Rogers his due, there was more bad luck. A 73-year-old musician succumbing to colon cancer just can't compete for attention with a young movie star dead from excess at a swank address. Jimmy Rogers spent much of his life seemingly eclipsed by others.

Born James A. Lane in Mississippi, he chose a stage name that, spellings aside, he would eventually share with both "the father of country music" and the pop-folkie of "Honeycomb" fame. When in print, his records could wind up in any section of the stores willing to carry them.

From the late '40s to 1955, Rogers was a member of the top band on the top blues label in the country. But it was his role to play unheralded second guitar on classics like "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man" while, up front, Muddy Waters cast spells and Little Walter Jacobs reinvented the harmonica.

Still, Rogers knew "race record" stardom for himself, scoring a major double-sided hit for Chess in 1950 with his own compositions, "That's All Right" and "Luedella." The success wasn't enough for Rogers to head off on his own, but it meant a trip to the microphone during club dates and at the end of Waters' recording sessions. Muddy's band became Rogers', if only in those moments, but no one would ever confuse the two men.

Where Waters' guitar and voice quivered with Olympian bombast and threat, Rogers worked a sleeker, jazzier groove. And his lyrics, almost always focused on the scorn of a woman, spoke not of retribution but of resignation. His characters may have indulged in self-pity, but, like his guitar work, there was no need for histrionics.

Rogers eventually left the Waters band and had a few more hits for Chess, but frustration with the feudal system of the industry led to an early retirement in 1960. The timing couldn't have been worse. While Muddy and colleagues were about to find new audiences with a folk revival at home and overseas, Rogers would be running a clothing store and driving a cab.

By the time Rogers returned to music in 1969, he was a not-so-elder statesman in a business transformed by bands that knew his licks if not his name. He'd make more records for a variety of labels, get almost-top billing at festivals and win some guilt-laden awards and tributes -- but never achieve the mainstream recognition won by a handful of his fellow survivors.

It was only in the last year of his life that Rogers saw a complete reissue of the three dozen sides Chess put out bearing his name. The two-CD package released on MCA represents, simply, a high point in an unparalleled era of American sound. With the long-delayed collection, one could argue that Rogers' only error was in working among too many legends.

Americans spend a lot of time mourning a loss of royalty in other places. We're lucky when we can remember our own.
SALON | Jan. 13, 1998