Rufus Payne: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rufus_Payne
Little Hank Williams learned a lot of what he knew from a black man playing the blues.
For his part Jimmie Rodgers also hung around a lot of black folks when he “worked” (he got fired for doing something close to nothing but different than the day before) at the railroad.
Inescapable conclusion: substantially all American music originated in the South with at least substantial influence by black Americans.
As Muddy Waters sang, the blues had a baby and they named the baby rock and roll.
The babies older brother was country music.
Here is one more fun fact: Elsie McWilliams actually wrote many if not most of Jimmie Rodgers songs. It’s not entirely clear how many, since she never wanted credit. Jimmie is often called the father of country music. Maybe it had a mother, or at least parents.
Certainly, the impression I got visiting the Jimmie Rodgers museum in Meridian, talking with the curator, was that if not for Elsie, no Jimmie, and if not for Jimmie, possibly a very different, less rich musical history for the past 100 or so years. He pointed to her piano and said “that’s where country music began.”
You know, giving birth to something is the hard part. Adapting it, tweaking it, changing it: these are often needed to make something USEFUL. But without that original Promethean fire: little or nothing.
God bless the creators. May everyone on Earth one day become one.