Cozy Cottages of Asheville

04/21/2024

04/20/2024

On April 18, 1927, Jimmie Rodgers – one of country music’s first superstars – got his big break on Asheville radio station WWNC.

Born in 1897 near Meridian, Mississippi, James Charles Rodgers liked to yodel and won an amateur talent contest at age 13. That same year he became a railroad water boy. In March 1927, Rodgers moved to Asheville, working as a railway brakeman and doing other jobs until he and his friend Otis Kuykendall began performing live weekly on WWNC. The duo soon added other musicians and billed themselves as the Jimmie Rodgers Entertainers.

In August 1927, Victor Records recorded Rodgers doing two songs. One, “The Soldier’s Sweetheart,” became an instant hit. Another hit, “Blue Yodel,” quickly followed. By 1929, Rodgers was a star. He appeared in a short film, “The Singing Brakeman”; toured the Midwest with humorist Will Rogers; and recorded with a young trumpeter, Louis Armstrong.

By the time he returned to Asheville in December 1929, the “Father of Country Music” had been living with tuberculosis for five years. He died in 1933. In 1961, Rodgers became the first performer inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Marker is located in Asheville, NC: https://www.dncr.nc.gov/blog/2024/01/23/jimmie-rodgers-1897-1933-p-94

01/19/2020

First snow of 2020

05/29/2019

2 Cozy Cottages

01/28/2018

03/01/2014

Guess why there are so many turkeys here this winter?

02/19/2014

My granddaughters at the French Broad Chocolate Lounge :)

02/10/2014

Snow is falling on the Cozy Cottages of Asheville

02/09/2014

Patty Squires and Buddy - Proprietor

02/08/2014

The sun is setting at the Cozy Cottage, time to feed the ducks and turkeys.