With his signature blue yodel, Jimmie Rodgers became country music’s first superstar shortly before the Great Depression. But by the spring of 1933, the “Singing Brakeman” was close to death–though he was only 35, he’d been bedridden for years fighting tuberculosis. Knowing it would be his last session, he booked time at a studio in New York City, where he was attended to by a nurse and lay on a cot between takes. Just a few days later he died of a lung hemorrhage. His remains were taken by train back to his native Mississippi, and thousands of people gathered to watch the railroad car bearing his casket pass by. When his body was interred in Meridian, a parade of mourners from all over the country came to pay their respects.
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Short made the stop in Meridian as part of a two-month country-music pilgrimage that also took her to Hank Williams’s resting place in Alabama and the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. Though the musical style she’s developed since then can’t strictly be classified as country–it mixes elements of moonstruck honky-tonk, bleak old-timey folk, and introverted indie rock–her reedy, winsome voice summons the ghosts of Rodgers, Williams, and a host of other long gone singers. When Short moved to Chicago a year and a half ago, hardly anyone here knew who she was–her discography consisted of a CD-R she’d released herself and a proper album that’d gone out of print. But on Valentine’s Day the Portland label Hush Records will put out Captain Wild Horse (Rides the Heart of Tomorrow), a collection of loping waltzes, nuanced love songs, and delicate ballads that ought to help fix her in plenty of people’s minds.
While attending the Pacific Northwest College of Art, Short taught herself how to play guitar and sing. She went to work as an after-school art instructor after her graduation in 2001, and late that year a friend invited her to perform at a hoot night called the Holiday Hot Dog Rodeo. “But it was for singer-songwriters, and I didn’t have any songs of my own,” says Short. “So I sat down and wrote a couple. It was good to have an assignment or a deadline, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have ever done it.”
Captain has already received glowing reviews in No Depression, Magnet, and Giant. And though Short’s first local gig, at the Hideout in December 2004, was a disaster (“There was only one person there,” she says), she’s recently reached large and receptive audiences opening for the likes of Colin Meloy and Edith Frost. After her Empty Bottle show on Saturday she’ll embark on a short tour–her first–playing seven shows across the midwest and east coast.
Where: Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jim Newberry.
