Jimmie Rodgers was a railroad brakeman turned recording star whose blue yodel, first captured on record in 1927, welded blues phrasing to hillbilly music and effectively invented commercial country music in the process. His plainspoken, wandering-man persona and the yodel that punctuated nearly every verse made him a template for country singers for a century afterward. Tuberculosis killed him in 1933, only six years into a career that never stopped echoing.

the sound in question

1927

Blue Yodel No. 1 (T for Texas)Jimmie Rodgers