Log Cabin Stories: Jimmy Long

Gene Autry and Jimmy Long song book
photos from the movie "Tumbling Tumbleweeds", 1935

Hobo Yodel

The Story of Jimmy Long

Gene Autry is still a name widely known among music and film fans. The name of his mentor and early compation, Jimmy Long, is mostly forgotten today. Born in the late 19th century, Long was a railroader and musician. He recorded numerous sides in his own right in the early 1930s but has been reduced often to a sidekick of Autry.

James Wiley "Jimmy" Long was born on November 25, 1889, in Southwest Arkansas to Matthew Levi and Martha Catherine (James) Long. The Long family were longtime residents of Arkansas, Long's father Matthew had been born in Hempstead County back in 1861. The Longs were a big family with a total of eight children, raised around Blevins, Arkansas, a small town in a rural area. However, at some point the family moved to Texas and Jimmy Long began working for the St. Louis-San Fransisco Railway (commonly known as Frisco) as a train dispatcher. At some point, Long took up playing the guitar and singing as well as writing songs.

He married Jessie Irene Hubbard when he was 20 years old and around 1916, daughter Beverly was born. In 1917, World War I interrupted the Americans' lives and Long was drafted into the US Army. At that time, he was living in Bastrop County, Texas, near Austin. The exact details of his service are unknown to me, however. Following the war, Long and his family first lived in Dunklin County in the boot heel of Missouri and eventually in Springfield, Missouri. In 1920, Long was transferred by the Frisco company to Sapulpa, Oklahoma, near Tulsa, though he likely maintained his Missouri home. He would work in Oklahoma for eight years and was the supervisor of a young telegrapher named Orvon Grover Autry, who later became western singer and actor Gene Autry.

Autry had started working there in 1925 and loved singing and playing guitar, which he did not only on radio KVOO but also during his night shifts at the railroad. Long and Autry met in 1928 and although Autry was 18 years younger than Long, they soon connected through music. Jimmie Rodgers had just started his sensational career and both men fell in love with his blues-drenched folk music. As a duo, both played guitar, while Autry took over the lead and Long sang harmony, specializing in Rodgers-type songs - many of them written by Long.

Mid 1930s

They used their railroad passes in October 1929 to catch a train from Tulsa to New York City for a record label audition. Autry had previously auditioned at Victor, unsuccessfully, however. Arriving in New York, they caught up with brothers Frankie and Johnny Marvin, who were already recording for the American Record Corporation (ARC). The quartet tried at Victor, recording two unreleased songs, and decided to go with ARC, beginning to record in October for the company. This was initially the last joint recording session for the Autry-Long duo.

In the next two years, Autry continued to record for different companies, including ARC and Victor, and became one of many Jimmie Rodgers clones, either covering Rodgers songs or recording material in the same style. Although they did not record together at that time, Long remained a mentor to Autry, who split his time between Oklahoma, working for the railroad, and New York, cutting recording sessions. Long recorded two solo numbers in New York in March 1930 for Gennett, which were rejected, and another two, "Watching the Clouds Roll By" and "When Daddy Was a Boy", which saw release on the Velvet and Diva dime store labels. Another session for Gennett in their Richmond, Indiana, headquarter studio was rejected as well but finally in December 1930, he recorded sessions that saw release on the Champion and Superior labels, two budget imprints that also belonged to Gennett's mother company, the Starr Piano Company. One of those songs was his own composition "That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine", a sentimental number about a mourning son who regretted his difficult relationship to his father.With a folkish melody, the song appealed to rural audiences and to those who liked to hear "rural" music. Long recorded it with railroad buddy Cliff Keiser but the releases on Champion and Superior went nowhere.

Long continued to record throughout 1931 and in October that year, reunited with Autry in the studio and they re-cut "That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine", with their new version being released in January 1932. ARC owned a plethora of record labels, some of them were distributed exclusively for furniture stores, mail-order businesses, and dime stores, and this wide distribution network certainly helped to spread the song across the country. Autry's regular broadcasts on WLS in Chicago might have been another factor. "Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine" became a hit. 30,000 copies were sold in the first month, 500,000 copies were sold at the end of the year. It was an enormous quantity during the hard depression years. The record remained a strong seller throughout the decade and, after Autry and Long performed the song in the movie "Tumbling Tumbleweeds", it was reissued on Vocalion in 1935 and reportedly sold more than 5,000,000 copies eventually. "Silver Haired Daddy of Mine" was covered by many artists throughout the years with more than 65 recorded versions known to exist.

Perfect release of "Silver Haired Daddy of Mine"

Long continued to record until 1933, often with his daughter Beverly and sometimes with his niece Ina Mae Spivey, mostly in Richmond for Starr Piano-owned labels but also one session for Victor and his last one altogether for Victor's budget label Bluebird. He continued to make records with Autry in the 1930s and records with his involvement were released and re-released steadily throughout the decade. Beverly also made recordings on her own and, along with her brother Jack, appeared as the Missouri Melody Makers on KWTO in Springfield. Long's niece Ina lived with them at that time and she married Autry in 1932.

Long never went full-time into the entertainment business but retained his job with the Frisco railroad. From time to time, when work allowed, he worked stage shows with Autry nevertheless. By then, his former inferior railroad worker had become one of the nation's most popular Western actor and singer. Long retired from Frisco around 1949 after 32 years. The same year, his wife Jesse died and his father did the following year. Jimmy Long passed away on September 25, 1953, at the age of 63 years in Springfield. He is buried there at Greenlawn Memorial Gardens.

The British Archive of Country Music has released a 22 track CD of Long's solo recordings entitled "Silver Haired Daddy of Mine".