You can hear this recording at the Internet Archive.


WHEN JIMMIE RODGERS SAID GOOD-BYE
Words and music by Dwight Butcher and Lou Herscher.
As recorded by Ernest Tubb, 1953. (Decca 28696)

There’s an old guitar that’s lonely
For its master’s gone away.
He’s is singin’ to the angels
Way up in heaven today.

He left a blues song for the brakeman.
For the baby, a lullaby.
To all sweethearts, he left a love song
When Jimmie Rodgers said goodbye.

He left a yodel for the cowboy.
They’ll sing it now with a tear-dimmed eye,
For he left ev’ry prairie lonely
When Jimmie Rodgers said goodbye.

They’ll miss him down in Alabama.
In Tennessee, you’ll hear them sigh.
Mississippi lost their blue yodeler
When Jimmie Rodgers said goodbye.

Though the freight trains keep on rollin’,
He caught a fast one on the fly,
But he left his guitar behind him
When Jimmie Rodgers said goodbye.

It’s twenty years since God called him
To his home up there on high,
But he left me so much to guide me
When Jimmie Rodgers said goodbye.