Andrew Jenkins

The Rev. Andrew W. Jenkins (November 26, 1885 – April 25, 1957 ) was a leading composer of American country, folk and gospel songs. Jenkins is credited with more than 800 compositions, about a third of which were nonsacred. He and his stepchildren performed as the Jenkins Family, a group considered to be the first family act to record country music, while Jenkins himself was among the most important country composers of the 1920s.

Early life Jenkins was born in 1885 in Jenkinsburg, Georgia, on the edge of Atlanta. He was left partially blind by a misprescribed medication while still an infant. Early on, he exhibited remarkable musical talents and was able to play almost any instrument he picked up, learning completely by ear. Jenkins, who also showed a proficiency for writing songs at a young age, saw his musical abilities as "a God gift."

Because he had some vision, Jenkins could not attend the state's school for the blind and had to pursue an education on his own. Besides his musical talents, he was skilled in other ways. After becoming a Methodist at the age of nine, he began "preaching" to playmates from porches and tree stumps. After his first wife's death, Jenkins married Francis Jane Walden Eskew in 1919. A young widow, his new wife had three musically talented children, Irene, Mary Lee and a son, T.P. The station, which had begun broadcasting just five months before and had a signal that reached coast-to-coast, became known as The Voice of the South. Their popularity, which reached to Canada and Mexico, (three years before the Carter Family began recording).

The Jenkins Family's initial releases were not originals, but were successful enough to earn the group another session, where they recorded four of Rev. Jenkins's songs, including two gospel numbers. Besides being one of the all-time best-selling country music 78s, the song set a sales record for Columbia that stood for many years.

"The Death of Floyd Collins" was based on one of the first great media events of the century, the story of a spelunker who became trapped in caverns near Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.

Prolific songwriter Jenkins proved a master at crafting topical songs from traditional musical and lyrical forms. For example, "Floyd Collins" opened with two lines that came directly from an old British ballad:

Oh, come all you young people and listen while I tell The fate of Floyd Collins, a lad we all know well In all, he wrote more than 300 non-sacred songs, many of them "news ballads". – in the late 1920s, pioneers such as Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family and in the 1930s, early folk artists such as Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly. The genre was revisited during the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s, in particular, by Bob Dylan, who wrote one of his first songs based on the same "formula" used by Jenkins, and Phil Ochs, many of whose songs came directly from newspaper headlines.

Meanwhile, Jenkins earned very little from the songs he wrote. The hit "The Death of Floyd Collins", for example, brought him just $25, and under his agreement with the producer he was working with at Okeh, he also gave up all rights to the song. After experiencing copyright problems, Jenkins began keeping meticulous records of his songs. The practice eventually paid off. Years later, after Mahalia Jackson recorded one of his gospel songs, "God Put a Rainbow in the Sky", his stepdaughter Irene was able to prove the song was not in the public domain but was Jenkins's composition.

The Jenkins Family's popularity opened Rev. Jenkins's ministry to a wide audience, as they performed at concerts and organized revival meetings throughout Georgia. Over time, Jenkins also served as pastor of several churches. In 1939, he lost his eyesight completely, yet continued to preach until the time of his death and also broadcast as an evangelist on Mexico's powerful, uncontrolled radio stations.

Jenkins was killed in an automobile accident in Thomaston, Georgia, in 1957.