Jimmie Skinner

Widely viewed as an outsider among country music’s central figures, Jimmie Skinner juggled numerous roles across his career, among them disc jockey, composer, stage performer, record-label founder, and retail distributor of discs. While working as a radio host in the early 1940s, he began experimenting with songwriting and achieved an initial breakthrough when “Doin My Time” appeared in 1941. Relocating to Knoxville, TN by 1950, he earned respect among bluegrass musicians and other traditional-style country artists for the quality of his material; Jimmy Martin, for instance, enjoyed success with the Skinner-penned “You Don't Know My Mind.” Mercury Records brought him aboard in 1957, and he promptly registered two chart successes with “I Found My Girl in the U.S.A.” and “Dark Hollow.” Subsequent years of touring and sessions for roughly six additional labels yielded no comparable breakthroughs, prompting a move to Ohio where he launched the Vetco imprint and opened Jimmy Skinner Music, a mail-order record shop he continued to run until his passing in 1979.