Known for his innovative yodeling style, Rodgers recorded 110 songs from 1927 to 1933. He was just 35 when he died of complications from tuberculosis. Hirano, 61, who is originally from Tokyo, obviously never met Rodgers, but there is no doubt this slight-framed man with wire-rim glasses and a thick Japanese accent shares a kindred connection to the Mississippi troubadour known as the father of country music.
The connection started 40 years ago when a friend in Tokyo lent Hirano a Jimmie Rodgers LP. “I took it home and put the needle on (the record) and after the first song that was it!” he said. “To me his sound is beyond music.”
Since that day in 1972, Hirano has been trying to perfect the tone and feeling of his hero’s songs. As he stood in his Noe Valley living room yodeling “When the Cactus is in Bloom” in time to delicate strums on his well-loved Martin guitar, it is apparent that he has spent much of his life practicing. Smooth birdlike calls penetrate the air. Rodgers would be proud.
He has 55 of the songs committed to memory and has sung each one thousands of times, but like a true connoisseur, the more he sings the more he realizes he has so much more to learn. Like a Zen master, he says true justice and understanding of these songs is a task he will never fully attain.
By day Hirano works as an assistant at a school in San Mateo, but it’s his love of Rodgers that keeps him inspired. Three or four times a month he plays the old-time -country tunes for small audiences at clubs in the Mission. He dons the same plaid shirt he bought at a thrift store 25 years ago when he first moved to San Francisco and started gigging here. His white cowboy hat is a signature part of the look and he wears it only when he’s playing. He won’t wear cowboy boots or a flashy white western suit like the one Rodgers shows off on the cover of his albums. “It’s too much,” said Hirano, who insists he’s not trying to impersonate Rodgers but rather interpret and share the musical vision of an American legend.
“Once I get up on the stage that energy just — boom! — explodes,” he said. Even many years later the same songs still inspire him: “I never get tired of it.”
