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Roseanna Rogers: A Long Time Never Met Relationship

James E. Akenson

Tennessee Tech University (Retired)

Cookeville, Tennessee, U.S.A

 

A few years back I wrote about my friend Andrew Smith in Tasmania who I had known for years but never met in person. Finally, at the 2018 International Country Music Conference (ICMC), I met Andrew Smith. We continue to be friends and communicate regularly and write articles together.
Well, I have another relationship that has similar qualities. I value my contact with Roseanna Rogers who appeared at the “True Value Country Showdown” in Sparta Tennessee.I remember it well. It was 4 June 1988. I received a Coleman cooler for serving as a judge.It is still in the basement, showing the signs of age, stacked under other coolers, and next to varied and sundry items. Like so many other relationships, you never know exactly where it’s going. This article takes me in directions I didn’t quite anticipate. Kind of like Rascal Flatt’s song that states “God bless the broken road that lead me straight to you.” In this case, there is an also broken road with Artificial Intelligence (Ai). Ideas popped into my head to use Ai in different ways. I’ll share them as we move along.
A former student and his band participated in the True Value Country Countdown. Jimmy Bilbrey is still active in Country Music in the Upper Cumberland Region of Tennessee. The most impressive…to me… performer was Mary Kate Werke. Can’t find her on a search today, though. The Kermit Potter Band performed, but did not compete. Can’t locate them on a search either. Even though it was a local event, the True Value Country organizers had judges leave before announcing the winner. Evidently, some folks can get quite agitated if the results don’t suit their tastes.
I left with my Coleman cooler. Roseanna Rogers appeared at the True Value Showdown when she was riding high with Buffalo Valley Road. It managed to be Number 1 in Tennessee radio airplay and Number 8 nationally. Country Music songs often mention states, cities, and landforms in the U.S. South. Even today, there is still a strong sense of Southern identity associated with Country Music. Buffalo Valley Road is set in the Upper Cumberland region of Middle Tennessee. Buffalo Valley Road runs from Cookeville to Baxter and down ‘the mountain’ to near the Caney Fork River.
Like a great Country Music song, Buffalo Valley Road told a story. It featured a “four room shack in a valley surrounded by a hillside farm. Pa raised seven young’uns and a little tobacco and corn.” Of course, I would have preferred the lyrics to say “Ma and Pa raised seven young uns…” No question but the lot of rural women wasn’t an easy one. I think they deserve tremendous credit for their hard work, bearing lots of children, and putting up with male domination.
Sounds like a classic sharecropping setting. Sharecropping characterized lots of small farmers in the South years ago both Black and White. It was a tough life. You didn’t own your land, but paid the owner half of your farm income. An Ai overview says “Predominantly used in the American South after the Civil War, it frequently trapped freed Black people and poor White farmers in exploitative cycles of unpayable debt.”
The female narrator Buffalo Valley Road tells that she played with her brother Billy and his friend Jessie. When they were older the female narrator and Jessie spent time alone together and “took a short cut to heaven on Buffalo Valley Road.” The ending finds the female narrator playing with her son and waiting to see if Jessie would be coming back down Buffalo Valley Road. Just like a guy, you say. Have fun and then disappear. Come to think of it I’ve been getting lots of “Submissive Wives” Facebook posts these days. Purity before marriage is one of the requirements. Can’t give in to the pleasure of the flesh before the wedding.
Buffalo Valley Road also fits with an important aspect of Country Music that my friend and colleague Dr. Randal D Williams and I have been researching for several years. We’ve been working on the Sacred and the Profane in Country Music. Country Music with strong roots in the South included a strong Evangelical Protestant impact. Baptists, Methodists, and the like helped make the Bible Belt possible.
They were into Salvation through Jesus Christ, Heaven and Hell, Saturday sinners and Sunday saints, and strict codes of sexual purity despite the temptations of the flesh. Buffalo Valley Road with a pleasureful moment for the young girl resulted in a baby outside of marriage. Thinking of the Sacred and Profane ‘pleasures of the flesh’ Buffalo Valley Road turned me to Ai. I decided to write two slightly different prompts asking Ai to create an image of the Buffalo Valley Road story.
First Chat GPT Buffalo Valley Road Query. The second version is the featured image above.

The first prompt didn’t include Jessie leaving Buffalo Valley Road. The second prompt include having Jessie leaving. I included elements from the song including sharecropping implied by Pa raising a little tobacco and corn. No, sharecropping isn’t specifically mentioned. Note that Ai even created some lyrics of its own consistent with the Buffalo Valley Road story.

Roseanna is in the centre.

Although I didn’t formally meet Roseanna Rogers on 4 June 1988, she has managed to be part of my professional life over the years. How so? Well, I’ve used Buffalo Valley Road in my teaching. I developed a primary grade lesson that I taught to Joy Chadwell’s second graders at Capshaw Elementary School in Cookeville, Tennessee. We filled out a map that included Buffalo Valley Road and sang the phrase “Buffalo Valley Road” when it occurred in the song.

No. We didn’t deal with the unplanned pregnancy. I also used it over the years when I taught a MA and PhD level course on Country Music for teachers. Just recently, I gave a talk for the Cookeville History Museum in honor of two Tennessee Tech University history professors.
Dr. Calvin Dickinson and Dr. Michael Birdwell had long careers at Tennessee Tech. It created additional interaction with Roseanna Rogers. “Country Music in the Upper Cumberland” dealt with the history and the current state of Country Music. I discussed the Old Time String Bands, the African American presence, concerts, festivals, artists, and the impact of technology. I made a major point that “The Big Picture is the Small Picture is the Big Picture.”Of course,
I included Roseanna Rogers and Buffalo Valley Road as part of the “Country Music In the Upper Cumberland” presentation. It fit perfectly with the “Big Picture is the Small Picture is the Big Picture.” It was a song with a local, southern setting yet was part of the bigger national Country Music scene. Everyone in attendance knew that Buffalo Valley Road ran from Cookeville to Baxter between Hwy 70 and Interstate 40. It made perfect sense to them.
Yet Buffalo Valley Road related to both the immediate Upper Cumberland region and was connected to the big picture of the Country Music industry. Roseanna Rogers and I have also been Facebook friends for quite some time. How it came about I can’t remember.
I did communicate with Roseanna Rogers that I was going to include Buffalo Valley Road in the Power Point for my “Upper Cumberland and Country Music” talk. We prepared a ZOOM link so Roseanna and others could attend virtually. She lives in Maine so in person attendance wasn’t really an option. The ZOOM link malfunctioned, but at least we tried. Roseanna Rogers knew about the talk and that she was part of it.
I’ve recently learned new things about Roseanna Rogers career. In 2010 she was inducted into the Maine Country Music Hall of Fame. She’s also receiving a Trail Blazer Pioneer Award for a lifetime achievement in country music. In addition, Roseanna says she’s “Been writing a lot . Got 7 songs down ready to go record. They are copy wrote so I’m good to go now into a nice studio in Maine to get them all down and put them on cd and youtube.”
Roseanna’s clearly staying active as a Country Music artist. Not only that but she just shared that “Years ago I sang with Bill Phillips who as you know had a big hit song with Dolly P. I sang with many artists and met so many great talents and friends that I have kept in touch with for years.”
My final step in this journey was to ask Ai to reflect for me as to this article. What would create as an image of what I’ve written. A picture supposedly is worth a thousand words. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t give quite the detail I’d like. There you have it. The Country Music song Buffalo Valley Road has taken me in various directions. I’ve learned more about Country Music. I’ve gotten to know Roseanna Rogers over a period of time.
We’re communicating more about career history and 2026 and beyond. She’s sending me more material. I just might be able to write another article about her in the future. Let’s see. It’s about 38 years. Who “woulda thunk” that 38 years after hearing Buffalo Valley Road on WHUB AM in Cookville, Tennessee that I’d be communicating with Roseanna Rogers and still thinking about this great Country Music song?
I couldn’t have guessed that in 2026 I would be dealing with the whiz-bang world of Artificial Intelligence. Really, “the broken road” leads straight to the most remarkable people and things. I guess I’ll ‘keep on truckin’ keeping it country. 

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