$100. The recordings were released on October 7, earning modest success. In November, Rodgers, determined more than ever to make it in entertainment, headed to New York City in an effort to arrange another session with Peer. Rodgers requested that his sister-in-law, Elsie McWilliams, a musician, help him write some songs. She would become his most frequent "songwriting partner." She cowrote or wrote nearly 40 songs for Rodgers. Rodgers went to the Victor studios in Camden, New Jersey and recorded four more sides, including "Blue Yodel". Better known as "T for Texas", it featured a yodel Rodgers claimed to have learned "after he caught a troupe of Swiss emissaries doing a demonstration at a church." In the next two years this recording sold nearly half a million copies, rocketing Rodgers to stardom. After this he determined when Peer and Victor would record him, and sold-out shows whenever and wherever he played. Over the next few years, Rodgers stayed very busy. He did a movie short for Columbia Pictures, The Singing Brakeman, which today appears on the DVD and VHS compilation "Times Ain't Like They Used To Be: Early Rural & Popular Music From Rare Original Film Masters 1928–35" and on YouTube, and made various recordings across the country. He performed on a bill with humorist Will Rogers as part of a Red Cross tour across the Midwest. On July 16, 1930, he recorded "Blue Yodel No. 9" with Louis Armstrong on trumpet and Armstrong's wife Lil on piano. A song written by Clayton McMichen and recorded as "Prohibition Has Done Me Wrong" was not issued, possibly because of copyright conflicts with Columbia, though to Juanita McMichen Lynch, Peer felt it was "too controversial for the times." The master was put aside and subsequently lost. Later years Rodgers' penultimate recordings were made in August 1932 in Camden, and the tuberculosis clearly was getting the better of him. He had given up touring by that time, but did have a weekly radio show in San Antonio, Texas, where he had relocated when "T for Texas" ("Blue Yodel Number 1") became a hit. It was not in Rodgers' make-up to stay still, though, and his constant touring and recording schedule only hurt his chances of recovery. With the country in the grip of the Great Depression, the expense of making field recordings resulted in the practice quickly fading. So, in May 1933, Rodgers