[2] Since 1986, he has released 31 studio albums, including collaborations with artists such as Dr. Ralph Stanley, Buddy Miller, and Donna the Buffalo.

[4] His father was born in Lexington, VA, the son of Reverend David Thomas and Sallie Ann Lauderdale (née Chapman).

He played a variety of music, including bluegrass, Grateful Dead, and folk in a duo with best friend Nathan Lajoie as a teenager.

Lauderdale remembers enjoying the album Will the Circle be Unbroken by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Neil Young's Harvest.

[8] Lauderdale joined the national touring production of Pump Boys & Dinettes, which eventually reached Los Angeles where he met musicians Rosie Flores, Billy Bremmer, Pete Anderson, Lucinda Williams, Dale Watson, and others.

[3] Lauderdale then got a publishing deal with Reprise and moved into the second floor of Buddy and Julie Miller's house until he got his own place in Nashville.

[13] Lauderdale's solo debut, Planet of Love, was produced by Rodney Crowell and John Leventhal and released in 1991.

In 2011, Lauderdale toured with Hot Tuna, an ensemble act that included Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady, Barry Mitterhof, G.E.

Black Roses features North Mississippi Allstars' Cody and Luther Dickinson, whom Lauderdale met in Nashville at the Americana Music Festival,[19] as well as Muscle Shoals musicians Spooner Oldham and David Hood.

[19] 2013's Blue Moon Junction features Lauderdale's work as a singer and songwriter, some of them co-written with Hunter in a solo, acoustic format.

[17] Lauderdale performed solo as the opening act for Nick Lowe on the latter's 1995 tour of the U.S. and Europe with the Impossible Birds.

[18] The term "the Jim Lauderdale Phenomenon," coined by singer-songwriter Kim Richey and cited in an April 2000 article in The Tennessean by writer Peter Cooper, is an ironic reference to the fact that Lauderdale was nominated for a Grammy for his work with Stanley but was released from a record deal with RCA not long after.

[20][21] The article notes that many country artists that were signed to major labels in the 1990s failed to get radio airtime and had their contracts dropped after making one or two albums.

[20] The problem became widespread in Nashville during this period, when a lot of good music was being created and recorded, but the megastars dominated the airwaves.

[7] A documentary film called Jim Lauderdale: The King of Broken Hearts, directed by Jeremy Dylan, was released in 2013.

Using interviews with Elvis Costello, Buddy Miller, John Oates, Gary Allan, Tony Brown, and Jerry Douglas, the film describes Lauderdale's successes and failures as a recording artist.