Yodeling
Encyclopedia
Yodeling is a form of singing that involves singing an extended note which rapidly and repeatedly changes in pitch from the vocal or chest register (or "chest voice") to the falsetto
/head register; making a high-low-high-low sound.The English word yodel is derived from a German word jodeln (originally Austro-Bavarian language) meaning "to utter the syllable jo". This vocal technique is used in many cultures throughout the world. Although traveling minstrels were yodeling in their performances in the United Kingdom and the United States as early as the eighteen-hundreds, the first country music
recording to include yodeling was cut by singer Riley Puckett
in 1924. In 1928, blending traditional work, blues, hobo and cowboy music, Jimmie Rodgers
released his first recording "Blue Yodel No.1", and created an instant national craze for yodeling in the United States. The popularity lasted through the 1940s, but by the 1950s it became rare to hear yodeling in Country or Western music.
British stage performances by yodelers were common as early as the nineteenth century.. Sir Walter Scott wrote in his June 4, 1830 journal entry that "Anne wants me to go hear the Tyrolese Minstrels but...I cannot but think their yodeling...is a variation upon the tones of a jackass
." In 1939 the Tyrolese Minstrels toured the United States and started an American craze for Alpine music. During the 1840s dozens of German, Swiss, and Austrian singing groups crisscrossed the country entertaining audiences with a combination of singing, yodeling, and “Alpine harmony.” Traveling American minstrels were yodeling in the United States as well. Tom Christian was the first American yodeling minstrel, appearing in 1847 in Chicago. Recordings of yodelers were made as early as 1892 and in 1920 the Victor
recording company listed 17 yodels in their catalogue, many of them by George Watson, the most successful yodeler of the time. In 1897 Watson recorded the song, "Sleep, Baby, Sleep" which was later recorded in 1927 by Riley Puckett
as the second yodeling record ever made (the first was "Rock All Our Babies to Sleep"). "Sleep Baby Sleep" was also the first song ever recorded by Jimmie Rodgers (at the Bristol sessions
); Rodgers would eventually come to be known as the Father of Country Music.
In Persian
classical music, singers frequently use tahrir, a yodeling technique that oscillates on neighbour tones. It is similar to the Swiss yodel, and is used as an ornament or trill in phrases which have long syllables, and usually falls at the end of a phrase.
In Georgian traditional music
, yodeling takes the form of krimanchuli technique, and is used as a top part in three/four part polyphony
.
In Central Africa
, Pygmy
singers use yodels within their elaborate polyphonic singing, and the Shona
people of Zimbabwe
sometimes yodel while playing the mbira
. The Mbuti
of the Congo incorporate distinctive whistles and yodels
into their songs. Living from hunting and gathering, they sing hunting and harvest songs and use yodelling to call each other. In 1952 ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey
recorded their songs and they have recently been released on compact discs.
It is thought that yodeling was first introduced to the United States by German immigrants in Pennsylvania in the early 1800s. As the new settlers traveled south through the Appalachian Mountains
and beyond into the Deep South
they came into contact with Irish immigrants, Scandinavians (practictioners of a unique yodeling called kölning), and other nationalities including African slaves who communicated with "field hollers", described by Frederick Law Olmstead in 1853 as a ‘long, loud, musical shout, rising and falling and breaking into falsetto’. German yodeling may have converted southern field hollers into a more musical form and combined them with Irish narrative ballads, resulting in the unique form of the yodeling tradition in America. But it was Jimmie Rodgers
who combined the southern Black blues with the yodel in the 1920s, who introduced and popularized the American yodel in the United States.
But not all early American yodeling music came out of the Deep South. Western music
was directly influenced by the folk music traditions of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and many cowboy songs can be traced back to European folk songs. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Western music became widely popular through the romanticization of the cowboy and idealized depictions of the west in Hollywood films. Singing cowboys, such as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, sang cowboy songs in their films and became popular throughout the United States.
was an entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface
or, especially after the American Civil War
, black people in blackface. Minstrel shows toured the same circuits as opera companies, circuses, and European entertainers, with venues ranging from lavish opera houses to makeshift tavern stages. When the European Tyrolese Minstrels toured the U.S. for several years in the early 1840s and created an American craze for Alpine music, four unemployed white actors decided to stage an African-American style spoof of this group's concerts. Calling themselves Dan Emmett
's Virginia Minstrels, the performance was wildly popular and most historians mark this production as the beginning of minstrelsy in the U.S. According to jazz historian Gary Giddins
:
Companies continued to perform in both the North and South throughout the Civil War, and after the war minstrelsy remained popular. Although African Americans were forbidden by law to perform on stage with whites in many states, some companies secretly included blacks, and as laws changed several all-black minstrel companies toured America and Great Britain. Black performers still had to wear blackface makeup in order to look "dark enough," and they performed material that demeaned their own race. Despite these drawbacks, minstrelsy provided African American performers with their first professional stage outlet.
By the 1880s the minstrel show had been replaced by Vaudeville
and American Burlesque
. By around 1905, more than 20 years before Jimmie Rodgers introduced his blue yodel, African Americans were touring the country singing and yodeling. The most noted yodelers of that time were Monroe Tabor ("The Yodeling Bellboy" - though he was not a bellboy), Beulah Henderson (who appeared in black face), and Charles Anderson (who played a singing "mammy" and a female impersonator in several of his acts). Tabor performed with the Dandy Dixie Minstrels. In New York in 1908 a 'well-known critic' reported:
And from a 1917 review:
Known as The Jolly Hendersons, Beulah Henderson toured with her husband Billy from 1905 through 1910. Billed as "The Classy Colored Comedy Pair" Beulah was featured as "America's only Colored Lady Yodeler". In Indianapolis in 1911 manager Tim Owsley noted:
Charles Anderson was touring with vaudeville as early as 1909 singing a combination of blues and yodeling. A 1913 St. Louis review reports:
Although most historians credit white singer Riley Puckett with the first recorded yodeling record (in 1924), in 1923 and 1924 Anderson recorded eight sides for the Okeh label which gave a summary account of his vaudeville repertoire during the previous decade. Five of the recorded songs are yodels - "Sleep, Baby, Sleep", "Comic Yodle Song", "Coo Coo" (J K Emmett's Cuckoo Song, adapted for Anderson's famous 60-second sustained soprano note), "Laughing Yodel" and "Roll On Silver Moon", a sentimental ballad, similar to Jimmie Rodgers' various Southern ballad recordings.
Country blues singer Lottie Kimbrough
, billed as The Kansas City Butterball (she was a rather large woman) sang in speakeasy
s and nightclubs. and recorded her music from 1924 through 1929. Kimbrough's musical collaboration with Winston Holmes resulted in her best known recordings. Holmes supplied a series of yodels, vocalized bird calls and train whistles on some of their recordings.
When music critic Abbe Niles heard the Blue Yodel recordings released by Jimmy Rodgers in 1928 he was impressed by how distinctively black Rodger's Blue Yodel recordings sounded, yodeling and all. In his opinion Rodgers was a "white man gone black". In his 1928 record review column, writing under the heading 'White man singing black songs', Niles acknowledged that Rodger's first Blue Yodel had "started the whole epidemic of yodelling blues that now rages - though Clarence Williams wrote a good one five years ago." Niles went on to advise his readers to add race records to their collections saying, "Listening to race records is nearly the only way for white people to share the Negroes' pleasures without bothering the Negroes."
Authors Lynn Abbott & Doug Seroff write:
in their chest voices and tones within a certain range of higher pitch in their head voices and spring into their falsetto (an "unsupported" register forcing vocal cords in a higher pitch without any head or chest voice air support). In untrained or inexperienced singers, a gap between these ranges often exists, although more experienced singers can control their voices at the point where these ranges overlap
and can easily switch between them to produce high-quality tones in either. Yodelling is a particular application of this technique, wherein a singer might switch between these registers several times in only a few seconds and at a high volume. Repeated alternation between registers at a singer's passaggio pitch range produces a very distinctive sound.
For example, in the famous "Yodel - Ay - EEE - Oooo", the "EEE" is sung in the head voice while all other syllables are in the chest voice.
The best places for Alpine-style yodelling are those with an echo
. Ideal natural locations include not only mountain range
s but lake
s, rocky gorges or shorelines, and high or open areas with one or more distant rock faces.
, a blind singer from Georgia. In 1924 in country music
, his recording was one of the top hits of that year. Another early yodeler was Emmett Miller
, a minstrel show
performer, also from Georgia. Miller is little-remembered today, however in the 1920s he recorded the song, "Lovesick Blues
" which was later a major hit for country singer Hank Williams. Bob Wills
, the King of Western Swing
, was also influenced by Miller (see the sound file above with Will's singer Tommy Duncan singing "Blue Yodel #1" in 1937) In the early 1920s African American Winston Holmes started a record label, Merritt Records, and was a performer himself. His vocals included bird calls, train whistles and yodels. He managed and made some songs with blues singer Lottie Kimbrough
in the twenties.
s, and eventually created his characteristic sound - a blend of traditional work, blues, hobo, and cowboy songs and his trademark "Blue Yodel
." His first Blue Yodel, known as “Blue Yodel No.1 (T For Texas) ”, was recorded in the Trinity Baptist Church at Camden, New Jersey. When the song was released in February 1928 it became “a national phenomenon and generated an excitement and record-buying frenzy that no-one could have predicted”. Rogers sang about everyday affairs and woes that many Americans of that time could relate to. Here are the lyrics of Blue Yodel #4:
According to a black musician who lived near Rodgers in Mississippi, everyone, both black and white alike, began to copy Rodgers: "Every one who could pick a guitar started yodeling like Rodgers." Rodgers died in 1933, however many performers that followed him claimed that he had been a big influence in their singing style and career.
.jpg)
In 1934 yodeler Elton Britt
recorded what was to become his signature song, "Chime Bells". Like so many others of that era, Britt listened to records of Jimmie Rodgers, which inspired him to learn how to yodel. Eventually he became renowned for his ability to sustain his yodel for an unusually long time, a skill he reportedly learned while swimming underwater for several minutes at a time. Country singer Jewel
yodels and is known for her version of "Chime Bells" as well. Jewel says that she learned to yodel from her father who also learned to yodel by listening to Jimmie Rodgers.
Blue yodeler Cliff Carlisle
was one of the most prolific recording artists of the 1930s, and a pioneer in the use of the Hawaiian steel guitar
in country music. He frequently released songs with sexual connotations including barnyard metaphors (which became something of a trademark).
Jack Guthrie
, the cousin of Woody Guthrie
, performed in the thirties and early forties. Known as "Oklahoma's Yodeling Cowboy", he developed a style of singing and yodeling influenced by his idol, Jimmie Rodgers, and his experiences as a bucking-horse rider and rodeo
performer.
Hank Snow
was one of the great country legends of the 1950's, but he had actually been singing in Canada for years where he was known as "The Yodeling Ranger". He admired Jimmie Rodgers as well, and learned to yodel by listening to his records. He even named his son Jimmie Rodgers Snow.
Tommy Duncan
, vocalist for "Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys", was a good yodeler. (See the sound file above with Duncan singing Rodger's "Blue Yodel #1" in 1937) Bob Wills
is considered by music authorities to be the co-founder of Western Swing.
The DeZurik Sisters
were two of the first women to become stars on both the National Barn Dance
and the Grand Ole Opry
, largely a result of their original yodeling style. Carolina Cotton and Patsy Montana
were early cowgirl yodeling singers as well. Patsy Montana's signature song, "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart
" was again popularized by singer/yodeler LeAnn Rimes
in the 1990s. In 1996 Rimes also recorded "The Cattle Call
", a "singing cowboy
" song written by cowboy yodeler Tex Owens, with legendary singer Eddy Arnold
. "The Cattle Call" was Arnold's signature song, but it has been recorded by many artists including Emmylou Harris
and even Elvis Presley
.
Cowboy singer and actor Roy Rogers
yodeled, as did his box office competitor Gene Autry
. (See the sound file above in which Autry sings the Jimmie Rodgers song "Blue Yodel #5") "Yodelin' Slim Clark
", hailed from Maine
and performed for 70 years. (See the sound file above "The Old Chisholm Trail" recorded by Clark in 1956.) Yodeler Don Walker
was from Texas. Though widely known in Texas, his singing career didn't really take off until he was 60 years old in 1994. In 2000 he received a lifetime "Heritage" award from the National Endowment for the Arts
, and he and his band played at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Jimmie Davis
, who served two terms as the Governor of Louisiana, was also a successful country singer who yodeled.
Perhaps yodeler Bill Haley
of Bill Haley and the Comets has one of the strangest histories of all. Bill Haley zoomed to fame as the "King of Rock and Roll" when his song "Rock Around the Clock
" was featured in the popular film Blackboard Jungle
. But it is little-known that Haley and his band had been around for years doing Western swing
music with Haley featured as a yodeler. Haley was born in 1925 and "Rock Around the Clock" made the scene in 1955 and at that time he and his band were using the name the Comets. However, prior to that time they had gone under the names the Down Homers, the Texas Range Riders, the Four Aces of Western Swing and finally, The Saddlemen. At one point in the 1940s, Bill Haley was even awarded Indiana State Yodeling Champion for his skill, perhaps something that his skillful manager Colonel Tom Parker
felt not important to mention to his screaming teenage rock 'n' roll fans.
Slim Whitman
has been performing for over 60 years. Whitman avoided the "down on yer luck" songs, preferring instead to sing laid-back romantic melodies about simple life and love. Critics dubbed his musical style "countrypolitan," due to its fusion of country music and a more sophisticated crooner
vocal style. Pop singer Michael Jackson
cited Whitman as one of his ten favorite vocalists. Beatles George Harrison
and Paul McCartney
cite Whitman as an early influence In the film, Mars Attacks! a Kansas teenager discovers that the Martians are vulnerable to Whitman's song "Indian Love Call
", whereupon he and his grandmother use it to destroy the Martians.
Other western music
yodeling singers include Douglas B. Green
(Ranger Doug) and Wylie Gustafson
. Green sings with his band Riders in the Sky. He is also a music historian and has written a book, Singing in the Saddle "the first comprehensive look at the singing cowboy phenomenon that swept the United States in the 1930s". Gustafson learned to yodel from his dad, who learned from Austrians on the ski team in Bozeman, Montana. In 2007, he released an instructional book and CD titled, How to Yodel: Lessons to Tickle Your Tonsils.
Yodeler Taylor Ware
was a contestant on America's Got Talent
when she was eleven years old. According to Ware, she taught herself to yodel from an audiotape and instruction book when she was seven years old. Alyse Eady
, who holds the title of Miss Arkansas 2010 and was 1st runner-up in the Miss America 2011 Pageant, both yodels and does ventriloquism to the song "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" as her talent performance.
(Montana Slim) was known as the "Father of Canadian Country Music". He began singing in the 1920s after seeing a traveling Swiss performer named "The Yodeling Fool" in a nearby town. Carter sang in the "singing cowboy" style and developed a yodel with a Swiss-sound sometimes called an "echo yodel" or a "three-in-one."
Bobbejaan Schoepen
was a Belgian yodeler and Franzl Lang
, also known as "Der Jodlerkönig" or the Yodel King, is a professional yodeler from the Alps.
Joy McKean
, Australian country music singer-songwriter, is known as the "grand lady" of Australian country music
. By the age of 18 she was performing with her sister Heather on their own radio show as the McKean Sisters, noted for their yodeling harmonies. Mckean performed with her husband Slim Dusty
till his death in 2003. Slim, a singer-songwriter and yodeler as well, wrote his first song, "The Way the Cowboy Dies" when he was only 10 years old. He received 37 Golden Guitar
and two ARIA
awards and was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame
.
Kishore Kumar
was a playback singer
from India, famous for his yodeling, while it was Mohammed Rafi
who introduced yodeling as playback singing in India.
band Focus
. A UK example of this style was the Glasgow-born Karl Denver
; the style can be heard in Frank Ifield's version of Johnny Mercer's "I Remember You." Slim Cessna's Auto Club
often features Slim and Jay Munly
yodeling.
is the yodel-like call of the character Tarzan
, as portrayed by actor Johnny Weissmuller
in the films based on the character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs
, starting with Tarzan the Ape Man (1932
). The yell was a creation of the movies, based on what Burroughs described in his books as "the victory cry of the bull ape."
Falsetto
Falsetto is the vocal register occupying the frequency range just above the modal voice register and overlapping with it by approximately one octave. It is produced by the vibration of the ligamentous edges of the vocal folds, in whole or in part...
/head register; making a high-low-high-low sound.The English word yodel is derived from a German word jodeln (originally Austro-Bavarian language) meaning "to utter the syllable jo". This vocal technique is used in many cultures throughout the world. Although traveling minstrels were yodeling in their performances in the United Kingdom and the United States as early as the eighteen-hundreds, the first country music
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
recording to include yodeling was cut by singer Riley Puckett
Riley Puckett
George Riley Puckett was an American country music pioneer mostly known for being a member of Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers.-Biography:...
in 1924. In 1928, blending traditional work, blues, hobo and cowboy music, Jimmie Rodgers
Jimmie Rodgers (country singer)
James Charles Rodgers , known as Jimmie Rodgers, was an American country singer in the early 20th century known most widely for his rhythmic yodeling...
released his first recording "Blue Yodel No.1", and created an instant national craze for yodeling in the United States. The popularity lasted through the 1940s, but by the 1950s it became rare to hear yodeling in Country or Western music.
History
Most experts agree that yodeling was used in Alpine folk music in the Central Alps as a method of communication between herders and their stock or between Alpine villages, with the multi-pitched "yelling" later becoming part of the region's traditional lore and musical expression. The calls may also have been endearments shepherds used to express affection to their herds. The earliest record of a yodel is in 1545, where it's described as "the call of a cowherd from AppenzellAppenzell
Appenzell is a region and historical canton in the northeast of Switzerland, entirely surrounded by the Canton of St. Gallen....
British stage performances by yodelers were common as early as the nineteenth century.. Sir Walter Scott wrote in his June 4, 1830 journal entry that "Anne wants me to go hear the Tyrolese Minstrels but...I cannot but think their yodeling...is a variation upon the tones of a jackass
Jackass
A jackass is a male donkey.Jackass may also refer to:In entertainment:* Jackass ** Jackass: The Movie, 2002** Jackass Number Two, 2006 film** Jackass 2.5, a DVD release** Jackass: The Game, a video game...
." In 1939 the Tyrolese Minstrels toured the United States and started an American craze for Alpine music. During the 1840s dozens of German, Swiss, and Austrian singing groups crisscrossed the country entertaining audiences with a combination of singing, yodeling, and “Alpine harmony.” Traveling American minstrels were yodeling in the United States as well. Tom Christian was the first American yodeling minstrel, appearing in 1847 in Chicago. Recordings of yodelers were made as early as 1892 and in 1920 the Victor
Victor
-Roman Catholics:Popes:*Saint Pope Victor I *Pope Victor II *Blessed Pope Victor III Antipopes:*Antipope Victor IV *Antipope Victor IV Bishops of Chur:*Victor I, Bishop of Chur, seventh century...
recording company listed 17 yodels in their catalogue, many of them by George Watson, the most successful yodeler of the time. In 1897 Watson recorded the song, "Sleep, Baby, Sleep" which was later recorded in 1927 by Riley Puckett
Riley Puckett
George Riley Puckett was an American country music pioneer mostly known for being a member of Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers.-Biography:...
as the second yodeling record ever made (the first was "Rock All Our Babies to Sleep"). "Sleep Baby Sleep" was also the first song ever recorded by Jimmie Rodgers (at the Bristol sessions
Bristol sessions
The Bristol sessions are considered the "Big Bang" of modern country music. They were held in 1927 in Bristol, Tennessee by Victor Talking Machine Company company producer Ralph Peer. They marked the commercial debuts of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family....
); Rodgers would eventually come to be known as the Father of Country Music.
In Persian
Music of Iran
The music of Iran has thousands of years of history, as seen in the archeological documents of Elam, one of the earliest world cultures,which was located in southwestern Iran...
classical music, singers frequently use tahrir, a yodeling technique that oscillates on neighbour tones. It is similar to the Swiss yodel, and is used as an ornament or trill in phrases which have long syllables, and usually falls at the end of a phrase.
In Georgian traditional music
Music of Georgia
Georgia has rich and still vibrant traditional music, which is primarily known as arguably the earliest polyphonic tradition of the Christian world. Situated on the border of Europe and Asia, Georgia is also a home of variety of urban singing styles with the mixture of native polyphony, Middle...
, yodeling takes the form of krimanchuli technique, and is used as a top part in three/four part polyphony
Polyphony
In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....
.
In Central Africa
Central Africa
Central Africa is a core region of the African continent which includes Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda....
, Pygmy
Pygmy
Pygmy is a term used for various ethnic groups worldwide whose average height is unusually short; anthropologists define pygmy as any group whose adult men grow to less than 150 cm in average height. A member of a slightly taller group is termed "pygmoid." The best known pygmies are the Aka,...
singers use yodels within their elaborate polyphonic singing, and the Shona
Shona people
Shona is the name collectively given to two groups of people in the east and southwest of Zimbabwe, north eastern Botswana and southern Mozambique.-Shona Regional Classification:...
people of Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...
sometimes yodel while playing the mbira
Mbira
In African music, the mbira is a musical instrument that consists of a wooden board to which staggered metal keys have been attached. It is often fitted into a resonator...
. The Mbuti
Mbuti
Mbuti or Bambuti are one of several indigenous pygmy groups in the Congo region of Africa. Their languages belong to the Central Sudanic and also to Bantu languages.-Overview:...
of the Congo incorporate distinctive whistles and yodels
into their songs. Living from hunting and gathering, they sing hunting and harvest songs and use yodelling to call each other. In 1952 ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey
Hugh Tracey
Hugh Tracey was an important twentieth century ethnomusicologist. He and his wife collected and archived music from Southern and Central Africa. He began making field recordings of music in the early 20's, through the 70's....
recorded their songs and they have recently been released on compact discs.
It is thought that yodeling was first introduced to the United States by German immigrants in Pennsylvania in the early 1800s. As the new settlers traveled south through the Appalachian Mountains
Appalachian Mountains
The Appalachian Mountains #Whether the stressed vowel is or ,#Whether the "ch" is pronounced as a fricative or an affricate , and#Whether the final vowel is the monophthong or the diphthong .), often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern North America. The Appalachians...
and beyond into the Deep South
Deep South
The Deep South is a descriptive category of the cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states which were most dependent on plantation type agriculture during the pre-Civil War period...
they came into contact with Irish immigrants, Scandinavians (practictioners of a unique yodeling called kölning), and other nationalities including African slaves who communicated with "field hollers", described by Frederick Law Olmstead in 1853 as a ‘long, loud, musical shout, rising and falling and breaking into falsetto’. German yodeling may have converted southern field hollers into a more musical form and combined them with Irish narrative ballads, resulting in the unique form of the yodeling tradition in America. But it was Jimmie Rodgers
Jimmie Rodgers (country singer)
James Charles Rodgers , known as Jimmie Rodgers, was an American country singer in the early 20th century known most widely for his rhythmic yodeling...
who combined the southern Black blues with the yodel in the 1920s, who introduced and popularized the American yodel in the United States.
But not all early American yodeling music came out of the Deep South. Western music
Western music
Western music may refer to:* Classical music, a genre of art music produced or rooted in the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music from the 10th century onward...
was directly influenced by the folk music traditions of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and many cowboy songs can be traced back to European folk songs. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Western music became widely popular through the romanticization of the cowboy and idealized depictions of the west in Hollywood films. Singing cowboys, such as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, sang cowboy songs in their films and became popular throughout the United States.
First professional yodelers in the United States
The American minstrel showMinstrel show
The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....
was an entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface
Blackface
Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky...
or, especially after the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, black people in blackface. Minstrel shows toured the same circuits as opera companies, circuses, and European entertainers, with venues ranging from lavish opera houses to makeshift tavern stages. When the European Tyrolese Minstrels toured the U.S. for several years in the early 1840s and created an American craze for Alpine music, four unemployed white actors decided to stage an African-American style spoof of this group's concerts. Calling themselves Dan Emmett
Dan Emmett
Daniel Decatur "Dan" Emmett was an American songwriter and entertainer, founder of the first troupe of the blackface minstrel tradition.-Biography:...
's Virginia Minstrels, the performance was wildly popular and most historians mark this production as the beginning of minstrelsy in the U.S. According to jazz historian Gary Giddins
Gary Giddins
Gary Giddins is an American jazz critic, author, and director, best known for his longtime work with The Village Voice. Born in Brooklyn, and raised on Long Island, Giddins graduated from Grinnell College, Iowa, in 1970...
:
- Though antebellum (minstrel) troupes were white, the form developed in a form of racial collaboration, illustrating the axiom that defines – and continues to define – American music as it developed over the next century and a half : African American innovations metamorphose into American popular culture when white performers learn to mimic black ones.
Companies continued to perform in both the North and South throughout the Civil War, and after the war minstrelsy remained popular. Although African Americans were forbidden by law to perform on stage with whites in many states, some companies secretly included blacks, and as laws changed several all-black minstrel companies toured America and Great Britain. Black performers still had to wear blackface makeup in order to look "dark enough," and they performed material that demeaned their own race. Despite these drawbacks, minstrelsy provided African American performers with their first professional stage outlet.
By the 1880s the minstrel show had been replaced by Vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
and American Burlesque
American burlesque
American Burlesque is a genre of variety show. Derived from elements of Victorian burlesque, music hall and minstrel shows, burlesque shows in America became popular in the 1860s and evolved to feature ribald comedy and female striptease...
. By around 1905, more than 20 years before Jimmie Rodgers introduced his blue yodel, African Americans were touring the country singing and yodeling. The most noted yodelers of that time were Monroe Tabor ("The Yodeling Bellboy" - though he was not a bellboy), Beulah Henderson (who appeared in black face), and Charles Anderson (who played a singing "mammy" and a female impersonator in several of his acts). Tabor performed with the Dandy Dixie Minstrels. In New York in 1908 a 'well-known critic' reported:
- Monroe Tabor sang "A Tear, a Kiss, a Smile". Mr Tabor is a new tenor with a good voice, which suffers only from a lack of training...While there was not quite enough comedy and ragtime, the Yoodle [sic] song, "Sleep, Baby, Sleep", was greatly in atonement and showed Monroe Tabor to be unexcelled as a yoodler.
And from a 1917 review:
- ...and Monroe Tabor yodeled as only J K Emmett Sr, of yore could do. At the Avenue Theater in December 1917, "When My Ship Comes Sailing Home" was a fine tenor solo by Tabor, who has no superiors as a yodeler.
Known as The Jolly Hendersons, Beulah Henderson toured with her husband Billy from 1905 through 1910. Billed as "The Classy Colored Comedy Pair" Beulah was featured as "America's only Colored Lady Yodeler". In Indianapolis in 1911 manager Tim Owsley noted:
- The Jolly Hendersons offered a clean, bright and snappy act of singing, talking and dancing. Each song rendered by the jolly pair won for them an encore. Mr Henderson is a real clever light comedian, while his partner, Miss Henderson , is just as clever as a singing and talking soubrette. In fact she is one of the first lady yodlers that we have had the pleasure of hearing.
Charles Anderson was touring with vaudeville as early as 1909 singing a combination of blues and yodeling. A 1913 St. Louis review reports:
- The Male Mockingbird, Charles Anderson, the man with the golden voice, is some character singer, imitator, and impersonator. As an imitator, Anderson has the best on the market skinned, his violin imitation intermezzo went big, and was one of the best imitations of a musical instrument heard in this neck of the woods for many moons. "Sleep Baby Sleep", a lullaby sung in costume of an old nurse went big. The yodeling in this song was excellent. "Baby Seals Blues", as rendered by Anderson, was worth going to hear. After a quick change, Anderson reappeared as the polished gentleman and sang "When the Cuckoo Sings", instantly winning the hearts of the audience with his perfect yodehng, causing said audience to cheer like mad for more.
Although most historians credit white singer Riley Puckett with the first recorded yodeling record (in 1924), in 1923 and 1924 Anderson recorded eight sides for the Okeh label which gave a summary account of his vaudeville repertoire during the previous decade. Five of the recorded songs are yodels - "Sleep, Baby, Sleep", "Comic Yodle Song", "Coo Coo" (J K Emmett's Cuckoo Song, adapted for Anderson's famous 60-second sustained soprano note), "Laughing Yodel" and "Roll On Silver Moon", a sentimental ballad, similar to Jimmie Rodgers' various Southern ballad recordings.
Country blues singer Lottie Kimbrough
Lottie Kimbrough
Lottie Kimbrough was an American country blues singer, who was also billed as Lottie Kimborough, Lottie Beaman, and Lena Kimbrough . Kimbrough was a large woman, and was nicknamed "the Kansas City Butterball"...
, billed as The Kansas City Butterball (she was a rather large woman) sang in speakeasy
Speakeasy
A speakeasy, also called a blind pig or blind tiger, is an establishment that illegally sells alcoholic beverages. Such establishments came into prominence in the United States during the period known as Prohibition...
s and nightclubs. and recorded her music from 1924 through 1929. Kimbrough's musical collaboration with Winston Holmes resulted in her best known recordings. Holmes supplied a series of yodels, vocalized bird calls and train whistles on some of their recordings.
When music critic Abbe Niles heard the Blue Yodel recordings released by Jimmy Rodgers in 1928 he was impressed by how distinctively black Rodger's Blue Yodel recordings sounded, yodeling and all. In his opinion Rodgers was a "white man gone black". In his 1928 record review column, writing under the heading 'White man singing black songs', Niles acknowledged that Rodger's first Blue Yodel had "started the whole epidemic of yodelling blues that now rages - though Clarence Williams wrote a good one five years ago." Niles went on to advise his readers to add race records to their collections saying, "Listening to race records is nearly the only way for white people to share the Negroes' pleasures without bothering the Negroes."
Authors Lynn Abbott & Doug Seroff write:
While some of the blue yodels heard on late 1920s Race recordings - those by the Mississippi Sheiks, for example - probably do owe something to Jimmie Rodgers' phenomenal success, others - like Billie Young's When They Get Lovin' They's Gone (accompanied by Jelly Roll Morton on Victor 23339,1930), Lottie Kimbrough and Winston Holmes' Lost Lover Blues (Gennett 6607, 1928), and Clint Jones' Mississippi Woman Blues and Blue Valley Blues (Okeh 8587, 1928) - seem more deeply connected to these precedent recordings by Charles Anderson, and to the venerable line of African-American yodelers they represent. There is no reason to doubt that Jimmie Rodgers, who could not resist a show, was exposed to and influenced by the black yodeler-blues singer tradition. Its practitioners were thoroughly entrenched in minstrelsy and vaudeville, and accessible to all races of people. Perhaps Jimmie even saw Charles Anderson himself perform, or heard some of Anderson's crystalline blues and yodeling 78s, before rising to immortality on his own great 'Blue Yodel' recordings. At any rate, the Freeman references strongly suggest that Charles Anderson and his generation of black professional yodelers had introduced the blue yodel in African-American entertainment before Jimmie Rodgers recorded.
Technique
All human voices are considered to have at least two distinct vocal registers, called the "head" and "chest" voices, which result from different ways that the tone is produced. Most people can sing tones within a certain range of lower pitchPitch (music)
Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...
in their chest voices and tones within a certain range of higher pitch in their head voices and spring into their falsetto (an "unsupported" register forcing vocal cords in a higher pitch without any head or chest voice air support). In untrained or inexperienced singers, a gap between these ranges often exists, although more experienced singers can control their voices at the point where these ranges overlap
Passaggio
Passaggio is a term used in classical singing to describe the pitch ranges in which vocal registration events occur. Beneath passaggio is the chest voice where any singer can produce a powerful sound, and above it lies the head voice, where a powerful and resonant sound is accessible, but usually...
and can easily switch between them to produce high-quality tones in either. Yodelling is a particular application of this technique, wherein a singer might switch between these registers several times in only a few seconds and at a high volume. Repeated alternation between registers at a singer's passaggio pitch range produces a very distinctive sound.
For example, in the famous "Yodel - Ay - EEE - Oooo", the "EEE" is sung in the head voice while all other syllables are in the chest voice.
The best places for Alpine-style yodelling are those with an echo
Echo (phenomenon)
In audio signal processing and acoustics, an echo is a reflection of sound, arriving at the listener some time after the direct sound. Typical examples are the echo produced by the bottom of a well, by a building, or by the walls of an enclosed room and an empty room. A true echo is a single...
. Ideal natural locations include not only mountain range
Mountain range
A mountain range is a single, large mass consisting of a succession of mountains or narrowly spaced mountain ridges, with or without peaks, closely related in position, direction, formation, and age; a component part of a mountain system or of a mountain chain...
s but lake
Lake
A lake is a body of relatively still fresh or salt water of considerable size, localized in a basin, that is surrounded by land. Lakes are inland and not part of the ocean and therefore are distinct from lagoons, and are larger and deeper than ponds. Lakes can be contrasted with rivers or streams,...
s, rocky gorges or shorelines, and high or open areas with one or more distant rock faces.
Performers
Early years
Most music historians say that the first country music record to include yodeling was "Rock All Our Babies to Sleep" sung by Riley PuckettRiley Puckett
George Riley Puckett was an American country music pioneer mostly known for being a member of Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers.-Biography:...
, a blind singer from Georgia. In 1924 in country music
1924 in country music
This is a list of notable events in country music that took place in the year 1924.- Events :* First broadcast of WLS Barn Dance in Chicago, led by the "Solemn Old Judge" George D...
, his recording was one of the top hits of that year. Another early yodeler was Emmett Miller
Emmett Miller
Emmett Miller was an American minstrel show performer and recording artist known for his falsetto, yodel-like voice. Little-remembered today, Miller was a major influence on many country music singers, including Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Milton Brown, Tommy Duncan, and Merle Haggard...
, a minstrel show
Minstrel show
The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....
performer, also from Georgia. Miller is little-remembered today, however in the 1920s he recorded the song, "Lovesick Blues
Lovesick Blues
"Lovesick Blues" is a show tune written by composer Cliff Friend and co-lyricist & producer Irving Mills. It has become a pop standard and an even more popular country song since it helped make Hank Williams famous in the 1940s. Published through Tin Pan Alley in 1922, the song was first recorded...
" which was later a major hit for country singer Hank Williams. Bob Wills
Bob Wills
James Robert Wills , better known as Bob Wills, was an American Western Swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader, considered by music authorities as the co-founder of Western Swing and universally known as the pioneering King of Western Swing.Bob Wills' name will forever be associated with...
, the King of Western Swing
Western swing
Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands...
, was also influenced by Miller (see the sound file above with Will's singer Tommy Duncan singing "Blue Yodel #1" in 1937) In the early 1920s African American Winston Holmes started a record label, Merritt Records, and was a performer himself. His vocals included bird calls, train whistles and yodels. He managed and made some songs with blues singer Lottie Kimbrough
Lottie Kimbrough
Lottie Kimbrough was an American country blues singer, who was also billed as Lottie Kimborough, Lottie Beaman, and Lena Kimbrough . Kimbrough was a large woman, and was nicknamed "the Kansas City Butterball"...
in the twenties.
Jimmie Rodgers
Probably the most famous early yodeler was Jimmie Rodgers, known as The Singing Brakeman, who recoded dozens of popular songs in the late 1920s and early 1930s. While working on the railroad he learned blues techniques from African American gandy dancerGandy dancer
Gandy dancer is a slang term used for early railroad workers who laid and maintained railroad tracks in the years before the work was done by machines....
s, and eventually created his characteristic sound - a blend of traditional work, blues, hobo, and cowboy songs and his trademark "Blue Yodel
Blue Yodel
The Blue Yodel songs are a series of thirteen songs written and recorded by Jimmie Rodgers during the period from 1927 to his death in May 1933. The songs were based on the 12-bar blues format and featured Rodgers’ trademark yodel refrains. The lyrics often had a risqué quality with “a macho,...
." His first Blue Yodel, known as “Blue Yodel No.1 (T For Texas) ”, was recorded in the Trinity Baptist Church at Camden, New Jersey. When the song was released in February 1928 it became “a national phenomenon and generated an excitement and record-buying frenzy that no-one could have predicted”. Rogers sang about everyday affairs and woes that many Americans of that time could relate to. Here are the lyrics of Blue Yodel #4:
- She’s long she’s tall, she six feet from the ground
- She’s long she’s tall, she six feet from the ground
- She tailor made, lord she ain’t no hand me down
- Oh-di-lay-ee-ay, di-lay-dee-oh, de-lay-ee
- She got eyes like diamonds, lord her teeth shine just the same
- She got eyes like diamonds and her teeth shine just the same
- She got sweet ruby lips, and a hair like a horse’s mane
- Oh-di-lay-ee-ay, di-lay-dee-oh, de-lay-ee
- Every time I see you mama, you’re always on the street
- Every time I see you mama, you’re always on the street
- You hang out on the corner, like a police on his beat
- Oh-di-lay-ee-ay, di-lay-dee-oh, de-lay-ee
- Every time I need you mama, lord I always find you’re gone
- Every time I need you mama, lord I always find you’re gone
- Listen here sweet mama, I’m gonna put your air brakes on
- Oh-di-lay-ee-ay, di-lay-dee-oh, de-lay-ee
According to a black musician who lived near Rodgers in Mississippi, everyone, both black and white alike, began to copy Rodgers: "Every one who could pick a guitar started yodeling like Rodgers." Rodgers died in 1933, however many performers that followed him claimed that he had been a big influence in their singing style and career.
Radio
Prior to about 1930, performers had only live performances and records to promote their music. When radios began to grow in popularity in the late 20s and early 30s, the powerful recording company RCA Victor, fearing that free music would devastate their record business, first attempted to prevent artists from appearing on the radio and then successfully stopped the growth of more powerful FM stations. But radio ownership grew from 2 out of 5 homes in 1931 to 4 out of 5 homes in 1938, and stations began to broadcast live shows featuring various artists, sometimes with a live audience. Some artists remained in their home area, however many traveled a circuit appearing on the dozens of low-power AM stations throughout the country, thus introducing the various styles of singing and yodeling to others outside of their region. Thus, a Georgia radio station of that era lists "cowboy Roy Lykes", the "Yodeling Fence Rider" from Texas, in its 1934 roster. Lykes is described as "a real cowboy" who wears "regulation cowboy shoes to get him in the mood".Notable performers in the U.S.
Elton Britt
Elton Britt , born James Elton Baker, was a country music guitarist and singer-songwriter.-Biography:Elton Britt was born in Searcy County, Arkansas...
recorded what was to become his signature song, "Chime Bells". Like so many others of that era, Britt listened to records of Jimmie Rodgers, which inspired him to learn how to yodel. Eventually he became renowned for his ability to sustain his yodel for an unusually long time, a skill he reportedly learned while swimming underwater for several minutes at a time. Country singer Jewel
Jewel (singer)
Jewel Kilcher , professionally known as Jewel, is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, actress and poet...
yodels and is known for her version of "Chime Bells" as well. Jewel says that she learned to yodel from her father who also learned to yodel by listening to Jimmie Rodgers.
Blue yodeler Cliff Carlisle
Cliff Carlisle
Cliff Carlisle was an American country and blues singer. Carlisle was a yodeler and was a pioneer in the use of the Hawaiian steel guitar in country music.-Biography:...
was one of the most prolific recording artists of the 1930s, and a pioneer in the use of the Hawaiian steel guitar
Steel guitar
Steel guitar is a type of guitar or the method of playing the instrument. Developed in Hawaii in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a steel guitar is usually positioned horizontally; strings are plucked with one hand, while the other hand changes the pitch of one or more strings with the use...
in country music. He frequently released songs with sexual connotations including barnyard metaphors (which became something of a trademark).
Jack Guthrie
Jack Guthrie
Jack Guthrie was a songwriter and performer whose rewritten version of the Woody Guthrie song "Oklahoma Hills" was a hit in 1945. The two musicians were cousins.-Early life:...
, the cousin of Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
, performed in the thirties and early forties. Known as "Oklahoma's Yodeling Cowboy", he developed a style of singing and yodeling influenced by his idol, Jimmie Rodgers, and his experiences as a bucking-horse rider and rodeo
Rodeo
Rodeo is a competitive sport which arose out of the working practices of cattle herding in Spain, Mexico, and later the United States, Canada, South America and Australia. It was based on the skills required of the working vaqueros and later, cowboys, in what today is the western United States,...
performer.
Hank Snow
Hank Snow
Clarence Eugene "Hank" Snow was a Canadian-American country music artist. He charted more than 70 singles on the Billboard country charts from 1950 until 1980...
was one of the great country legends of the 1950's, but he had actually been singing in Canada for years where he was known as "The Yodeling Ranger". He admired Jimmie Rodgers as well, and learned to yodel by listening to his records. He even named his son Jimmie Rodgers Snow.
Tommy Duncan
Tommy Duncan
Thomas Elmer Duncan , better known as Tommy Duncan, was a pioneering American Western swing vocalist and songwriter who gained fame in the 1930s as a founding member of The Texas Playboys...
, vocalist for "Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys", was a good yodeler. (See the sound file above with Duncan singing Rodger's "Blue Yodel #1" in 1937) Bob Wills
Bob Wills
James Robert Wills , better known as Bob Wills, was an American Western Swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader, considered by music authorities as the co-founder of Western Swing and universally known as the pioneering King of Western Swing.Bob Wills' name will forever be associated with...
is considered by music authorities to be the co-founder of Western Swing.
The DeZurik Sisters
The DeZurik Sisters
The DeZurik Sisters were two of the first women to become stars on both the National Barn Dance and the Grand Ole Opry, largely a result of their original yodeling style.-Background:...
were two of the first women to become stars on both the National Barn Dance
National Barn Dance
National Barn Dance, broadcast by WLS-AM in Chicago, Illinois starting in 1924, was one of the first American country music radio programs and a direct precursor of the Grand Ole Opry...
and the Grand Ole Opry
Grand Ole Opry
The Grand Ole Opry is a weekly country music stage concert in Nashville, Tennessee, that has presented the biggest stars of that genre since 1925. It is also among the longest-running broadcasts in history since its beginnings as a one-hour radio "barn dance" on WSM-AM...
, largely a result of their original yodeling style. Carolina Cotton and Patsy Montana
Patsy Montana
Ruby Rose Blevins , known professionally as Patsy Montana, was an American country music singer-songwriter and the first female country performer to have a million-selling single...
were early cowgirl yodeling singers as well. Patsy Montana's signature song, "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart
I Want to be a Cowboy's Sweetheart
"I Want to be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" is a country and Western song written and first recorded in 1935 by Rubye Blevins, who performed as Patsy Montana. It was the first country and Western song by a female artist to sell more than one million copies....
" was again popularized by singer/yodeler LeAnn Rimes
LeAnn Rimes
LeAnn Rimes is an American country/pop singer. She is known for her rich vocals and her rise to fame as an eight-year-old champion on the original Ed McMahon version of Star Search, followed by the release of the Patsy Cline-intended single "Blue" when Rimes was only age 13, resulting in her...
in the 1990s. In 1996 Rimes also recorded "The Cattle Call
The Cattle Call
"The Cattle Call" is a song written and recorded in 1934 by American songwriter and musician Tex Owens. It became a signature song for Eddy Arnold....
", a "singing cowboy
Singing cowboy
A singing cowboy was a subtype of the archetypal cowboy hero of early Western films, popularized by many of the B-movies of the 1930s and 1940s...
" song written by cowboy yodeler Tex Owens, with legendary singer Eddy Arnold
Eddy Arnold
Richard Edward Arnold , known professionally as Eddy Arnold, was an American country music singer who performed for six decades. He was a so-called Nashville sound innovator of the late 1950s, and scored 147 songs on the Billboard country music charts, second only to George Jones. He sold more...
. "The Cattle Call" was Arnold's signature song, but it has been recorded by many artists including Emmylou Harris
Emmylou Harris
Emmylou Harris is an American singer-songwriter and musician. In addition to her work as a solo artist and bandleader, both as an interpreter of other composers' works and as a singer-songwriter, she is a sought-after backing vocalist and duet partner, working with numerous other artists including...
and even Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
.
Cowboy singer and actor Roy Rogers
Roy Rogers
Roy Rogers, born Leonard Franklin Slye , was an American singer and cowboy actor, one of the most heavily marketed and merchandised stars of his era, as well as being the namesake of the Roy Rogers Restaurants franchised chain...
yodeled, as did his box office competitor Gene Autry
Gene Autry
Orvon Grover Autry , better known as Gene Autry, was an American performer who gained fame as The Singing Cowboy on the radio, in movies and on television for more than three decades beginning in the 1930s...
. (See the sound file above in which Autry sings the Jimmie Rodgers song "Blue Yodel #5") "Yodelin' Slim Clark
Yodelin' Slim Clark
Raymond LeRoy Clark was an American musician known for his yodeling. He was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Clark. Slim completed two years of high school, at which time he became a professional musician at the age of 15 in 1932 - however, he was performing at...
", hailed from Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
and performed for 70 years. (See the sound file above "The Old Chisholm Trail" recorded by Clark in 1956.) Yodeler Don Walker
Don Walker
Don Walker may refer to:*Don Walker , Australian musician*Don Walker , American orchestrator*Don Walker...
was from Texas. Though widely known in Texas, his singing career didn't really take off until he was 60 years old in 1994. In 2000 he received a lifetime "Heritage" award from the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
, and he and his band played at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Jimmie Davis
Jimmie Davis
James Houston Davis , better known as Jimmie Davis, was a noted singer of both sacred and popular songs who served two nonconsecutive terms as the 47th Governor of Louisiana...
, who served two terms as the Governor of Louisiana, was also a successful country singer who yodeled.
Perhaps yodeler Bill Haley
Bill Haley
Bill Haley was one of the first American rock and roll musicians. He is credited by many with first popularizing this form of music in the early 1950s with his group Bill Haley & His Comets and their hit song "Rock Around the Clock".-Early life and career:...
of Bill Haley and the Comets has one of the strangest histories of all. Bill Haley zoomed to fame as the "King of Rock and Roll" when his song "Rock Around the Clock
Rock Around the Clock
"Rock Around the Clock" is a 12-bar-blues-based song written by Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers in 1952. The best-known and most successful rendition was recorded by Bill Haley and His Comets in 1954...
" was featured in the popular film Blackboard Jungle
Blackboard Jungle
Blackboard Jungle is a 1955 social commentary film about teachers in an inner-city school. It is based on the novel of the same name by Evan Hunter.-Plot:...
. But it is little-known that Haley and his band had been around for years doing Western swing
Western swing
Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands...
music with Haley featured as a yodeler. Haley was born in 1925 and "Rock Around the Clock" made the scene in 1955 and at that time he and his band were using the name the Comets. However, prior to that time they had gone under the names the Down Homers, the Texas Range Riders, the Four Aces of Western Swing and finally, The Saddlemen. At one point in the 1940s, Bill Haley was even awarded Indiana State Yodeling Champion for his skill, perhaps something that his skillful manager Colonel Tom Parker
Colonel Tom Parker
"Colonel" Thomas Andrew "Tom" Parker born Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk, was a Dutch-born entertainment impresario known best as the manager of Elvis Presley...
felt not important to mention to his screaming teenage rock 'n' roll fans.
Slim Whitman
Slim Whitman
Ottis Dewey Whitman, Jr. , known professionally as Slim Whitman, is an American country music singer and songwriter, known for his yodelling abilities. He has sold in excess of 120 million albums in unit sales and has had numerous successful recordings...
has been performing for over 60 years. Whitman avoided the "down on yer luck" songs, preferring instead to sing laid-back romantic melodies about simple life and love. Critics dubbed his musical style "countrypolitan," due to its fusion of country music and a more sophisticated crooner
Crooner
Crooner is an American epithet given to male singers of pop standards, mostly from the Great American Songbook, either backed by a full orchestra, a big band or by a piano. Originally it was an ironic term denoting an emphatically sentimental, often emotional singing style made possible by the use...
vocal style. Pop singer Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
cited Whitman as one of his ten favorite vocalists. Beatles George Harrison
George Harrison
George Harrison, MBE was an English musician, guitarist, singer-songwriter, actor and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian mysticism, and introduced it to the other...
and Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
cite Whitman as an early influence In the film, Mars Attacks! a Kansas teenager discovers that the Martians are vulnerable to Whitman's song "Indian Love Call
Indian Love Call
"Indian Love Call" is a song from Rose-Marie, a 1924 operetta-style Broadway musical with music by Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart, and book and lyrics by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II...
", whereupon he and his grandmother use it to destroy the Martians.
Other western music
Western music
Western music may refer to:* Classical music, a genre of art music produced or rooted in the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music from the 10th century onward...
yodeling singers include Douglas B. Green
Douglas B. Green
Douglas B. Green , better known by his stage name Ranger Doug, is an American musician, arranger and award-winning Western music songwriter, best known for his work with the Western music and comedy group Riders in the Sky in which he plays guitar and sings lead and baritone vocals. He is also an...
(Ranger Doug) and Wylie Gustafson
Wylie Gustafson
Wylie Gustafson is an American singer-songwriter who has toured nationally and internationally with his band, 'Wylie & The Wild West'...
. Green sings with his band Riders in the Sky. He is also a music historian and has written a book, Singing in the Saddle "the first comprehensive look at the singing cowboy phenomenon that swept the United States in the 1930s". Gustafson learned to yodel from his dad, who learned from Austrians on the ski team in Bozeman, Montana. In 2007, he released an instructional book and CD titled, How to Yodel: Lessons to Tickle Your Tonsils.
Yodeler Taylor Ware
Taylor Ware
Taylor Marie Ware is an American singer and yodeler from Franklin, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville.Before Ware knew how to yodel, she performed at a county fair at age four. Her talent was singing and playing a violin. When she was six she decided to sing to seniors, so she started an...
was a contestant on America's Got Talent
America's Got Talent
America's Got Talent is an American reality television series on the NBC television network, and part of the global British Got Talent franchise. It is a talent show that features singers, dancers, magicians, comedians, and other performers of all ages competing for the advertised top prize of...
when she was eleven years old. According to Ware, she taught herself to yodel from an audiotape and instruction book when she was seven years old. Alyse Eady
Alyse Eady
Alyse Cynthia Eady, holds the title of Miss Arkansas 2010 and was 1st Runner-Up in the Miss America 2011 Pageant on January 15, 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada. She is a 22-year-old graduate of Ouachita Baptist University with a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communications and Speech Communication...
, who holds the title of Miss Arkansas 2010 and was 1st runner-up in the Miss America 2011 Pageant, both yodels and does ventriloquism to the song "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" as her talent performance.
Outside of the U.S.
Canadian Wilf CarterWilf Carter
Wilf Carter , also known as Montana Slim, was a Canadian country music singer, songwriter, guitarist, and yodeller...
(Montana Slim) was known as the "Father of Canadian Country Music". He began singing in the 1920s after seeing a traveling Swiss performer named "The Yodeling Fool" in a nearby town. Carter sang in the "singing cowboy" style and developed a yodel with a Swiss-sound sometimes called an "echo yodel" or a "three-in-one."
Bobbejaan Schoepen
Bobbejaan Schoepen
Bobbejaan Schoepen is a pseudonym of Modest Schoepen was a Flemish pioneer in Belgian pop music, vaudeville, and European country music...
was a Belgian yodeler and Franzl Lang
Franzl Lang
Franz "Franzl" Lang , known as the Yodelking , is a famous yodeler from Bavaria,Lang also sings and plays the guitar and the accordion; he has further authored several books on yodeling. Lang's genre is German folk music; he typically sings in Bavarian dialect of the rural Alpine regions and its...
, also known as "Der Jodlerkönig" or the Yodel King, is a professional yodeler from the Alps.
Joy McKean
Joy McKean
Joy McKean OAM, born 1930, is an Australian country music singer-songwriter and wife of the late Slim Dusty. Known as the "grand lady" of Australian country music, McKean is recognised as one of Australia's leading song writers and bush balladeers and wrote several of Dusty's most popular...
, Australian country music singer-songwriter, is known as the "grand lady" of Australian country music
Australian country music
Australian country music is a part of the music of Australia. There is a broad range of styles, from bluegrass, to yodelling to folk to the more popular. The genre has been influenced by Celtic and English folk music, by the traditions of Australian bush balladeers, as well as by popular American...
. By the age of 18 she was performing with her sister Heather on their own radio show as the McKean Sisters, noted for their yodeling harmonies. Mckean performed with her husband Slim Dusty
Slim Dusty
David Gordon "Slim Dusty " Kirkpatrick AO, MBE was an Australian country music singer-songwriter and producer, with a career spanning nearly eight decades. He was known to record songs in the legacy of Australian poets Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson that represented the Australian Bush...
till his death in 2003. Slim, a singer-songwriter and yodeler as well, wrote his first song, "The Way the Cowboy Dies" when he was only 10 years old. He received 37 Golden Guitar
Golden Guitar
The Big Golden Guitar is one of the many "big" attractions that can be found around Australia. Located in Tamworth, New South Wales, the monument is one of the best-known points of interest in New England New South Wales...
and two ARIA
Australian Recording Industry Association
The Australian Recording Industry Association is a trade group representing the Australian recording industry which was established in 1983 by six major record companies, EMI, Festival, CBS, RCA, WEA and Universal replacing the Association of Australian Record Manufacturers which was formed in 1956...
awards and was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame
ARIA Hall of Fame
Since 1988 the Australian Recording Industry Association has inducted artists into its ARIA Hall of Fame. While most have been recognised at the annual ARIA Music Awards, in 2005 ARIA sought to create a separate standalone "ARIA Icons: Hall of Fame" event as only one or two acts could be inducted...
.
Kishore Kumar
Kishore Kumar
Kishore Kumar , born Abhas Kumar Ganguly, was an Indian film playback singer and an actor who also worked as lyricist, composer, producer, director, screenwriter and scriptwriter.Kishore Kumar was one of India's greatest performers of the late 20th century...
was a playback singer
Playback singer
A playback singer is a singer whose singing is prerecorded for use in movies. Playback singers record songs for soundtracks, and actors or actresses lip-sync the songs for cameras, while the actual singer does not appear on screen.-South Asia:...
from India, famous for his yodeling, while it was Mohammed Rafi
Mohammed Rafi
Mohammad Rafi , was an Indian playback singer whose career spanned four decades. He was awarded National Award and 6 Filmfare Awards. In 1967, he was honoured with the Padma Shri awarded by the Government of India....
who introduced yodeling as playback singing in India.
Recent developments
One of the earliest songs to portray an unusual marriage between yodeling and hard rock music was "Hocus Pocus" by the DutchNetherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
band Focus
Focus (band)
Focus is a Dutch rock band which was founded by classically trained organist/flautist Thijs van Leer in 1969, and is most famous for the instrumental pieces "Hocus Pocus" and "Sylvia"...
. A UK example of this style was the Glasgow-born Karl Denver
Karl Denver
Karl Denver was a Scottish singer, who, with his trio had a series of UK hit singles in the early 1960s. Most famous of these was a 1961 version of "Wimoweh", which showed off Denver's falsetto yodelling register...
; the style can be heard in Frank Ifield's version of Johnny Mercer's "I Remember You." Slim Cessna's Auto Club
Slim Cessna's Auto Club
Slim Cessna's Auto Club is an alternative country-gothabilly band formed in 1992 in Denver, Colorado. The constant in the band has been Slim Cessna, formerly a member of The Denver Gentlemen along with David Eugene Edwards and Jeffery-Paul of 16 Horsepower. Jay Munly is also a key member of the...
often features Slim and Jay Munly
Jay Munly
Jay Munly is a banjo player, guitarist, singer, and songwriter based in Denver, Colorado. He has played a significant role in the development of the "Denver Sound", music that mixes elements of country, Gothic, folk, and gospel...
yodeling.
The Tarzan yell
The Tarzan yellTarzan yell
The Tarzan yell is the distinctive, ululating yell of the character Tarzan, as portrayed by actor Johnny Weissmuller in the films based on the character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, starting with Tarzan the Ape Man...
is the yodel-like call of the character Tarzan
Tarzan
Tarzan is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani "great apes"; he later experiences civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer...
, as portrayed by actor Johnny Weissmuller
Johnny Weissmuller
Johnny Weissmuller was an Austro-Hungarian-born American swimmer and actor best known for playing Tarzan in movies. Weissmuller was one of the world's best swimmers in the 1920s, winning five Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal. He won fifty-two US National Championships and set sixty-seven...
in the films based on the character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, although he produced works in many genres.-Biography:...
, starting with Tarzan the Ape Man (1932
1932 in film
-Events:*Cary Grant's film career begins*Katharine Hepburn's film career begins*Shirley Temple's film career begins*Disney released Flowers and Trees, the first cartoon in three-strip Technicolor film.*Santa, first sound film made in Mexico released....
). The yell was a creation of the movies, based on what Burroughs described in his books as "the victory cry of the bull ape."
See also
- Field hollerField hollerField Hollers as well as work songs were African American styles of music from before the American Civil War, this style of music is closely related to spirituals in the sense that it expressed religious feelings and included subtle hints about ways of escaping slavery, among other things...
- Singing cowboy
- Western music (North America)Western music (North America)Western music originated as a form of American folk music. Originally composed by and about the people who settled and worked throughout the Western United States and Western Canada. Directly related musically to old English, Scottish, and Irish folk ballads, Western music celebrates the life of...
- Old time music
- Western swingWestern swingWestern swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands...
External links
- http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/b_yodel.htm America's Blue Yodel
- Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World by Bart Plantenga, New York: Routledge, 2004), ISBN 0-415-93990-9 – from SwitzerlandSwitzerlandSwitzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
to the avant-gardeAvant-gardeAvant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
, an exhaustive survey of the field.