The other cowboy thread reminded me of a conversation my wife and I recently had…
What’s up with cowboys and yodeling?
How come so many cowboy songs include Swiss vocalization?
Jimmie Rodgers, the first superstar of Country Music, and a succession of hit - massive hit 78s all called Blue Yodel, and numbered from 1 through 12. He also recorded a 13th before dying of consumption, but it was called his “Last Blue Yodel” rather than “Blue Yodel No. 13”.
Among these are standards better known by names like “Mule Skinner Blues” (big hit for Bill Monroe) or “T for Texas”, etc.
Here’s the html of a pdf flyer which offers some explanation.
A quote:
The conventional explanation traces yodeling to Europe’s Alpine region at no earlier
than 1815 ,200 years after the first Europeans arrived. But could
the yodel have arrived much earlier? Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo argues that
yodeling reached North America perhaps 150 to 200 years earlier.
Evidence is scant, but the historical circumstances surrounding
North America’s early history raise questions:
For example, did Native Americans already yodel before the
first Europeans stepped off the first boat? Certain Shawnee vocals
sound suspiciously like yodeling. Listen to contemporary yodeler
Peter Rowan’s dovetailing of Bluegrass and Native American
yodeling in Old In the Way’s “Land of the Navajo.” That Native
Americans may have yodeled is supported by descriptions of
their vocal styles as including “vocal pulsations, falsettos, nasality.”
Native Americans were also influenced by contact with their new
neighbors, African slaves.
further:
And when Africans in Nairobi first heard Jimmie Rodgers they
declared him a demigod for whom they wrote numerous “chimirocha” songs.
So what can we say with any certainty about yodeling’s
transmission to North America? It seems highly unlikely that
yodelers could have been kept silent for some two hundred years (1620’s to 1830’s)
Helvetia, West Virginia, resident cheese-maker
yodeler Bruce agrees "that yodeling was here by the 1600
African slaves also brought polyphonic singing, falsetto,
and probably yodeling to North America.
Ahha… a little Bob Wills anyone?
I always assumed that yodeling cowboys stem most directly from the influence of the large communities of Southern Germans who settled in central and southern Texas starting in the mid-1800s. Anyone who has walked around New Braunfels in the hill country west of Austin can easily imagine yodeling cowboys. It’s the same influence that gave button accordions and tubas to Tex-Mex norteño music.
Still a hanging offense in some areas.
djm
Jimmie Rodgers’ yodel was uniquely (at its start) a ‘blue yodel’, which pointed to an interesting tie between the European and African vocal traditions. His bands also included Hawaiian slide guitar, played in a bluesy African-like style.
His ‘hillbilly’ bands mixed blues, country, western, dixieland jazz, gospel… Waaaay ahead of his time, Jimmie was. And the records still hold up well. Definitely a favorite of mine!
You git caught yodelin’ round these here parts, you might git run outta town. Same goes for line dancin’.
One of Jimmy Rogers’ three known guitars is on display at the town next door in Bristol,VA/TN at the Birthplace of Country Music museum.
http://www.birthplaceofcountrymusic.org/node/1393
I was thinking the same thing about here, Tom. The picture of my dad, brothers, and our rancher friend Jim yodeling while driving Jim’s cattle to lower ground for the winter doesn’t come into focus. In fact, if one of them tried it, they’d probably stake him out directly under the path of the cattle and start a stampede.
Susan