From Classic Country by Charles K. Wolfe (New York: Routledge, 2001)

[Jimmie Riddle] was heard by thousands as a longtime member of Roy Acuff's Smoky Mountain Boys, and was seen by millions doing his hambone routines with Jackie Phelps on Hee Haw....

In November 1979 I interviewed Jimmie for the PBS series Southbound....

"[Around 1936] I was playing the harmonica mostly then, but I was also doing this other crazy thing they call eephing. But the real name of that's hoodling....

"My uncle learned that up at a dance out of Dyersburg, where somebody was doing it up on stage with the musicians. That's where he got it, and he's got to be seventy years old at least. When Uncle Ralph came to visit us in Memphis, I was just six, but I took a liking to that eephin' stuff.... When I was younger, I never heard anyone but him do that, but since then I have heard four or five different ones that can do it...."

In the 1970s Mike Seeger recorded him demonstrating eephing, and I included this tape on a collection for New World Records called I Am on My Journey Home: Vocal Styles and Resources in Folk Music. Jimmie made a few festival appearances with his famous aunt, Almeda, and left a few examples of his way with a humorous folk ballad; he also left us with examples of his uncanny helicopter imitations, his ability to thump out "William Tell Overture" on his throat, his tap dance on his teeth, his hamboning, and his general imitations. In 1970 he recorded and issued a great tour de force single for Decca, "Yakety Eeph" and "Wildwood Eeph," in which he did most of his great mouth sounds and played most of the instruments....

[Jimmie's son Steven] has already made his recording debut on a legendary LP by the Holy Modal Rounders, Good Taste Is Timeless, in which he eephs through a cut called "Living in the Country."....