Let me start with a disclaimer: I grew up listening to Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers. Yodeling always seemed to me to be as much a part of their songs as the lyrics. Now, having said that, I thought you folks might find some interest in a few words I discovered recently that comprise an excerpt from "The Cowman's Code of Ethics" by Ramon F. Adams (1949).

"Always before the dance, the boys gathered at the drugstore and the band (Jim Winslow's) gave a little free show...and usually some cowhand would cut loose and sing some song and these boys could really sing (when you found one that could). I've been out here forty-three years and have never heard a cowboy yodel and believe that they would have shot him if he had tried just one time. I still want to shoot these movie cowhands who sing through their noses or yodel and represent their sacred calling as yodeling. Cowhands hummed to quiet their cattle when they were going up the trail at night but there wasn't any damn yodeling."