Subject: RE: Origins of Yodelling in Country Music
From:
Stewie
Date: 25 Aug 01 - 10:29 PM
I thought people interested in this thread might like to know the thoughts of a few 'experts', country historians, on this fascinating topic. I know Cranky says they shouldn't be trusted, but it is worth looking at what they have to say. I hope I am not misrepresenting any of them in my brief summaries. I have been meaning to post this for a couple of days, but I kept getting distracted by happenings in the real world.
The consensus among country music historians – Malone, Wolfe, Green, Porterfield etc – is that Jimmy Rodgers was the connection between country music and the yodel, albeit he was not the first country musician to yodel on a recording – that guernsey went to Riley Puckett of Skillet Lickers fame who recorded 'Rock All Our Babies to Sleep' in April 1924 which was followed in September of that same year with his second yodeling record, 'Sleep, Baby, Sleep'. Rodgers recorded 'Sleep, Baby, Sleep' as his second recording in his first session in October 1927. He was certainly aware of Puckett's recording but sourced his lyrics elsewhere. The performances had little in common except the title and a similar tune. Rodgers' fluid and melodic yodel was quite different from what Wolfe has described as Puckett's 'pseudo-Alpine' yodel.
The record, backed by 'The Soldier's Sweetheart', sold reasonably well for new artist, but Ralph Peer did not call him back to record more. Eventually, in 1928, Rodgers went to New York and telephoned Peer who agreed to a second session. Because Rodgers didn't have much material, Peer decided 'to use one of his blues songs to fill in'. Rodgers recorded 'T for Texas' which was released by Victor as 'Blue Yodel'. As Charles Wolfe noted ' it almost certainly sold over a million copies … and established Rodgers as the premier singer of early country music'. It started a yodeling epidemic whereby for a time 'yodeling became almost synonymous with country music' (Wolfe). Curiously, Victor regarded the record as parody or, at best, a novelty song and marketed it as 'Popular Song for Comedian with Guitar' and praised the artist 'for his grotesque style' (Nolan Portafield).
The following is a pertinent quote from Robert Coltman 'Roots of the Country Yodel' JEMFQ 12:24 (Summer 1976) pp 91-92. It is quoted in Nolan Porterfield 'Jimmie Rodgers' Uni of Illinois Press 1992, p 125-126. I will give it in full as John Edwards Memorial Foundation stuff is probably difficult to come by:
Once Rodgers had recorded his first Blue Yodels, everything changed. His suave, rueful vernacular songs made him the first real people's popular singer, stylistically ten years ahead of his time, breaking the dominance of golden voice and stage manner. All this was not to be digested at once, and imitators often sounded inane; indeed, the typical Rodgers hit was fragmentary, insubstantial, held together by his wry, remarkable personality and the signature of his yodel. Hearing it, one catches one's breath as his voice slips mischievously over the break. Doubtless he was well aware of the yodel's value to his career; virtually all his songs had it worked in somewhere, and he wore each yodel like an old shirt, supremely at ease. In his throat, it shed its Swiss starch and its black inversion, making other popular singers of the time sound as if they were standing at attention wearing tight-fitting tuxedos. Rodgers' yodeling is perhaps the simplest style of all, scorned by many yodeling devotees. But what he did with it was magnetic, inimitable, and not at all easy.
So much for the connection, the more difficult and intriguing question is how Rodgers came by his yodel – and, for this, there appears to be no definitive answer. At one end of the spectrum, you have Rodgers fans who believed/believe that Rodgers invented it. At the other end, the scholars went searching for its true origins. There appears to be no full-length study of this and answers must be sought in essays such as Coltman's and in general studies of country music such as Bill Malone's 'Country Music USA', Douglas Green 'Country Roots' etc. Of particular relevance is Nolan Portefield's biography of Rodgers and Charles Wolfe's essay 'A Lighter Shade of Blue: White Country Blues' in Lawrence Cohn (ed) 'Nothing But the Blues' Abbeville Press 1993. An essay, which draws a number of threads together and is based on the research of Wolfe, Porterfield, Malone etc, appeared in the booklet accompanying an excellent compilation CD titled 'American Yodeling 1911-1946' Trikont US-0246-2. This German label CD embraces various yodeling styles and includes artists such as The Mississippi Sheiks, Riley Puckett, Bill Monroe, the DeZurich Sisters, Patsy Montana, Cliff Carlisle, Jimmie Rodgers and others. The accompanying essay, 'Yodeling in America', is by Christoph Wagner. It was reprinted under the title 'T for Tyrol' in Folk Roots #179 May 1998.
Wagner points out that, although yodeling evolved from indigenous ways of life in certain parts of the world – eg the Swiss Alps and rain forests of Central Africa – it was an import in the USA, Canada and Hawaii. He refers to the close-knit communities of immigrants to America in cities like Cleveland, Chicago, New York etc and suggests that, because of difficulties of communication among the throng of races, cultures, languages and dialects, 'the wordless yodel had a particular strong appeal'. He refers to the use of yodeling black entertainers long before it became a national craze in the late 1920s – Charles Anderson, Monroe Tabor, Beulah Henderson ('America's Only Colored Lady Yodeler') etc. He refers to the vaudeville theatres and tent shows 'where novelty acts such as yodeling fitted perfectly into a program of magicians, acrobats, Irish tenors, Hawaiian string bands and dancing girls'.
Importantly, Wagner notes that the 'black vaudeville entertainers added a new ingredient: for the first time, they mixed yodels with blues and ragtime' and goes on to speculate that perhaps 'the similarity to the falsetto of the Delta blues or the field hollers'. He notes the early use of yodeling in the 19th century by white minstrels such as Tom Christian and Daniel Decatur Emmett, and George P. Watson who waxed his first cylinders in 1897. He draws particular attention to the immigrant communities from the Alps cultivating their traditions with a passion in their restaurants and to the famous Tyrolean group, the Rainer Family who toured Europe. One of the original Rainer Family formed his own band, the Tyrolese Minstrels, and toured America in 1839. In the second half of the century and into the 20th century more and more Alpine musicians came to America. The Swiss-American yodeling star, Fritz Zimmerman, made recordings from 1917 onwards. That is the tapestry on which he places Jimmie Rodgers and his blue yodel. Wagner's brief is wider than 'country music' alone and, except for his point about the yodel and the blues, makes no specific suggestions about the provenance of Rodgers' blue yodel.
Rodgers' biographer, Nolan Porterfield, refers to the 'complex social flux and unwritten history' through which scholars have sorted in search of the true origins of the blue yodel. His conclusion is that, while 'falsetto vocal embellishments were common in popular music long before Rodgers was born, it difficult to know which of several likely sources contributed to his assimilation of the device'. Porterfield's possibilities include, 'at the very least, the classic Alpine warble, the black field hollers and rhythmic shouts of gandy dancers on the railroads, and a yodeling tradition on the popular stage passing back through vaudeville to the roots of minstrelsy as early as 1840, with re-connections at that point with Afro-American culture'. He refers also to the cowboy who, in his romantic manifestations was supposed to be 'a native yodeler'. Nick Tosches has pointed out that yodeling among cowboys 'was no less common among cowboys than fiddling among oceanographers or tromboning among rare book dealers'. Porterfield agrees that 'the relationship between Rodger's yodel and either field hollers or cowboy crooning is tenuous at best' and that 'evidence of cause and effect, influence and reinforcement, is simply lacking'.
In his 'A Lighter Shade of Blue', Wolfe agrees that no one really knows how Rodgers came up with it. He too refers to the falsetto singing of Delta singers and black field hollers and work songs. He suggests, however, that one source might have been closer to Rodgers than any of those – the 'well-defined tradition of blackface singing that had emerged on the vaudeville and medicine show circuits shortly before World War I. Such singing was part blackface parody, part exaggeration, part vocal contortion and part sincere imitation'. He notes that one of the first stars was Lasses White who recorded a song called 'Nigger Blues' in 1916 and later starred on the Grand Ole Opry in the 1930s. He goes on to assert that 'the singer who really developed the style on records and who influenced 2 generations of country singers was a man named Emmett Miller'. 'Although Miller seldom appeared on radio and confined much of his activity to the live vaudeville circuit, he left behind an impressive series of recordings, done between 1924 and 1926, which reveal him to be adept at the kind of falsetto singing and "blue yodeling" that Rodgers later did'.
Even though Rodgers played ukulele in an Hawaiian-style band in the early 1920s, none of the country music writers stresses an Hawaiian connection in the way that has been postulated in above postings. If Hawaiian music is mentioned at all in this context, it is usually referred to in passing as among the many attractions of the vaudeville/medicine show. That does not necessarily mean there was no connection; it is simply that present research has not uncovered sufficient evidence upon which to make any categorical assertions. Personally, I find Wolfe's leaning in the direction of blackface minstrelsy, in particular the role of Emmett Miller, to be most persuasive, but this too is only conjecture. Shelton and Goldblatt's 'The Country Music Story' has a wonderful photo of Jimmie in blackface in the early 1920s.
--Stewie.
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sj
