Before telephones came into the Southern Appalachian Mountains, hollerin' was a well respected form of communication. A champion of this actual art-form was Leonard Emanual of North Carolina. There were real competitions between the best of these---sometimes official contests at folk festivals. They resembled yodeling superficially---and often incorporated voice breaks like typical yodels. The falsetto, of course, carried further than the lower pitched tones. Mr Leonard Emanual had a special holler that he called his DITTY. Utilizing it, he won several contests.

The only younger person I ever heard do some of these hollers was Mike Seeger. (But Mike isn't young any more ;-) And he stressed that this was a method of "communication", and the hollerers could be recognized by their signature calls---the same way those in the know could recognize who was in the pilothouse of a given Mississippi River steamboat just by the personal way in which he blew the whistle. The same went for train whistles. There was a whole language involved that could give real info---sometimes lifesaving information, like: "I'LL BE PASSING ON THE PORT/LEFT SIDE" or "ON THE STARBOARD SIDE" or "THE BRIDGE AHEAD IS OUT--DANGER"

song lyric fragment:

The people knew by the whistle's moan
That the man at the throttle was Casey Jones.



Art Thieme