Blue Yodel

The Blue Yodel songs are a series of thirteen songs written and recorded by Jimmie Rodgers during the period from 1927 to his death in May 1933. The songs were based on the 12-bar blues format and featured Rodgers’ trademark yodel refrains. The lyrics often had a risqué quality with “a macho, slightly dangerous undertone”.[1] The original 78 issue of "Blue Yodel No. 1 ("T" for Texas)" sold more than a half million copies, a phenomenal number at the time. The term "blue yodel" is also sometimes used to differentiate the earlier Austrian yodeling from the American form of yodeling introduced by Rodgers.

A folk-blues hybrid

Jimmie Rodgers’ background in the blackface minstrel-shows and as a railroad worker enabled him to develop a unique musical hybridisation drawing from both black and white traditions, as exemplified by the Blue Yodel songs. In his recordings Rodgers and his record producer, Ralph Peer, achieved a “vernacular combination of blues, jazz, and traditional folk” to produce a style of music then called ‘hillbilly’.[2]

Rodgers’ Blue Yodel songs, as well as a number of his other songs of a similar pattern, drew heavily on fragmentary and ephemeral song phrases from blues and folk traditions (called ‘floating lyrics’ or ‘maverick phrases’).[3]

Jimmie Rodgers’ yodel

Jimmie Rodgers’ yodeling refrains, perhaps mimicking a mournful train whistle, are integral to the Blue Yodel songs. Rodgers’ loping and melancholy vocal ornamentations have been described as “that famous blue yodel that defies the rational and conjecturing mind”.[4] Rodgers himself apparently viewed his yodeling as little more than a vocal flourish; he described them as “curlicues I can make with my throat.”[5]

Jimmie Rodgers said he saw a troupe of Swiss yodelers doing a demonstration at a church. They were touring America, and he just happened to catch it, liked it, and incorporated it into his songs.

It has been suggested that Rodgers may have been influenced by the yodeling of Emmett Miller, a blackface minstrel-show singer who recorded for Okeh Records from 1924 to 1929.[6] Singers such as Vernon Dalhart, Riley Puckett, and Gid Tanner incorporated yodeling in recordings made in the mid-1920s; Rodgers recorded a version of Riley Puckett's “Sleep, Baby, Sleep" in August 1927.[2]

Jimmie Rodgers’ distinctive yodel “had the steady ease of hobo song, and was simple enough to imitate”, unlike the sophisticated yodeling of other contemporary performers.[2] Rodgers’ recording and performing successes in the late 1920s and early 1930s ensured that yodeling “became not only an obligatory stylistic flourish, but a commercial necessity”. By the 1930s yodeling was a widespread phenomenon and had become almost synonymous with country music.[5]

When members of Kenya's Kipsigi tribe first encountered the Blue Yodels in the early 1950s, they attributed Rodgers' voice to a half-man, half-antelope spirit they dubbed "Chemirocha."[7] Songs dedicated to Chemirocha came to be incorporated into their fertility rituals; one recording, recorded by ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey, is available here.

The first Blue Yodel (T for Texas)

Jimmie Rodgers’s first Blue Yodel, which became known as “Blue Yodel No. 1 (T for Texas) ”, was recorded on 30 November 1927 in the Trinity Baptist Church at Camden, New Jersey. When the song was released in February 1928 it became “a national phenomenon and generated an excitement and record-buying frenzy that no-one could have predicted”.[1]

Blue Yodel song details

Covers and legacy

See also

References

  1. 1 2 ‘Jimmie Rodgers: Life & Time’ by John Lilly (citing Jimmie Rodgers: The Life and Times of America's Blue Yodeler by Nolan Porterfield, University of Illinois Press, 1992).
  2. 1 2 3 ‘Black and White Cultural Seepage in Country’, by Cole M. Greif-Neill, ‘Your folyops’ website (2005).
  3. ↑ John Greenway, ‘Jimmie Rodgers: A Folksong Catalyst’, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 70, No. 277. (Jul-Sept 1957), pp. 231-234: available on-line
  4. ↑ Liner Notes by Bob Dylan, ‘The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers’ album, released 19 August 1997 (Egyptian Records label) (from) 'Jimmie Rodgers', 'The Bob Dylan Who’s Who' website.
  5. 1 2 Yodel-ay-ee-oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World by Bart Plantenga, 2004, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-93989-5.
  6. ↑ Nick Tosches, Where Dead Voices Gather, 2001, Little, Brown, USA, ISBN 0-316-89507-5
  7. ↑ Kailath, Ryan. "In A Kenyan Village, A 65-Year-Old Recording Comes Home". NPR.org. NPR. Retrieved July 1, 2015.
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