page_title: Yodeling
section_title: Yodeling in the United States
hierarchical_section_title: Yodeling / Yodeling in the United States
context_page_description: Yodeling is a form of singing which involves repeated and rapid changes of pitch between the low-pitch chest register and the high-pitch head register or falsetto. The English word yodel is derived from the German word jodeln, meaning "to utter the syllable jo". This vocal technique is used in many cultures worldwide.
  Alpine yodeling was a longtime rural tradition in Europe, and became popular in the 1830s as entertainment in theaters and music halls.
  In Europe, yodeling is still a major feature of folk music from Switzerland, Austria, South Tyrol in Italy, and southern Germany and can be heard in many contemporary folk songs, which are also featured on regular TV broadcasts.
  In the United States, traveling minstrels were yodeling in the 19th century, and in 1920 the Victor recording company listed 17 yodels in their catalogue. In 1928, blending Alpine yodeling with African American work and blues music styles and traditional folk music, Jimmie Rodgers released his recording "Blue Yodel No. 1".
context_section_description: It is thought that yodeling was first introduced to the United States by German immigrants in Pennsylvania in the early 1800s. As the new settlers traveled south through the Appalachian Mountains and beyond into the Deep South they came into contact with Scots-Irish immigrants, Scandinavians (practitioners of a unique yodeling called kölning), and other nationalities including African slaves who communicated with "field hollers", described by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1853 as a "long, loud, musical shout, rising and falling and breaking into falsetto".
  In 1839, the Tyrolese Minstrels toured the United States and started an American craze for Alpine music. During the 1840s, dozens of German, Swiss, and Austrian singing groups crisscrossed the country entertaining audiences with a combination of singing, yodeling, and "Alpine harmony." The popularity of the European groups led to the formation of many American family singing groups as well. The most popular was the Hutchison Family Singers who toured, singing harmony and yodeling. Minstrel shows parodied the Hutchison's yodeling with their own, calling it "Tyrolesian business". In 1853, Christy's Minstrels burlesqued (mocked)  the Hutchinson Family singing 'We Come From the Hills With Tyrolean Echo'.
  Other traveling American minstrels were yodeling in the United States as well. Tom Christian was the first American yodeling minstrel, appearing in 1847 in Chicago. Recordings of yodelers were made in 1892 and in 1920 the Victor recording company listed 17 yodels in their catalogue, many of them by George Watson, the most successful yodeler of the time. In 1902 Watson recorded the song "Hush-a-bye Baby," which was later recorded in 1924 by Riley Puckett as "Rock All Our Babies to Sleep," the first country yodeling record ever made. Earlier, in 1897, Watson had recorded "Sleep, Baby, Sleep" which Puckett recorded in 1927 as the second-ever country yodeling record. "Sleep, Baby, Sleep" was also the first song ever recorded by Jimmie Rodgers (at the Bristol sessions in 1928); Rodgers would eventually come to be known as the father of both country music and American yodeling when he combined the yodel with southern African-American blues.
  The American minstrel show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the American Civil War, black people in blackface. Minstrel shows toured the same circuits as opera companies, circuses, and European entertainers, with venues ranging from lavish opera houses to makeshift tavern stages. When the European Tyrolese Minstrels toured the United States for several years in the early 1840s and created an American craze for Alpine yodeling music, four unemployed white actors decided to stage an African-American style spoof of this group's concerts. Calling themselves Dan Emmett's Virginia Minstrels, the performance was wildly popular and most historians mark this production as the beginning of minstrelsy in the U.S. According to jazz historian Gary Giddins:
  Though antebellum (minstrel) troupes were white, the form developed in a form of racial collaboration, illustrating the axiom that defines – and continues to define – American music as it developed over the next century and a half: African American innovations metamorphose into American popular culture when white performers learn to mimic black ones.
caption: Sheet music cover for "Dandy Jim from Caroline", featuring Dan Emmett (center) and the other Virginia Minstrels, c. 1844
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