page_title: Yodeling
section_title: Cowboy yodelers
hierarchical_section_title: Yodeling / Performers / Cowboy yodelers
caption_attribution_description: English: Lynne Roberts and Roy Rogers in Billy the Kid Returns (1938) - publicity still
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: Although today's idea of the life and times of cowboys may not be completely accurate, the American cowboy is not a myth. At one time the American West was an open range with thousands of cattle that needed to be watched over, branded, and herded and rounded up and driven to slaughter houses. John Lomax recalls:
  I couldn't have been more than 4 years old when I first heard a cowboy yodel and sing to his cattle. I was sleeping in my father's cabin in Texas. As the cowboys drove the cattle along, they sang, called and yodeled to them. ... They made up songs about trail life.
  Music historian Timothy Wise writes that it was the mass media of the time; radio, phonograph, and film, that spread the romantic myth of the cowboy and "popular music was integral to the mass mediation of the idea and of the representation of the cowboy, and yodeling was one of its primary signifiers." The transformation of Rogers' blue yodel to the cowboy yodel involved a change in both rhythm and a move away from Southern blues-type lyrics. Some yodels contained more of the Alpine type of yodel as well. Roy Rogers, singing with the Sons of the Pioneers in 1934, sings to a "sweet Tryolean maid" in "A Swiss Yodel".
  Jimmie Rodgers was the first to write and sing a cowboy yodel, "The Land of My Boyhood Dreams", in 1929. At that time he had moved to Texas and a publicity photograph of Rodgers wearing a cowboy outfit appears on  one of the recordings he made with the Carter Family. Other country singers, who at that time were called "hillbilly" singers, quickly took on the cowboy image at least in part to escape the negative connotations of the hillbilly label.
  A Georgia radio station of that era lists "cowboy Roy Lykes", the "Yodeling Fence Rider" from Texas, in its 1934 roster. Lykes is described as "a real cowboy" who "wears regulation cowboy shoes to get him in the mood". Many of the old cowboy songs use a beat meant to signify the trot of a lonely cowboy riding his horse on the range.
  Without question the most famous singing cowboys are Gene Autry and Roy Rogers the King of the Cowboys. In the 1930s Rogers founded and sang in the group the Sons of the Pioneers "who through well-crafted romantic songs of the American west—often featuring three-part harmonized yodeling—created a new genre in early country music that was quite distinct from that of the so-called hillbillies."
  Canadian Wilf Carter (Montana Slim), known as the "Father of Canadian Country Music," is a good example of an early cowboy singer. He began singing in the 1920s after seeing a traveling Swiss performer named "The Yodeling Fool" in a nearby town. Carter sang in the "singing cowboy" style and developed a yodel with a Swiss-sound sometimes called an "echo yodel" or a "three-in-one."
  Elton Britt is also considered to be one of the early cowboy yodelers. In 1934 he recorded what was to become his signature song, "Chime Bells." Like so many others of that era, Britt listened to records of Jimmie Rodgers, which inspired him to learn how to yodel. Eventually he became renowned for his ability to sustain his yodel for an unusually long time, a skill he reportedly learned while swimming underwater for several minutes at a time.
  Jack Guthrie, the cousin of Woody Guthrie, performed in the thirties and early forties. Known as "Oklahoma's Yodeling Cowboy", he developed a style of singing and yodeling influenced by his idol, Jimmie Rodgers, and his experiences as a bucking-horse rider and rodeo performer.
  Known as the "Texas Drifter," Goebel Reeves claimed to have taught Jimmie Rodgers to yodel, which is doubtful. Reeves came from a middle-class background, but chose the life of a hobo. His most famous song, "Hobo's Lullaby," has been covered by numerous singers, notably Woody Guthrie and his son Arlo.
  Zeke Clements, known as "The Dixie Yodeler" acted in "singing cowboy" Westerns and also provided the voice of Bashful, the yodeling dwarf, in Walt Disney's 1937 film Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. Yodeler Hannès Schroll was the voice for the Goofy holler, a stock sound effect that is used frequen
caption: Lynne Roberts, Roy Rogers, and Trigger in Billy the Kid Returns, 1938
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Microsoft Windows Photo Gallery 6.0.6001.18000", "Image DateTime": "2013:08:09 09:54:22", "Image ExifOffset": "2254", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4508", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4404", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1885", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1482", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "C3595C3CF862429AB255E6F8722E5BDC", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}