A Brief History of Yodeling
There is a place for every genre of music. Rap in Brooklyn, reggae in San Diego, Bruce Springsteen in New Jersey and yodeling in the American West. Yodeling however, was not born in the west. The yodel has deep roots in Europe reaching as far back as the 400’s in places like Switzerland, Austria and Germany. The yodel was used to communicate with one another across vast expanses of land, through steep and remote valleys of the Alps. Fast forward about a millennium and the yodel was incorporated into the folk traditions of these areas. The yodel developed from a communication tool into an art form. By the 1700’s the yodel was being incorporated into songs that told stories of love, nature and life in the mountains.
In the mid 1800’s, European yodelers were pushed to leave their land because of economic hardship, political and religious prosecution, land shortage and over population. They had received word from relatives and friends that America would provide economic stability, religious freedom and lots of land. This news prompted Europeans to board ships like the SS Philadelphia for a transatlantic journey that would take weeks or months. These journeys were harsh and the one-way ticket included overcrowding, poor hygiene and in many cases sickness and death. If you were on the SS Germany you might have been struck with cholera and died. If you were aboard the SS Atlantic, your ship would have sunk and you would have drowned off the coast of Nova Scotia. You would have been likely to arrive at your destination safely and luxuriously if you were traveling aboard the SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse.
The yodeling immigrants were drawn to geographical regions of the US that would be similar to the land they left behind. They made there way yonder to places like the Appalachian Mountains, the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the Cascade Mountains, the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Smokey Mountains. Once settling into their new land after an arduous journey, the immigrants started to sing their yodeling song. They would pass down the yodeling practice within families and communities used for everything from communication to festive gatherings.
In 1880, yodeling emerged in America in an early form of variety entertainment called Vaudeville. Tom Christen and Helen Brown are recognized as being the first yodeling immigrants to perform in Vaudevills. There are unfortunatley no recordings of either singer due to a lack of recorded media and lost or unarchived performances. The exposure yodeling was given in Vaudeville performances influenced its adoption by the father of country music, Jimmie Rodgers. Rodgers is one of the first American artists to combine yodeling with the blues and Appalachian folk music.
Yodeling became infused with country, western and blues sounds. The European accordion, violin and zither were replaced by the American banjo, fiddle, harmonica and steel guitar. These American instruments were integral because of their adaptability to the isolation of frontier life and cowboy culture. Jimmie Rodgers with his country blues sound went on to influence yodeling troubadours like Hank Williams, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Earnest Tubb and Cole Wilson and His Tumbleweeds. If you listen closely to Jimmie Rodgers’ tune “T for Texas” you can hear the influence it had on Canned Heat’s “Going Up the Country.”
And the rest is history. Now as I drive yonder through plains and over mountains, I admire and contemplate the blend between story telling and yodeling that has been accomplished so well by these American pioneers. An American twist on a millennia old European valley call. Jimmie Rodgers, the father of country sings “I’m going, said I, to the land of the sky, away out on the mountain.” A smooth yodel eases his tune to an end but is followed by Roy Rogers sing “oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above, don’t fence me in. Let me ride through the wild open country that I love, don’t fence me in.” The yodel has become an ode to emotion and an ode to the land.
Hells Canyon, Idaho
