The Rough Guide to Yodel

Posted March 15th, 2007 at 6:16 am by Dave DiMartino, Yahoo! Music

 3 Comments / Filed in: Cool Stuff

If you’re like me, sometimes you feel like you’ve heard enough yodeling. Gwen Stefani, apparently on a “Sound Of Music” binge, stuck some on a single a few months ago, and a smash it wasn’t. Jewel used to yodel for kicks during her live shows, but the novelty wore thin in record time, believe me. Need I mention that working in a Yahoo! office guarantees you’ll be hearing a yodel emanating from someone’s squawkbox for the remainder of your natural days? Didn’t think so.

So what’s up with this yodel business?

Some facts: First of all, the best known of all yodels — you know, the one that sounds like “Yo-du-LAY-hee-hoo” — isn’t the only yodel in the book. A yodel can be just about anything a yodeler decides to yodel — if indeed, he or she is in fact yodeling. Not to get too technical about it — because, like, what do I know? I just looked here — but someone yodels when, in the course of vocalizing, they switch between what’s referred to as their “head” and “chest” voice. It’s that little abrupt change in between, and the skillfulness with which it’s done, that’s the arty part of the yodel. Though the Western stereotype of a yodeler usually involves sheep, hot chocolate and the Matterhorn in the background, yodeling isn’t exclusive to any continent or Sunnyvale-based Internet company, and the world is clearly better for it.

In the early days of Yahoo!, when budgets were small and marketing departments thought big, someone from Black Rocket, the company’s first ad agency, had a bright idea. What better way to get across the sheer fun of the Yahoo! brand than encapsulate it all within an easy-to-remember, good old fashioned yodel? And thus came yodeling cowboy Wylie Gustafson, leaving his mark on Yahoo!’s very first television commercial in April 1996 and all humanity thereafter.

That said, it wouldn’t be professionally responsible to let pass the recent release of “The Rough Guide to Yodel” without some comment. A collection of yodeling music recorded in every territory from here to — not quite, but almost — Timbuktu, this CD manages to do the unthinkable and removed the yodel from its hicks/sticks environs and position it as the art you perhaps never thought it was. Compiled by Bart Plantenga, a radio producer who’s also penned “Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World,” the disc features 18 tracks of the hardcore stuff, all of which goes down surprisingly easily. Recognizable names like Gillian Welch and the Fugs’ Ed Sanders sit next to an international cast including Cameroon native Francis Bebey — whose “Pygmy Divorce” borders on the ultra-surreal — Switzerland’s Christine Lauterberg, and Hawaii’s Ho’op’i Brothers, creators of the truly multi-culti “Hawaiian Cowboy.”

If it all sounds like a freak show, the surprise is: it isn’t. It’s a neatly sequenced array of music that, despite its unavoidable air of NPR programming — and you know that’s true — is completely listenable from beginning to end, and the perfect soundtrack for waiting for the cows to come home.

Which, oddly, they always do. Have you noticed?

Dave DiMartino
Executive Editor, Yahoo! Music

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3 Comments Add your own

Joe Arnold, Roughshod Records | March 19th, 2007 at 11:27 am

Mike Johnson’s “YODELING 40 YEARS” 2-disc CD
is available at the Roughshod Records online store!

What’s so special about this yodeling release, you ask, since there have been many, many yodeling albums containing 20 to 30 yodeling songs on them! Quite true, but none of them can boast that all of the songs on those releases were written by ONE person! Well we can, because all 50 of the yodeling songs on this 2-disc CD album were written & composed by Mike Johnson.
These songs will take you on a journey from Mike’s raw beginnings and development to the versatile yodeler he is today. Also debuting on this release are more of Mike’s unique wordless yodeling songs like “Black Yodels No. 2 to 7″, “Snuggle-Up Yodel”, “Wild Horse Yodel”, and “Yodel Round Up.” Mike has written over 100 yodeling songs.
Mike Johnson is also one of the 18 World Famous Yodelers featured on the “Rough Guide To Yodel” CD, singing his ever-popular “Yeah I’m A Cowboy.”

Wanna hear some of those songs, go to http://www.indiecharts.com/yodeler
Wanna see him in action, go to http://www.YouTube.com and type the below titles into the Search Engine bar;
1. Mike Johnson’s Tarzan Did! [Mike is 60 years old on this performance]
2. Mike Johnson’s Wild Horse Yodel [and this one too!]
3. Mike Johnson – Mama Don’t Allow No Music Round Here.

On 15 March 2007 we received a confirmation letter from the Library of Congress informing us that Mike Johnson’s “Yodeling 40 Years” and “Black Yodel No.1″ CDs, and related yodeling material, are now part of the Recorded Sound Reference Center’s permanent collection. This is a part of the Library’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division.

Joe Arnold, Roughshod Records
P.O. Box 100933, Arlington, Va. 22210

sydney | November 24th, 2007 at 8:22 pm

i want to no how to yodle but i cant get it down do you no what some of the steps i could try to help?

Joe Arnold | June 1st, 2008 at 8:17 pm

We now have about a dozen of our yodeling friends on our YouTube site. Janet McBride, McDonald Craig, Joyce Leonard, Ben Steneker, KG & The Ranger, Lou Stebner, Tom Wills, Kata Hay, Donna Hyland, and many more.
Joe Arnold, Roughshod Records
http://www.youtube.com/BY1NO1