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 album sold more than a half million copies, a phenomenal number at the time.
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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’ 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]
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]
In 1969, country singer Merle Haggard released Same Train, A Different Time: Merle Haggard Sings The Great Songs Of Jimmie Rodgers, which included "Blue Yodel #6", "California Blues", and "Mule Skinner Blues". Tompall Glaser recorded a version of "T For Texas" which was included on the 1976 compilation, Wanted! The Outlaws, country music's first million-selling album. The band Lynyrd Skynyrd also performed "T for Texas" on their 1976 live album, One More From the Road, in a rock and roll style with triple guitar work from the band's three guitarists. Also Johnny Cash has recorded a cover of "T for Texas", which can be heard on his posthumously issued box set Unearthed. Bill Monroe has covered three of the Blue Yodels, #3, #7 and #8 (Muleskinner Blues). Many other artists have gone on to copy Monroe's style of Blue Yodel #8 including Dolly Parton, the Stoneman Family and Rhonda Vincent. The Del McCoury band has also been know to play Blue Yodel #3 in Monroe's style.