Page "Yodeling" Paragraph 24

While some of the blue yodels heard on late 1920s Race recordings-those by the Mississippi Sheiks, for example-probably do owe something to Jimmie Rodgers ' phenomenal success, others-like Billie Young's When They Get Lovin ' They's Gone ( accompanied by Jelly Roll Morton on Victor 23339, 1930 ), Lottie Kimbrough and Winston Holmes ' Lost Lover Blues ( Gennett 6607, 1928 ), and Clint Jones ' Mississippi Woman Blues and Blue Valley Blues ( Okeh 8587, 1928 )-seem more deeply connected to these precedent recordings by Charles Anderson, and to the venerable line of African-American yodelers they represent.

There is no reason to doubt that Jimmie Rodgers, who could not resist a show, was exposed to and influenced by the black yodeler-blues singer tradition.

Its practitioners were thoroughly entrenched in minstrelsy and vaudeville, and accessible to all races of people.

Perhaps Jimmie even saw Charles Anderson himself perform, or heard some of Anderson's crystalline blues and yodeling 78s, before rising to immortality on his own great ' Blue Yodel ' recordings.

At any rate, the Freeman references strongly suggest that Charles Anderson and his generation of black professional yodelers had introduced the blue yodel in African-American entertainment before Jimmie Rodgers recorded.