Jimmie Rodgers and the Semiosis of the Hillbilly ... - Musical Quarterly

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Page 2 of 39 The Musical Quarterly Rodgers’s blue yodels, noting the short two-bar structure of most of them involving stepwise movement upwards followed by three descending sixths. 8 This pattern occurs in all but “Sleep, Baby, Sleep” and “Treasures Untold,” which have more extended yodels. However, because Födermayer was principally concerned with the acoustical aspects of the blue yodels, he did not discuss their significance within the context of the songs or within Rodgers’s material generally, nor their relationship to other items in the wider yodel repertory. Furthermore, as his discussion centered on the blue yodels, the other yodel melodies in Rodgers’s recordings were not mentioned. The present study is an attempt to apply a broader musicological analysis to Rodgers’s yodeling, looking specifically at developments discernible in his recorded output. The intention is to direct the focus onto the content of his yodels in order to elucidate connections with previous performance practice and investigate Rodgers’s apparent innovations. Because virtually all the yodel types of the so-called hillbilly yodelers (that is, the mainly southern, rural, and blues-influenced yodelers popular in Depression-era America) occur in Jimmie Rodgers’s recordings, he is clearly the primary paradigm for the genre and for many popular-music vocal practices that followed. 9 In order to understand the yodel styles of these early country musicians and their relationship to previous and later occurrences of the same vocal expressive technique, it thus makes sense to devote some attention to his uses. The research questions can be put simply: what are the key features of his yodeling style, what melodic materials are they based upon, and how do these align with the moods and lyric themes of his songs? All of Rodgers’s records, along with a number of alternate takes, have been released by the German record label Bear Family. 10 That set includes a carefully prepared discography by Nolan Porterfield listing recording dates, locations, and accompanying musicians—an invaluable asset for anyone interested in this body of work. The debt I owe to Dr. Porterfield’s scholarship is obvious in what follows, for comparing records in chronological order reveals much about the evolution of Rodgers’s yodeling. Moreover, such comparison demonstrates that certain vocal tricks or mannerisms were used in a particular session and never again (at least by him). So by grouping these recording sessions according to their dates, the development of styles, figures, and even apparently momentary infatuations in Rodgers’s work can be traced. That method has formed the basis of this empirical analysis. Downloaded from http://mq.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on July 15, 2013
Jimmie Rodgers and the Semiosis of the Hillbilly Yodel Page 3 of 39 Academic Literature Devoted to Rodgers Rodgers was central to the concept of “hillbilly” music, which began to emerge in the mid to late 1920s, when the commercial recording industry started to focus attention on the rural South, and he has continued to occupy a key role in the historiography of hillbilly, or old-time, music. When this music began to interest academics as an object of study, justification for their interest was based upon the music’s relationship to “folk” sources and to African American experience. Interest therefore centered on Rodgers as a folksinger, specifically as a carrier or transmitter of Negro blues traditions. His more obviously popular material, although it constitutes a larger percentage of his corpus, was not considered worthy of investigation. John Greenway’s “Jimmie Rodgers: A Folksong Catalyst” is typical of this approach to Rodgers’s music. 11 This was, according to Bill Malone, “the first article on hillbilly music to appear in a scholarly journal,” 12 a fact which further contributed to Rodgers’s special position in the discourse on the genre. Greenway, however, was interested in Jimmie Rodgers primarily as an exponent of folk music. Regarding his music as folksong allowed the intellectual fiction of conceptualizing him as an “exception” within the nascent recording industry and thus not “just another radio practitioner of commercial hillbilly degeneration.” 13 The blanket dismissal of popular music on grounds of commercialism typifies the mid-twentieth-century attitude toward much of the material constituting the repertoire of the hillbilly singers: individual items were always under suspicion of having been tainted with commercialism and therefore rendered inauthentic. Only those songs whose pedigree could be traced either through “folk” music (a dubious distinction in the first place) or through black experience were considered valuable or worthy of study. As Greenway explicitly states, “His miscellaneous and sentimental songs are of little interest to folklorists.” 14 Greenway and others of his generation who were more interested in folklore than in popular culture found “Rodgers’ work ...useful not only for helping us understand some of the changes undergone by folksong, but also for permitting the recovery of original phraseology which has since become corrupt.” 15 However, for students of popular music Rodgers is at least as interesting for his unique fusion of materials and moods and for his remarkable commercial success. This makes his “miscellaneous and sentimental songs” of particular interest, especially with regard to following historical developments in a musical device such as yodeling. However, in fairness to Greenway, whose work is significant and important, it is necessary to recall that he clearly stated Downloaded from http://mq.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on July 15, 2013
Page 1: The Musical Quarterly Advance Acces
Page 5 and 6: Jimmie Rodgers and the Semiosis of
Page 9 and 10: 5 Jimmie Rodgers and the Semiosis o
Page 13 and 14: the past in a way that is nostalgic
Page 15 and 16: Other Home Tropes: Generic Sixths a
Page 17 and 18: 5 swung Jimmie Rodgers and the Semi
Page 19 and 20: In his article “Jimmie Rodgers, A
Page 27 and 28: eally resembles his. In short, it s
Page 29 and 30: 19) My Little Lady 12 June 1928 O d
Page 31 and 32: 57) Those Gambler Blues 5 July 1930
Page 33 and 34: 88) Mother, the Queen of My Heart 1
Page 35 and 36: Notes Jimmie Rodgers and the Semios
Page 39: Jimmie Rodgers and the Semiosis of

Jimmie Rodgers and the Semiosis of the Hillbilly ... - Musical Quarterly

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?