Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/04/19/walmart-yodeling-kid-becom.html
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That is a wonderful thing.
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Suuuuure am glad cowboy hat included!
Ok, this kid is great and talented and someone is introducing him to the right music, but… why the hell is everyone calling him “yodeling kid”!?! He’s not yodeling at all. Obviously Hank Williams incorporated a lot of vocalizations similar to yodeling, but god this annoys me.
Ok, rant over. Sorry.
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if gene autry yodeled, this kid certainly is, since he sings in a similar fashion.
…did i see that this kid performed at coachella? or was that a gag?
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I think that this is, indeed, called yodeling. I think American country yodeling is quite different from Austrian/central-European yodeling, if that’s what you’re comparing it to. The American “blue yodel,” exemplified by people like by Jimmie Rodgers, was being used a lot in the early 1900s.
Is this yodeling? Blue Yodel No. 2:
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No, I’m comparing it to Appalachian yodeling which is a direct descendant of Alpine styles. Jimmie Rodgers uses a lot of the same vocalizations here, as does Hank, but this isn’t really yodeling, more yodel-singing. It doesn’t really matter and this kid deserves a pat on the back, but spend any time in a southern honky-tonk and you get a sense of just how much of a rich history there is and how it was really diluted when it was injected into popular music.
This is more along the lines of what I think of when I think of North American yodeling styles.
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Sure, but what I was saying was that Jimmie Rodgers’s style was often contemporaneously referred to as “yodeling,” and still is. I’m sure there are a lot of people with opinions on what true yodeling is, but calling this “yodeling” has a pretty long tradition.
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Yeah, you’re right. And I’m not asserting that any one style is “true” yodeling. I just think it’s a weird leap to describe this kid as “yodeling kid” as opposed to “mini Hank” or something. Like I said, it doesn’t matter one bit, but I was a little let down when I finally broke down and watched the videos. There are some damn talented yodelers out there and this kid is just parroting HW. Which is fine, I guess.
I just went and watched his video in Walmart. i couldn’t make it all the way through. Wait until his voice changes. He got is 15 minutes of fame.
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