Jodellied > Jodellied > My unique American yodel Trip 26. Mike Johnson, American Black No.1 Yodeler

Mike Johnson is Country Music's No. 1 Black Yodeler. His Yodel Song Archives,
containing 114 yodeling songs written and composed by him, and related material,
was officially inducted into the Recorded Sound Reference Center's permanent music
collection in the Library of Congress on 26 April 2007.

There have been other Black Yodelers among the numerous
Minstrel and Stringband acts between 1880 and 1925,
like the famous Monroe Tabor, Beulah Henderson,
Charles Anderson, and The Mississippi Sheiks.

Then came Mike's personal friend, Korean War Veteran & Bronze Star recipient,
McDonald Craig of Linden, Tennessee, who recorded briefly on
Nashville's Gold Standard label during the mid-1960s
and became the only Black Yodeler to ever win First Place
at an Annual [1978] Jimmie Rodgers Yodeling Championship
hosted by the Jimmie Rodgers Museum in Meridian, Mississippi.
Others along the way include Linda Martell, Stoney Edwards, and Slim Gaillard.

None of them, however, have demonstrated Mike's unique versatility in combining
the Jimmie Rodgers and Swiss yodeling styles.

He joined the U.S. Navy in September 1965 and served two Vietnam tours
attached to the USS Constellation,
CVA-64 from 1967 to 1969. Afterwards he also worked as a Bus Boy,
Motorcycle Courier, Park Police Officer, Freelance Photographer,
Driving Instructor and in September 1981 he became a long-distance trucker.
Trucking, starting with Newlon's Transfer [1981 to 1995, the first of three companies]
in Arlington, Virginia, would play a major role in establishing him
on the Independent Country Music circuit.

His early influences, the Singing Cowboys like Gene Autry, Roy Rogers,
Tex Ritter, Herb Jeffries [the only Black Movie Singing Cowboy] and the sound of
the Steel Guitar paved his way to Country Music.
He later honed himself on the music of Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams,
Johnny Cash, and Roger Miller. Mike says Roger Miller gave him the songwriting bug.
"I just wanted to be a songwriter! But I've had to do everything else along the way to get there!"

Performing since the mid-1960s Mike went to Nashville in 1981
for his first professional recording session at Jim Maxwell's Globe Recording Studio
on Dickerson Road.

He booked a two-hour session and recorded five songs,
from which sprang his first 45rpm single,
"King Of The Fish/Please Don't Squeeze The Charmin"
on his MAJJ Productions literary banner.

"I still regard this session as the best one I ever did!" Mike maintains.

When Globe Studio relocated outside Nashville in 1983,
Mike over to Champ Recording Studio on Church Street
where he met and mentored under Jim Stanton, founder and
owner of the legendary Rich-R-Tone Records,
and continued to record his songs there until Jim's untimely death in 1989.

"Jim taught me how Nashville clique thought and worked..."
Mike acknowledges.

Mike became an ASCAP member in 1984 and after membership,
song registration, and royalty disputes he quit and joined BMI in 1994.

"Did You Hug Your Mother Today?" became his first radio hit in 1994,
being the most requested song and playing for three weeks surrounding
Mother's Day on Big John Baldry's Michigan Jamboree Radio Show,
WBYW-FM 89.9 in Grand Rapids Michigan.

Mike is in Pulitzer Prize Nominee,
Pamela E. Foster's two anthologies about African Americans in Country Music.
The 1998 "My Country, The African Diaspora's Country Music Heritage"
[ISBN-0-9662680-0-8 hardback] [ISBN-0-9662680-1-6 soft cover]
and her 2000 "My Country Too,
The Other Black Music."[ISBN-0-9662680-2-4 paperback]

In late November 2003 everything came to a sudden halt when three neck vertebrae
collapsed on his spinal cord. He was treated at the Veterans Hospital in Washington D.C.
and underwent surgery in January 2004 at the Veterans Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.

Mike is one of the 18 world famous Yodelers on Bart Plantenga's 2006
"Rough Guide To Yodel" CD, [RGNET1174CD]singing his
"Yeah I'm A Cowboy."
Plantenga authored the 2004 Best Seller "Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo,
The Secret History of Yodeling Around The World." [ISBN-0-415-93990-9]

Mike Johnson's "Yodeling 40 Years" 2-disc CD album featuring
50 of his own yodeling songs was released in January 2007.

The 30 March 2007 First Issue of Big-Mag #1, a Netherlands publication,
featured Mike in a 5-page article [with 3 color photographs] written by Bart Plantenga.
Mike has since been the subject of several of Bart's yodeling projects.

So there you have it. Mike Johnson! Man of many hats,
but always Mike Johnson!

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

COUNTRY BOY EDDIE introduced
Mike in September of 1982 to his Birmingham, Alabama Channel-6 TV viewers as "
...sounding like Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and Jimmie Rodgers, all rolled into one!"

BOB EVERHART wrote in his 1996 January/February Issue of Tradition magazine,
"FINALLY, a new tape of good yodeling. This guy not only yodels,
he double yodels and triple yodels!
He's also a darn good songwriter and singer and guitarist."

BART PLANTENGA stated at his 7 May 2005 yodel-book lecture
at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City,
"Mike Johnson, Virginia long-haul trucker and
Country Music's No.1 Black Yodeler is a gifted Yodeler who

easily switches from Hillbilly to Swiss-style yodeling...
and became a bit of an Interstate legend
when he began selling his recordings at truck stops along his long-distance routes..."

Tha't why I think, Jimmie Rodgers is American No.1 Blue yodeler,