Mike Johnson, Country Music's No.1 Black Yodeler
P.O. Box 100933, Arlington, Va. 22210 * (703)671-0935 * [email protected]
P.O. Box 100933, Arlington, Va. 22210 * (703)671-0935 * [email protected]
Mike Johnson is Country Music's No.1 Black Yodeler. His unique versatility in combining the Jimmie Rodgers, Cowboy, and Swiss yodeling styles, along with being the most consistently performing and recorded black yodeler since McDonald Craig, earned him the indisputable title. He single, double, and triple yodels, and like European Yodelers he also writes and performs wordless yodeling songs. Johnson first learned to yodel during the 1950s imitating the “Tarzan call” of actor Johnny Weissmuller. Over a decade later as he became involved in country music, some of his early influences were Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, and his songwriting idol, Roger Miller.
His 1200 song catalog contains over 150 yodeling songs, 50 of which are “Black Yodel No.1 to Black Yodel No.50” and 114 of which were compiled into “Mike Johnson’s Yodel Song Archives” a 4-disc set specifically created for the Recorded Sound Reference Center, which they acquired on 27 April 2007 for inclusion in their Reading and Reference Room collection at the Library of Congress in Washington DC.
His 1200 song catalog contains over 150 yodeling songs, 50 of which are “Black Yodel No.1 to Black Yodel No.50” and 114 of which were compiled into “Mike Johnson’s Yodel Song Archives” a 4-disc set specifically created for the Recorded Sound Reference Center, which they acquired on 27 April 2007 for inclusion in their Reading and Reference Room collection at the Library of Congress in Washington DC.
Mike Johnson went to Nashville in April of 1981 for his first professional recording session at Jim Maxwell’s Globe Recording Studio which resulted in the release of a 45rpm Single. In September 1981 he became a long distance trucker for Newlon’s Transfer of Arlington, Va., little knowing that it would play a major role in establishing him on the Independent Country Music Circuit. When Globe Studio moved to White House, Tennessee in 1983, Maxwell introduced Mike to his friend Jim ‘Hobe’ Stanton, also in Nashville, owner of Champ Recording Studio and the legendary Rich-R-Tone Records. Between his busy trucking schedules, Mike managed to squeeze in four recording sessions at Champ Recording Studio, first releasing a 45-rpm Single "King of the Fish" b/w "Please Don't Squeeze the Charmin" and later creating Roughshod Records and You and Me Records on 13 June 1987, two years before Stanton’s untimely death on 15 July 1989. “Jim taught me how the Nashville clique thought and worked,” Mike acknowledges.
He is profiled in Pamela E. Foster’s 1998 “My Country the African Diaspora’s Country Music Heritage” and in her 2000 follow up book “My Country Too the Other Black Music.” Foster is an award winning Nashville Journalist.
Mike was inducted into America’s Old Time Country Music Hall of Fame on 1 September 2002 by the National Traditional Country Music Association in Avoca, Iowa, in a ceremony presided over by Bob Everhart, president of the association.
Contacted in January 2005 by Bart Plantenga, 2004 author of the most definitive study on the world-wide history of yodeling, “Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo the Secret History of Yodeling Around the World.” On May 7 2005 Mike attended and performed at Plantenga's 2nd US yodeling book lecture at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York along with yodelers Randy Erwin and Lynn Book. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Sy-90njr0
Mike’s yodeling song “Yeah I’m a Cowboy” was one of the 18 yodeling songs selected by Plantenga and placed on his 2006 “Rough Guide to Yodel” CD produced and released world-wide by the World Music Network in the UK. Plantenga continued to involve Mike in projects and profiled him in his 2012 follow up yodeling history book “Yodel In Hi-Fi.” On December 2012 Mike published “I Just Wanted to Be A Songwriter, a Mike Johnson Music Anthology” a 390-page visual & text presentation of nearly everything ever published from 1980 about Mike Johnson and his music from 1980 to December 2012.
On 29 August 2016 Mike Johnson received a Lifetime Achievement Award and his label-mate James Adelsberger received an Instrumental CD of the Year Award, both presented by Bob Everhart at the National Traditional Country Music Association’s 41st Annual Old Time Country Music Festival in LeMars, Iowa.
