ABSTRACT
Answering the question of whether a real cowboy—the guy responsible for rounding up the herd—is the source of manufactured cowboy yodeling withers down to a lack of hard evidence. Because notations of authentic yodeling cowboy songs do not exist, cowboy yodelers did not exist. Cowboys, many insist, didn't yodel until the 20th century when Tin Pan Alley pranced west. However, from an aesthetic point of view, none of this matters; who cares whether anyone was a real cowboy or “just” some professional entertainer? Fd rather listen to fake cowgal Patsy Montana than real cowboy Ken Maynard any day. Then again, yodeling could have been part of the “trail” cowboys daily work routine calls aimed at getting the herding and corralling jobs done. Maybe the cowboys yodeled in the herds by day and serenaded their bunkmates at night, or maybe they just weren't adventurous-creative enough to put song and yodel together.
