A Recording Artists Dream by Janet McBride
(Article from Rope Burns Magazine)

This is a neat story.  Read on.  This is the email promo letter I sent out on the new CD #007.  I thought you’d like it.

Have you ever thought you might be the person who finds an old forgotten recording of someone famous or found yourself looking at antiques hoping to find that ‘diamond in the rough’?   Sometimes things just happen.  Patsy Montana and I had been friends for over 40 years before she passed away in 1996.  In 2002 I was told that Patsy’s husband Paul was in a rest home in San Jacinto so while on our way to San Diego for a show, we made plans to stop in and see him.  While there John and I visited with their daughter Beverly and grandson Michael.  They told us they were pretty overwhelmed trying to get the Rose’s house ready to sell.  It seemed that Patsy had saved everything.  Before we left I told Beverly to let me know if I could help in any way.  When Beverly ran onto a large box of ‘reel to reel’ tape recordings she didn’t know what to do with, I suggested she send them to me to listen to which I did.  One by one, minute by minute and reel by reel I listened by the hour.  The tapes were old and often would break. The tapes contained bits and pieces of Patsy Montana at home, an interview on the radio and even with her children and grandchildren.  When I came upon a piece of tape with just Patsy playing her guitar and singing, my ears perked up.  The tape broke but there was still a verse and chorus of a song I hadn’t heard Patsy sing before and I thought that it might be useable in some way but of course, I had to figure out a way.   That was late 2002.

My mind went back to the tape often but it wasn’t until in March of 2004 that I began to work out just how I was going to do it. I thought a dream might work and before too long I had my song going.  In April I was in Alabama and sang the song to Beverly and Michael.  It was a long way from being finished but they both agreed that I was on the right track.

With the digital mastering and restoration talent of Phil York and with the expert musicianship of Mike McClain, Milo Deering and Rocky Gribble and the masterful production and engineering of McClain at his Recording Studio plus the harmony voices of Call of the West’s Jeanne Cahill and Jerome Campbell and John Ingram I have completed A Cowgirl’s Dream.

It is the first song on the CD ‘Happy Yodeling Cowgirl’ making the total of 14 songs that contain a yodel.  This project has been a labor of love on my part.  I hope you like it.

My email is: JMcBride.Yodeler@sbcglobal.net

My Web Page is:

www.heroeswest.com/yodelqueen or
www.janetmcbrideyodeler.com/

JANET MCBRIDE

$17.00 for the CD.

You can pay by Pay Pal by using my email address of :

JMcBride.Yodeler@sbcglobal.net

or send Check or M.O. to address above.  DO NOT PAY AT THE WEBSITE.

Fan club $5.00

To Pat Boilesen,
216-- S. 7th St.,
Albion, Ne. 68620-1112

Excerpts from Beverly & Michael’s letter.

When we lost Mom in May of 1996, I naturally took a leave of absence from work to try to help Daddy get her affairs in order.  Imagine my dismay as I walked into her office at home to discover 60 years of semi-organized chaos. Important contracts boxed with fan letters. Priceless photos of long gone stars of yesteryear mixed with snaps of unidentified fans from all over the world. Sheet music long out of print slowly morphing into dust, carefully arranged in alphabetical order in long forgotten boxes. So I would spend a few weeks wading through it all go home work long enough to get more time off without getting fired fly back to California open the same drawers and closets only to find them full again almost as though there was an elevator from the basement pushing stuff up as quickly as I got them emptied. So it was no surprise when I discovered a large box in the dark recesses of a back closet untouched and unopened for many years simply transferred with each move. Inside was a treasure trove of old reel-to-reels and giant, heavy old transcriptions with much of the recording surface peeling off. What on earth could be done with such stuff? Impossible to throw out just as seemingly impossible to recover. Into this scenario enter good friends Janet McBride and John Ingram who had come to visit Daddy, now in a nursing home after a devastating stroke. They kindly agreed to take them to see what could be done. The result is what you hear on this remarkable record. They worked some sort of sound magic and managed to lift mother’s voice and yodel from the decaying surface. Then Janet’s genius for songwriting integrated the two into this loving memorial to Mom and her music. Many thanks from our family for this wonderful tribute to both Mom and her Cowboy Sweetheart my Dad who rode with her faithfully and supportively on a trail that spanned over 60 years.

Beverly & Michael

www.heroeswest.com/yodelqueen

Yodeling has been going in and out of favor in the country field for 70 years: some yodelers made it famous, some didn't. Some sang well, some wrote songs. Many country (and non-country) singers have tried yodeling; most have failed at it.

In the last 20 years or so, some singers have surprised listeners with a pretty good yodel thrown into a song as a little added touch: most of these singers have something in common - or shall I say, someone in common - and that person is yodeling teacher extraordinaire Janet McBride.

Janet as been performing and recording for over 50 years. During that time her career has had its ups and downs (in the mid-1960s she was a traveling member of the Grand Ole Opry).

McBride has proved to many singers and other folks in the music business that she's among the best, if not the best, yodeler in the history of country music.

That's why other singers flock to her for lessons. If yodeling was as popular as electric guitar, Janet McBride would be a superstar.

Don't just believe me: check out any of these three cds (four, if you consider 50 YEARS OF YODELING is a two-cd set). As its title suggests, the songs on 50 YEARS OF YODELING were recorded over a period of years, some going back to the 1940s when she sang with her siblings in a family group.

Janet started her solo recording career in 1960 on Starday, getting to sing with musicians who became legends in the recording studios.

It didn't take long for musicians across the country to spread the word. Gigs and offers followed, but great fame and wealth did not.

Like so many musicians, Janet was known by most professionals, but unknown to the largest section of the public.

I should mention here that there's a dandy liner notes booklet with 50 YEARS OF YODELING, listing all the songs and the lineup of musicians and signers.

If the first song' She Taught Me to Yodel' (young Janet at only age 17) doesn't knock you out, you have no heart.

Many of the tunes on 50 YEARS OF YODELING are considered yodeling cowboy classics. For much of her career she was asked to record these songs that already had been hits for other singers both female and male. In many cases, Janet's version surpasses the original.

When Janet writes a song, it often sounds like a classic from decades ago: this became obvious listening to the two other cds HAPPY YODELING COWGIRL (2005) and GOSPEL COUNTRY (2004).

The latter cd has two bonus songs: Janet singing with her siblings on 'Let's Pretend', recorded in 1951, and 'I'll Be Listening', recorded in 1997.

I love her girlish voice on the early recordings. Like most signers, Janet's voice has deepened over the years as she has gained more knowledge of how to sing better and write songs, and when she tears into a yodel, watch out: she still has the power to amaze.

It's more subtle now, perhaps - not quite as dramatic as in her youth - but Janet knows how to use her instrument better than ever.

Rich and famous or not, Janet McBride is a winner.