The sound of yodeling carries a long way, and Bettina Makley can't escape it.
By LANE DeGREGORY
Published October 23, 2003
[Times photos: Lara Cerri]
When she was 3, Bettina Makley would yodel to imitate her mom, who had taught herself the unusual voice stylings. She began yodeling at Florida Folk Festivals in 1971. But here, at the Ka-Tiki Bar in Treasure Island recently, Makley also sang her way, crooning simple lyrics and strumming a guitar.
Yodeling fan Daniela Gisela Roush, above, felt inspired enough to dance, gesture and holler when Makley hit her yodeling notes. But she said she liked Makley’s other music, too.
Bettina Makley’s family is featured in Chapter 7 of Bart Plantenga’s book. It is scheduled for release next month.
TREASURE ISLAND - She doesn't want to yodel. Not tonight.
Maybe they won't make me, she thinks, shouldering her guitar. She steps behind the microphone, tests the sound, check-check. She finger-picks a couple of chords.
She's on the deck at the Ka-Tiki Bar, facing 150 people. She and her flute player, Raven, drove down from Jacksonville late last night. It's Thursday and she's headlining the folk jam. She's debuting her first CD.
Maybe tonight, she thinks, an audience will hear my music and my voice - without a warble - and maybe they'll want to hear more.
She has been waiting 30 years for this. When you're 46, and your three kids are grown, and you've sung your whole life's soundtrack in someone else's style, shouldn't you be able to trumpet your own true voice?
It's not as if she wants to be known as a yodeler.
"I'm Bettina Makley," she says into the mike. "And tonight I'm going to sing you all a few of my songs."
Mom's calling
Her mom yodeled incessantly: in the shower, in the kitchen, in the car. Makley's mom wasn't raised in the Alps, where you have to communicate across chasms, or even in Appalachia, where folks yodel to calm the cows.
As a young girl in New Hampshire, Makley's mom Elroyce became captivated by a country yodeler called Georgia Mae. Elroyce taught herself how to break her voice, then she figured out where to break it, climbing up and down, over and around octaves, switching from her head voice to her chest voice in carefully controlled rhythms.
When she became a mom, Elroyce Makley yodeled her six kids in from the yard.
Bettina started imitating her mom when she was 3. Her parents put her up on coffee tables to perform. People paid her dimes. Her mom started harmonizing with her, then her two big sisters joined in. Soon, they were warbling at school festivals, singing for church suppers.
"I was a kind of dorky, dumpy kid. And I never fit in. But everyone knew I yodeled," Makley says. "The nasty cheerleaders used to pin me against the wall in the cafeteria and threaten to beat me up if I didn't yodel. So I yodeled."
When the family moved to Florida in 1971, they auditioned for the state's folk festival. The Makley women performed at every Florida Folk Festival for the next 32 years. This spring, the lineup included Bettina's two daughters - three generations of yodelers.
And Makley's mom performed an unprecedented stunt: a triple yodel, loud and true, two keys higher than she'd ever nailed it.
That was the last concert the Makley Family would perform together. To Bettina's lasting regret, nobody ever recorded the family singing together.
Two weeks after that last show, Elroyce Makley died.
Now there's no one who can carry that lonesome high, high harmony, no one left who can hit that triple yodel.
Enough with the eagle, already
The tiki bar is packed. Folks are perched at tall tables, surrounding the square bar. All seven TVs are tuned into the final game of the baseball playoffs.
For most people, Makley is background music.
"This next song is about a bald eagle I saw soaring over the Hardee's in Jacksonville," she tells whoever is listening. "It's a true story. I hope y'all enjoy it."
She sings about her fat kitty and astronaut John Glenn. She croons about dancing and loving, about ghosts and gardens. Her lyrics are simple, her melodies sweet. Her voice belts like Bonnie Raitt's, then soothes like Emmylou Harris'.
At the end of her first set, a few people applaud. A white-bearded man tips his captain's hat. A gray-haired woman claps above her head. And a blond in a flowery sundress slides toward the stage.
"I love your music," gushes the woman, Daniela Gisela Roush of Sunset Beach in Treasure Island. Makley beams.
"But aren't you going to yodel?"
Singing goat puppets
Most folks see yodeling as a small, silly genre, sort of like the polka. Some scholars won't even grant yodeling its own musical category. It's more like a simple phrasing, something catchy to throw into a chorus, a slide-whistle riff you don't really need.
A new book, Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo, says of the misunderstood art form, "It has seldom been seen as anything but some annoying, kitschy, baroque, decorative quirk akin to either white-trash nasal twangs or some pompous Germanic arias punctuated by transvestitic falsettos."
"I bet everyone can name a yodel," author Bart Plantenga says. "Most Westerners go right to Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music." Who could forget that lonely goat herd? "Older readers remember Jimmie Rodgers on the radio, while some may half-remember a yodeling TV commercial (with a blond-braided doll hawking Swiss Miss)."
Plantenga's is the first book devoted entirely to yodeling. It's scheduled to be released next month by Routledge Press. Makley will be yodeling at the publisher's party.
Her family is featured in Chapter 7. "The Yodeling Makley Matriarchy of Jacksonville, Fla., includes the kind of gifted, entertaining, and yet un-self-conscious performers we used to call genuine folks," the author writes. "After all, they've never performed professionally."
Translation: They never got paid.
Command performance
During her set break, a man with a white ponytail takes the stage. "All right, y'all, ante up!" he calls, passing around an empty beer pitcher. "Now you all didn't have to pay a cover here tonight, so let's cough up some cash.
"We've got to get this lady gas money to get back to Jacksonville."
At least she still has CDs to sell.
Makley and the flute player do four more songs. She taps the toe of her right silver pump. She sways in her short black skirt. Her songs. Her music.
Roush, the yodeling fan, sashays back, dancing alone, right in front of the stage. Raven drops his flute and bows out from behind the microphone. "Thank you," Makley says. "Thanks for listening."
It's 10:20. Above the beach, the sky is black. On the seven TVs, the Red Sox are winning.
Makley clears her throat. She fixes her eyes somewhere above the bar. "All right," she announces. "I'm going to try to yodel."
No introduction. No overture. Right then. Right away. She cannonballs in, drowning her guitar: "Chime bells are ringing, Yo-del-ay-ee-ee-oo, Yo-del-odel-ay-ee-ee-oo."
The sound reverberates through the tiki bar, rattling the palmetto frond roof, warping time. Everyone swivels on their stools. What Red Sox? What was that?
You'd think no one had ever yodeled on Sunset Beach before.
"Phenomenal!" declares the man in the captain's hat.
"Oh my god!" Roush bubbles. "Can you believe it?"
So Makley yodels one more, then one more after that. The same classic yodels she has yelped all these years. So much for her own songs.
"And I have some of my CDs up here, if any of you are interested," she says after the show.
Roush hurries up, waving $15. "Which yodels are on this one?" she asks, turning over the disc, looking for a title she recognizes.
"On my next CD, I'm definitely going to yodel," Makley promises. "I've been practicing Mom's high harmonies and her triple yodel. I want to record it for her. But I'm sorry," she tells the Roush. "There's no yodeling on this one."
Holding onto the CD, Roush smiles. "I'll take it anyway."
