“Blue Yodel No. 3” (subtitled “Evening Sun Yodel”) was written and recorded by Jimmie Rodgers, the Mississippi-born singer who became known as “the Father of Country Music.” Rodgers recorded the song on February 15, 1928, in Camden, New Jersey, and it was released on September 7, 1928, on Victor 21433, paired with “Never No Mo’ Blues” on the B-side. The song is the third in Rodgers’s series of “Blue Yodel” recordings — thirteen songs across his short career (1927–1933) that combined the 12-bar blues format with his trademark yodel refrains.
Rodgers’s yodeling came from an unlikely source: he saw a touring troupe of Swiss yodelers performing at a church and incorporated the technique into his own singing. He himself was modest about the technique, describing his yodels as “curlicues I can make with my throat” and treating them as a vocal flourish rather than a defining stylistic choice. The combination of country-blues phrasing and yodel refrain became his signature, and the Blue Yodel series collectively defined the early-country-music vocabulary that would later seed the bluegrass tradition.
“Blue Yodel No. 3” sits among the more durable entries in the Rodgers Blue Yodel series. The song crossed into the bluegrass repertoire through Bill Monroe and many subsequent acts, with Monroe’s “Mule Skinner Blues” recording (a closely related Rodgers song) being the most direct line of transmission. Rodgers died of tuberculosis on May 26, 1933, only six years into his recording career; his catalog has shaped American country and bluegrass music ever since.
