yodeling styles, along with being the most publicized, commercially recorded and consistently performing black yodeler, that firmly established him as such.

And just how did Mike Johnson learn to yodel? "Johnny Weissmuller!" he quickly acknowledges. "I grew up during the 1950s and 60s, a period when adventure movies and cliff-hangers ruled the Silver Screen. Westerns, Gladiators, The Phantom, Flash Gordon, and my all-time favorite, Tarzan! I had read all of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan novels during the 60s, and summer camps and boy scout camping trips set the stage for many of us to imitate him. I wore out that Tarzan yodel, morning noon, and night! At one point my mother threatened to ship me off to Africa, much to my youthful delight! So, I was actually yodeling before I even realized it and when I got into Country Music, I already had a major head start with the yodeling. Without a doubt, it was my yodeling that paved my early music road."

Mike has written over 1200 songs, including some 50-plus yodeling songs. While he started out doing some of the standard yodel songs like "T-For Texas," "Sue City Sue," "Back in the Saddle Again" and "Cattle Call," he quickly realized the endless possibilities in combining these yodels to create his own unique sounds. He began experimenting with non-yodel songs like "Happy Trails," "Oh Lonesome Me," "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer," "Waltz Across Texas" and "Jambalaya," which quickly became his signature song and many others to test the possibilities. This led to writing his own yodeling songs like "Just A Nobody" [18 March 1971] "I Can Yodel Songs Like Them All!" [23 July 1981] and "Your Old Lady," [22 February 1982-major crowd favorite during the ‘80s] that demonstrated his uniqueness and ability to handle a fast yodel. "Your Old Lady" is a combination yodel-lesson and story on how the yodel was born that is a lot more detailed than the old yodel standard "She Taught Me How To Yodel."

Born in 1946, Mike Johnson joined the U.S. Navy in the fall of 1965 following his high school graduation. He served two Vietnam tours attached to the USS Constellation, CVA-64 from 1967 to 1969. Afterwards he also worked as a motorcycle courier, park police officer, freelance photographer, driving instructor and a long-distance trucker, starting with Newlon’s Transfer [1981-1995] in Arlington, Virginia. Trucking would play a major role in establishing him on the Independent Country Music circuit.

Mike’s early influences, the singing cowboys like Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Tex Ritter, and the sound of the steel guitar paved his way to country music. He honed himself on the music of Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and Roger Miller. Mike says Roger Miller gave him the songwriting bug. "I just wanted to be a songwriter. But I’ve had to do everything else along the way to get there!"

Although Mike wrote his first song in 1957, it was drawing, reading, writing and camping that occupied most of his youthful time. A large number of his artwork was done specifically for his literary works.

Performing in numerous bars and honky-tonks since the mid-1960s, it would be another 10 years before he would take a serious stab at songwriting. In 1981 he went to Nashville for his first professional recording session at Jim Maxwell’s Globe Recording Studio on Dickerson Road. He booked a two-hour session and recorded five songs: King Of The Fish, Please Don’t Squeeze The Charmin, Just A Nobody, A Singing Star and 5.Little Boys And Doggies. From that sprang his first 45 rpm single, King Of The Fish/Please Don’t Squeeze The Charmin on his MAJJ Productions literary banner. Lawrence Record Store at 409 Broadway in downtown Nashville was the first retailer to stock the new release, and they have been carrying Mike’s releases ever since. In September of 1982, Country Boy Eddie introduced Mike to his Birmingham, Alabama Channel-6 TV viewers as " …sounding like Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and Jimmie Rodgers, all rolled into one!"

In 1994, his song "Did You Hug Your Mother Today?" was the most listener-requested song, playing for three weeks surrounding Mother’s Day on Big John Baldry’s Michigan Jamboree Radio Show. In 1999 he re-mastered his "Black Yodel No.1" cassette and released it as his first CD. In January 1995 his Top-Rail Chatter Country Music magazine was born and garnered him another following because it catered strictly to the independent singers, songwriters and their music, and provided useful information on copyrighting, publishing, music scams, and the music business in general. It ran until December 2002, when Mike’s busy trucking schedule and his mother’s stroke reduced it to a mere newsletter format before publication ceased much to the dismay of his long-time subscribers, many of whom had become personal friends. One highlight of Mike’s trucking was that he actually got to meet a lot of his subscribers and other music folk during his trucking runs. Something that he most definitely misses.

On September 1, 2002 Mike Johnson was inducted into America’s Old-Time Country Music Hall Of Fame by The National Traditional Country Music Association at the 27th Annual Old-Time Country Music Festival, in Avoca, Iowa.

So there you have it. Mike Johnson. Man of many hats, but always Mike Johnson!