Maybe you've seen her at a county fair. More likely you've heard her singing up a storm as only an accomplished yodeler can do.
The following story is from The Pinnacle, Hollister and San Benito County's "BEST" newspaper. You can see their online version at www.pinnaclenews.com.
In their March 14 issue Lolita Ferrell gets whole page coverage and more in the San Benito Life section. Great pictures of a living legend. Sorry, but I only robbed one of them.
So put your boots on and clear your throat as you read this great article. And if you have an achin' to learn to yodel afterwards, you can look at: www.musicridge.com/yodeling.htm and www.yodelcourse.com/
Happy reading.
by Kate Woods
Pinnacle Staff WriterDecked out in a deep green cowboy shirt, a suede fringe vest and heavy silver and turquoise trinkets, the trim and springy "Yodeling" Lolita Ferrell talks excitedly about her 70 years in the country music business.
Two hours isn't enough time to hear all of Lady Lolita's tales. She's performed in every county fair from San Diego to Eugene, Ore., and graced many a bluegrass and traditional country western band, including the incomparable Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, doing what she does best: yodeling and singing.
When the 80-year-old Hollister entertainer goes into action, she takes on a stage presence and musical passion like that of a youthful Loretta Lynn.
Did we tell you Lolita can yodel with the best Swiss miss? We did? Well, it's worth saying again because she's so proud of her throaty, falsetto intonations she snagged the California vanity plate "YODEL," which hangs from the back of her blue pickup.
"I want to be a cowboy's sweetheart,
I want to learn to rope and ride;
I want to hear the coyote's howling,
Out west of the great divide.
Yo-de-oh-ee-ohhh-ee-oh yo-de-oh-ee-oh . . . Ah ha!"Yodeling Lolita has been inducted into countless country, swing and bluegrass music Halls of Fame --- in California, Nevada, Arizona, Nebraska, Colorado --- and has walls of trophies to prove it. But last Thursday the shiny awards were packed in boxes for a trip to Brookdale near Ben Lomond where the Northern California Bluegrass Society paid tribute to the legendary yodeler at the historic Brookdale Lodge. The organizers of the festival requested that Lolita bring her trophies and photos to festoon the hotel lobby --- mementos of her musical life.
"I'M A COUNTRY HICK"
"I'm a country hick," she said, with a smile that caused her eyes to flash. "I come from a musical family."
Born Lolita Ferrell in 1922 in Grinds Pass, Idaho, Lolita had eight siblings and a dad who worked as a gold and tungsten miner and a carpenter. He went where the work was.
"We lived in half of the states in the U.S. before there were 50 states," she said.
One of those states was Colorado, and it was there in the mountains where Lolita, at only 10-years-old, became infatuated with yodeling, developed by the Swiss to communicate across mountain canyons. While collecting wood and water, Lolita and her younger sister became spooked when they thought they heard someone following them on a high, forested ridge.
Lolita yelled out to the mystery person, and to their surprise, the "person" yelled back. They ran home and told their father about their scary adventure, only to be told that what they had heard was "an echo."
After that, Lolita started experimenting with the echoes, and before long she was able to break her voice into separate octaves as she yodeled throughout the mountain canyons.
And the rest is history, a long history, as the thousands of photographs throughout her house can attest. Snapshots of every bluegrass and country music hero she has ever met, performed with, or shared a bill with adorn the walls of her home: Patsy Montana, Ernest Tubbs, Curley Dee and his Happy Roving Cowboys, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and the Oakridge Boys are just a few of the faces with whom she has shared Kodak moments.
She hooked up for a stint with the Texas Playboys just two months after their legendary founder, Bob Wills, passed away.
But her strongest love is bluegrass, and she prefers it to the sounds of "country rock," as she calls it.
"It isn't country western anymore," she said. "It infuriates me, and everyone else, too. Nashville didn't do justice to the old timers. They always wanted money, money, money for promoting. People like Garth Brooks and Reba McIntire, they took over Nashville, they took over Nashville because they had the money. Those people paid to get there."
Lolita came to Hollister when she was in her late 20's when the population was only 6,000. She was married twice and had a boy and a girl, now 52 and 54 respectively, who still live in Hollister. After raising her family, Lolita returned to her music muse with a zeal. For decades she performed with the renowned Fresno fiddling band, the Music Farmers, as they traveled up and down California and the western U.S.
"For one year we broke the record at the Sheraton in Fresno, and we played there every Sunday," said Lolita as she thumbed through one of many scrapbooks filled with reams of news stories, gig fliers and more photos documenting her formidable career. "No one was ever booked there that long."
In 1979 former Fresno mayor Daniel Whiter gave her the key to the city.
THE BLUEGRASS ROAD
It's hard to get the spunky performer, who now has four grandchildren and three great grandchildren, to sit still long enough to pry from her the details about her many tales on the bluegrass road. And one can see she has a million yarns upon stepping into the "inner sanctum" of her home. In her bedroom, every corner, nook, cranny and wall are covered with montages of photos, knick-knacks and gifts that her many admirers have showered on her throughout the years --- a cowboy riding on his horse inside a snow globe; porcelain dust collectors of birds perched on twigs; antique blue-green colored bottles; southwestern jewelry. Then there are her own artistic creations ---- a cornucopia of crafts, like vases encrusted with old-fashioned costume jewelry; painted wooden reliefs of country scenes; and her Indian Princess performance outfit made of white leather and decorated with cobalt blue beads, with long fringe on the sleeves and hem, a red sash and white moccasins.
"I'm like Elvis Presley," she said clutching a stuffed tiger toy --- another gift --- as she pointed to all her old cohorts on the walls. "When I come back from yodeling on a weekend, I like to unwind in here."
She undoubtedly did that when she returned from the Brookdale bluegrass festival. One of the organizers, Barbra Burman, said Lolita gave two performances over the weekend and both were hits.
"She did wonderful and the audience loved it," said Burman. "She got standing ovations and a huge bouquet of roses. And a huge chocolate birthday cake."
The cake was big enough to feed all of the 500 fans in the Brookdale Lodge audience, a crowd that overflowed the bar, the lobby, the halls and the patios.
"I had tears coming to my eyes," Lolita said. "I was just flabbergasted."
A CD was made of her performance backed by the bluegrass bands Earthquake Country and Harmony Grits, and it was played on San Jose's KKUP radio station Monday night. Some of the songs included "Give Me the Pillow You Dream On," "Waltz Across Texas," and "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart."
Burman said the Northern California Bluegrass Society received some 30 cards and letters from all over the nation congratulating Lolita on her latest honor.
THE EARTHQUAKE SPRINGOLIN
Besides her trophies and some of the many photos she has collected over the years, Lolita took a special instrument to the festival that she custom-made out of manzanita wood and steel springs, which she calls an "earthquake springolin." She demonstrated its backwoods sound by playing the springs with a long piece of metal. It looks like it would sound like metal scrapping on a chalkboard, but it actually creates a rhythmical noise somewhere between an autochord harp --- a stringed instrument played flat on the lap --- and a twangy Jew's harp.
Yodeling Lolita doesn't perform as much as she used to, except occasionally, like at the bluegrass festival that honored her on the weekend. When she does, she usually performs with Harmony Grits.
One of Lolita's favorite hangouts these days is the Panoche Inn in the Badlands, where fans might catch her on any given weekend, enjoying the juke box and sipping a beer with her friends and aficianados. Don't expect her to break out in a yodel, though. She will be happy to reminisce about the old days of bluegrass glory, but she saves her voice only for special engagements.
With a little friendly persuasion, however, you may get to hear her perform a solo on the springolin.
