writerrad - Posted - 06/07/2010:  11:32:42

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There is a large supposition in most serious works on the five-string banjo that African American finger style banjo was largely present after the civil war, but outside of one or two stars like Horace Weston associated with classic banjo, there is not much work about it. The evidence is there probably in old newspapers and in old sheet music..

Looking to banjo roots to folk sources, or 20th Century folk sources can be misleading and reveal distorted answers. The 19th and early twenthieth centuries were periods when banjo playing pervaded all forms of music in the English speaking world. While folk tradition persisted, from early times it was itself the product of interaction with the world of banjo in popular and professional music.

One place to look for this is in Ragtime. Ragtime was largely seen as a five-string banjo music, even if today the image of it is centered around the piano composers of ragtime. Indeed, one major predecessor of ragtime on piano was the kind of piano known in the 19th century as Banjo Piano, which sought to reproduce the syncopations of Black and pseudo black banjo playing on the piano. In the piano literature itself there are whole passages where the original instructions of the composers are to play "like a banjoist" and Joplin among other ragtime composers dedicated entire movements and sections of their tunes to ragtime banjoists.

David Cantwell makes the astute suggestion in Bluegrass Breakdown that African American banjoists created this end of the origin of Ragtime as they transformed the three-finger style of banjo playing that became dominant in show business including minstrelsy after the civil war.

Gus Cannon's playing is probably a survival of that. His banjo playing is most energetic and forceful on tunes that are vaguely associated with the pop music extensions of Ragtime like "Money Never Runs Out." "Goo Goo Eyes," and "Walk Right In." Cannon never said that he was an initiator or innovator of anything and spoke of other banjoists who played similar music.

After I finish the Cannon article, I intend to go through a database of articles I downloaded from African American newspapers between the 1890s and about 1915, just every article with the word "banjo" in it. Since I had access to the database these papers came from on a limited basis, when I downloaded these clippings in April, I didnt have time to read them, but I did notice as I was downloading and documenting, that there was wide mention of African American banjo kings, and of the existence of signs that the various banjo oriented organizations and clubs we associate with classic banjo among European Americans were widespread among African Americans during the same period.

This would have been a three or four fingered style which addresses the instrument chromatically and oriented, though not exclusively based, to sheet music and the general banjo world. Of course, to play Black music, one had to adapt that to the needs of the music which is what Cannon did.

writerrad - Posted - 06/07/2010:  11:50:57

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Of course, besides this European or European American derived guitar or classic style banjo, there is the thornier issue of other forms of finger style banjo among Black folk. What little publication exists about Black banjo playing has focused on its African roots on one hand and its connections with either white minstrel players or white "Appalachian" banjoists on the other, rather than with African American music and culture.

None of that research documents African American finger picking since finger style banjo playing was not really relevant to Black connection with white people that such research centered on.


I can only present conjecture. A style of two finger picking lutes involving the thumb and the index finger sometimes up picking sometimes combining up picking and brushing has probably been transmitted to African American and European American banjo playing and guitar playing by AFrican Americans. One of its distinctions is the major role the thumb plays not just as a noter of convenient strings, often the fifth and fourth strings, but as establishment of a regular rhythm or meter by its regular alternation or by the sounding of a single string.

This two finger style of banjo and guitar player has had large-scale mixture with other forms of lute playing including thumb lead and brushing, clawhammer, and guitar banjo styles, including classic banjo. It probably was invigorated by the popularity of finger picked guitar which spead among rural African Americans in the late 19th and early 20th Century along with inexpensive steel string guitars. While influence exists from parlor style guitar playing, it seems to have been the primary influence on African American blues and country ragtime guitar playing. It is astounding how many African American blues guitar players play two finger, rather than three finger style, including those who do the fancier ragtime influenced pieces like Gary Davis and how many European American folk learned finger pickers like Doc Watson pick with two and not three fingers, even when they reproduce tunes developed by three-finger guitarists.

In the major samplings that I have listened to of field recordings of African American folk banjoists from the 1930s on, most banjoists including those identified chiefly as frailing banjoists play some finger style banjo, although only a few like Covington and Bluegrass influenced Lou Hairston play only finger style.

Gus Cannon, for instance, said that when he began to play the banjo when he was 12 (in 1895) he learned two finger banjo a month or two after he learned clawhammer. In 1967, he could still play a nice 6/8 two finger .

writerrad - Posted - 06/07/2010:  14:25:24

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quote:

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Originally posted by Banjowik

I'd swear he's gotta pick when he plays "Bring it with you when you come" An absolute corker of a tune, my fave!
Any information on this tune? I play it (sorta) with a pick outta G tuning.



Thanks for sharing your research!

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There are some lines on "Bring it with you when you come" that are Hosea Woods playing lead on a banjo guitar or perhaps a banjo mandolin that the listener might think are Cannon playing five string. Compare that to parts of the Beale Street Boys recording of "Fourth and Beale" and the Stompers last tune "Prison Wall Blues" where the same thing happens.

writerrad - Posted - 06/07/2010:  14:35:14

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quote:

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Originally posted by BANJOJUDY

Picked this up off Banjo-L e-mail list, offered with usual disclaimers, but I did watch the trailer and it looks as though this is a great purchase.

The DVD 'Chasin' Gus' Ghost' was released on DVD last Thursday May 20, 2010:
chasingusghost.com/

Anybody that is a Gus Cannon fan may want to check it out. Movie
trailer here:
youtube.com/watch?v=-5fZXwmfzms

The DVD is $20 here:
rediscovermusic.com/product/3425/143

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I just saw the film. It was a disappointment for anyone who wants to learn anything about Gus Cannon since he fades from any discussion pretty quickly into the film. Like most blues fans, the 1960s Jug band players--or rather the ones who became successful at it--who are the actual center of the film were fairly uninterested in Gus Cannon but liked the less songster oriented music that Ashley Thompson and above all Noah Lewis made both with Cannon and separately.

These were pretty much the songs that they all recorded except for Sebastian who did have a good taste for the more songster, ragtime music.

Hosea Woods was Cannon's closest musical collaborator during the period he made the recordings, but his name is never uttered.


Even though Cannon's main stage name was Banjo Joe, there was absolutely no discussion of the fact that he played a five string banjo, how significant or unusual that was, or anything about his playing other than the brush with fame around Walk Right in. During the entire film, no one else plays a five string banjo, although you see a really nice banjo hanging on the wall wherever they interviewed Kweskin.

There is no real information about Cannon's music and where it came from other than some misinformed statements about the blues in general, nothing about
Ragtime, nothing about Black show business music, and nothing about the traditional music that Cannon played either.

Had they interviewed Bill Keith, the banjo genius who played with Kweskin, Keith would have told them honestly that the Kweskin band was never really interested in the real blues or rag oriented jug band music that Cannon made but in 1920s pop music, so Keith never even tried to pick like cannon. Instead when he worked for Kweskin he took his fifth string off and played plectrum with a pick on his RB

Nothing wrong with a movie about the survivors of the 1960s Jug Band scene. I have a bunch of friends on three continents who need to get this DVD to see people important to their lives, but there isnt anything about Gus Cannon that is discussed or revealed in film as an artist, or a person, or even someone who represented something significant

writerrad - Posted - 06/08/2010:  13:55:12

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I would be interested in arguments in favor of Cannon playing with a pick. Also, that on some tunes Cannon used a mandolin or guitar banjo.

I still believe the thesis that all the tunes he uses a five-string banjo, but I think doubt is there especially on a few of the tunes with the Ashley Thompson and Elijah Avery versions of the stompers. On the versions with Wood, I think it is clear that Woods plays a pick played guitar on several tunes and plays louder lead than Cannon does.

My biggest question is on the Jug Stompers Version of Madison Street Rag.

Supertone - Posted - 06/08/2010:  17:44:03

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Hi Tony,
I messed around with Madison Street Rag for curiosities sake. It sounds like Cannon is playing in the key of F with the banjo in the old standard C (gCGBD) tuning except for a short key change to C that comes around 2:00 or so. Sounds like he is still using the F and C7 chord shapes for the key change with a nice little tremolo (I learned a little tremolo using the middle finger that would work well for this kind of effect from watching the great blues guitar player, Paul Geremia) flourish to get back down the neck and into the key of F again. Seems like he is using rolls, strums/downpicking and single string work (at the tag of the kick off)
This is not even close to a transcription but I think it might be close to what he is doing. Try it out and see what you think!

writerrad - Posted - 06/08/2010:  18:59:17

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quote:

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Originally posted by Supertone

Hi Tony,
I messed around with Madison Street Rag for curiosities sake. It sounds like Cannon is playing in the key of F with the banjo in the old standard C (gCGBD) tuning except for a short key change to C that comes around 2:00 or so. Sounds like he is still using the F and C7 chord shapes for the key change with a nice little tremolo (I learned a little tremolo using the middle finger that would work well for this kind of effect from watching the great blues guitar player, Paul Geremia) flourish to get back down the neck and into the key of F again. Seems like he is using rolls, strums/downpicking and single string work (at the tag of the kick off)
This is not even close to a transcription but I think it might be close to what he is doing. Try it out and see what you think!

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That sounds pretty good. The playing on both versions of that tune are quite different from the rest of of his playing, especially the more settled and established finger picking you hear once Hosea Woods is in the band the music is more adjusted to Cannon and Woods more songster and more show business much.

From woods joining the band on rhythm, you do not have any of that strumming.

Bobby Bostick, who took some lessons from Cannon in the 1960s told he there was something involving the pinkie to create that tremelo. I have read that classic finger style stars also made suich tremelos.

I am going to listen hard to that again and try to see what you say.

writerrad - Posted - 06/09/2010:  14:25:21

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There are a number of the 1927-1930 recordings where Gus Cannon plays no banjo at all and only plays jug.

I am curious if anyone can argue that there is any five string banjo play on the following recordings. I have listened to them over and over at regular speed. I have listened to each a second and third time adding 100 then 200 seconds to the length of the recording with Audacity. However, I cannot hear any banjo playing by Gus Cannon or anything that sounds like any of the other recordings where he plays five-string banjo. On each of these recordings, Cannon is playing the jug and playing the jug strongly. This follows a pattern set on other recordings where Cannon starts playing the banjo usually in the introduction of a piece and either stops playing the banjo or interrupts his playing when he is singing or playing a jug solo, with perhaps a flourish or two at the end.

However, on the following recordings most of them on one single session I can note now five-string banjo playing. This contrasts rather strongly with "Riley"s Wagon" where Cannon's five string banjo playing patterns he plays on records like both recordings of Jonestown Blues and Wolf River Blues sounds loud and clear. Perhaps this is a reason why on future tunes, especially tunes where Cannon sings, Hosea Woods often plays the Jug so that the banjo can be played.

These tunes are the September 5, 1928 Recording of Pig Ankle Strut,

and on September 20, 1928 the recordings of Cairo Rag, Bugle Call Rag, and the two takes available of Viola Lee Blues.

Now on the September 20, 1928 tunes, you can hear a banjo, but it is the guitar banjo of Elijah Avery playing boom chuck backup. Even when Avery makes a flourish, or does a bit of stop time or a bass run or otherwise detracts from the boom chuck accompaniment, you do not hear any different sound that could have been made with Cannon's banjo the way you do hear Cannon's banjo differentiating from the guitar playing of Ashely Thompson or the way you can hear the difference coming between Cannon's five string and the guitar, banjo mandolin, and banjo guitar playing of Hosea Woods in the 1929 and 1930 recordings.

Supertone - Posted - 06/09/2010:  15:16:03

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Have you looked at the Dixon and Goodrich discography in regards to those particular cuts?
I took a listen to the tunes and did not hear any obvious banjo in the mix. Thanks for pointing that out. Never noticed it before!

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Edited by - Supertone on 06/09/2010 15:17:54

writerrad - Posted - 06/09/2010:  15:30:09

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I wanted to add two tunes that I also strongly suspect there was little or no five string banjo played on Noah's Blues and Ripley Blues done at the same session as the Pig Ankle Strut on Septepmber 5, 1928.

These two blues two of the seven blues done in the Key of G by either Ashley
Thompson or Noah Lewis. Lewis and Thompson were of the same generation--a decade or so younger than Cannon and were from the Ripley-Hennings area of Tennessee where Cannon had not lived for more than a decade before the recordings. Their music was "modern," the kind of Blues that crystalized in the Mississippi country 1910-1920. Apparently Thompson and Lewis who had working together since childhood preferred the key of G. Cannon went and got them for the victor recordings in 1927, though he never regularly played with them.

Cannon does play five string banjo on the recordings the Jug Stompers made with Ashley Thompson sung by Thompson the magnificent January 30, 1928 recordings of "Minglewood Blues" and "Big Railroad Blues." These are two of the greatest blues recordings of any kind ever made IMHO. Thompson's impassioned singing, Lewis's wonderful harmonica playing, and Cannon's supportive banjo playing, and Thompson's terrific guitar playing both single string treble lead and his slap bass sounding bass runs are something everyone needs to hear and hear often!

However, Cannon's banjo playing is quite different here than on many other recordings. He does pinched chords at times, but he plays more rolls and other single string figures, then he punctuates the rolls with down picking strums. On these tunes and Minglewood he also plays a rag counterpoint to the single string lead of Thompson's guitar, all while Noah is playing some of the best Blues Harp ever played.

It is pretty clear Cannon considered Noah the band's outstanding soloist who replaced the fiddlers his own fiddle which he had put down as the years went on and the fiddlers he had played with with a blues harp, but without Thompson, Cannon's banjo sinks even further into the background, even when Hosea Wood's accompaniment and the bands general show business blues approach slows things down in the three great blues Lewis sings with the Stompers in October 1929 Going to Germany, Rooster Crowing blues, and Pretty Mama blues. Even here, unlike the Blues Cannon or Woods sings, Cannon leaves the single string lead behind and mixes in roll like figures with his pinches, when he is not dropping the banjo to play the jug. This is mixed up particularly on Rooster crowing Blues where Woods apparently uses a guitar banjo

Of course, none of these blues compare to the driving Blues of Ticket Agent Man and Tghe New Minglewood Blues that Noah Lewis recorded with his contemporarie3s from the Ripley John Estes, Ham Lewis and other in November 1930 as Noah Lewis's jug band. There is there is no loping aklong to a horse ande buggy or rather horse and mule rhythm to the banjo, these blues are automotively driven and speeding like the Blues Ashley Thompson sang.

writerrad - Posted - 06/09/2010:  15:44:58

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quote:

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Originally posted by Supertone

Have you looked at the Dixon and Goodrich discography in regards to those particular cuts?
I took a listen to the tunes and did not hear any obvious banjo in the mix. Thanks for pointing that out. Never noticed it before!

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No I havent. I do not have access to it though I will try to check it through people who do. The discography for these sessions even where it is available is not very good or accurate. To make matters worse all the reissues since the 1970s have been based on reproducing what Bengst Olsson wrote for the Herwin reissue of Cannon in 1974 or so. Olsson's attiotude was anything but professional and scholarly and seemed to be more into talking about the drinking, sex, and drugs of Gus Cannon and his counterparts rather than the music. Chris Smith who wrote the liners to the Document reissues told me that Document never allowed him to do any serious research, just reproduce what Olsson left.

David Evans really scored Olsson in his review of the Herwin in the Journal of American Folklore--It is a great review as David also reviews the first reissue of Texas Henry Thomas in the same review.

For example, at least one song sung by Lewis is attributed in these notes to Hosea Woods, I think Rooster crowing blues, even though you can hear Woods shouting "sing it mister lewis" on the recording. I have already pointed out that Woods plays the jug on several tunes though Cannon is only credited with the jug on all the recordings. Hosea Woods apparently plays Kazoo on several tunes on the last session with Avery, but this is not credited. On the Brunswick recordings they had Cannon playing guitar and Woods Banjo!!! although I think Woods might have played guitar banjo on one of those tunes.

Nobody was really concerned with this when they made these records, certainly not the recording companies.

Recordings seem an enormous deal to us, because they are all of what we have of this precious history, but to a performer like Cannon and most blues singers, that they had made a record was of small consequence, a matter of prestige that might or might not get them a gig at a juke house. When interviewed in the 1950s and 1960s, Gus Cannon seemed to have little or no memory of his 1927-1930 recordings even though he made thirty-four recordings, a large number for any Downhopme Blues Player of the time. Even when he made his Stax record, Cannon had no record player to play it on.

Tony

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 06/09/2010:  16:33:32

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This continues to be a fascinating thread, Tony. Keep it up!

Update on my version of Walk Right In, that I said I would record and post this week:

It's still evolving, and not quite ready to record.

I started with a chord oriented 1st position version...clawhammer, but with a lot of ragtimey strumming injected. Then I worked out a more linear improvisational version to alternate with that. Then I added a few words here and there to create slightly different versions of the verse.

Then I thought I might add a throat tromnet part or two (one high, one low)...but afterwards I transferred that to kazoo...but I had to construct a coat-hanger rack for the kazoo, since it's a kazoo shaped like a trumpet, that didn't fit comfortably in my harmonica rack...then I thought I'd add a harmonica part, so I was wearing two racks...then I worked out a slide version...but I have to get the slide on and off my finger in a hurry between verses. Then I worked out a version that's all between the 5th and 12th fret.

By then, the whole thing seemed to be getting too complicated.

Now I've dropped the harmonica...and I'm working on getting a reasonably tight and coherent version of the rest, that I'm very comfortable playing, before I try to record it.

So...maybe next week.

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Edited by - Marc Nerenberg on 06/09/2010 16:55:22

writerrad - Posted - 06/11/2010:  06:37:40

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quote:

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Originally posted by Banjowik

I'd swear he's gotta pick when he plays "Bring it with you when you come" An absolute corker of a tune, my fave!
Any information on this tune? I play it (sorta) with a pick outta G tuning.



Thanks for sharing your research!

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I have thought a lot more about that tune and listened to it a bunch of times including slowing it down in Audacity and have developed a more developed understanding of the patterns of Cannon's playing.

The tune is played in the Key of C and is probably played in the old c tuning, not in G. This was the dominant banjo tuning of the time, especially for the classic singer style banjo that was clearly one of several influences on Cannon's playing. Cannon preferred to play in C in the C tuning. He did record a few tunes in F using the C tuning and with Hosea Woods he played tunes in the C tuning with his banjo capoed up to D sharp and possibly F in the Beale Street Boys recordings. On one session for Paramount, Cannon evidently tuned his banjo down two steps and played a tune that would normally be played in C in Bflat and a tune he normally played in F from the C position (although as pointed out here above part of the tune is int he key of C) that comes out in D sharp.

While like most old time Black banjoist, Cannon did clawhammer tunes in G, there is absolutely no indicatation that he played tunes in the G tuning or in the key of G when it was his choice. The only tunes out of the 34 he recorded commercially in G are the tunes that Noah Lewis and Ashley Thompson selected and played on. While Cannon plays a bit of accompanying banjo on the first two of these songs with Thompson"Mingelewood Blues" and "Big Railroad Blues", on several of those songs such as "Ripley Blues" and "Noah's Blues" there is no sign that Cannon played the banjo at all. Things get a bit better in 1929 when you can hear accompinent by Cannon on Rooster Crowing and Pretty Mamma Blues sung by Lewis in his key of G.

Like most tunes with energetic banjo work that he recorded, "Bring it with you when you come is played in the key of C." One thing that might throw the listener off is that there is some extremely energetic guitar banjo lead playing by Hosea Woods that can be mistaken for Cannon's banjo playing.

Contemporary banjoists tend to underplay the old C tuning. I know I hardly played it at all until I seriously started to grapple with Gus Cannon and the legacy of classic banjo. I would add another thing that led me to turn to understanding the advantages of that tuning was last summer when Jamming near chapel hill with a number of Miscreants including the great Gail Gillespie, the same Gail64 who graces this form, that when I gave her my banjo to play tuned in double C so I could play the guitar and let a master play the banjo, gail returned the banjo to me tuned in C where it stayed for a while longer---I confess to be smitten and star struck with Gail as a banjoist and major world philosopher and role model for America's youth, LOL.

Howevwer, the whole big world of the five string banjo at its greatest extent when banjo playing was integral to all forms of popular music in the English speaking world was done in the C tuning or in keys that are reachable in it without capos such as F. Cannon may have even played his D version Jug Stompers version of "Jonestown Blues" in the C tuning without tuning the banjo up or using a capo.

Very much of my own thinking and discussion about Cannon seems to be affected by the way that revivalist old time banjo lovers like myself look at banjo playing which reflects our prejudices and distance from the realities that banjoists like Cannon faced. When I decided I was going to learn Cannon's music, I simply took out a banjo and began playing tunes he recorded or tunes that I thought would fit that kind of music witha pick playing in the key of jug, or playing finger style banjo in a way that I had learned to play finger style guitar. But that had nothing to do with how Cannon played.

Indeed, there is nothing that shows he played the jug stompers tunes in the key of G in G tuning as opposed to in the C tuning. I do have an interview with Cannon done in the 1960s where you can very clearly hear him changing the tuning on the fourth string from d to c and back and forth when he is going from playing an old time tune to playing tunes in finger lead.

What John Fabke says about Madison street rag is quite important. Cannon played the banjo a number of different ways, sometimes in the same tune. He was a master banjoist and he came into banjo playing in the 1890s, probably developed much of his repertoire in the 1900s and 1910s when there was a high level of five-string banjo playing on a world scale, on the scale of the Black ragtime and blues influenced music he played both on the popular music and folk levels.

The resources and approache he had came from this big banjo world, whatever level of excellence he had obtained. Cannon did bill himself as the world's leading "banjo pugilist" when he toured with Hosea Woods in small towns in the South and offered a thousand dollars to anyone who could outdo him playing the banjo. Yet, this reflected the banjo world he was part of that was much bigger than what we are part of.

writerrad - Posted - 06/11/2010:  06:46:49

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quote:

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Originally posted by drybones

I'm a big fan of Cannon's Jug Stompers and the Memphis Jug Band but I find the banjo usually plays a supporting role and that the beauty of the songs comes from the singing, the rhythm, the witty lyrics, and the ensemble playing.

db

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Yes, Cannon was a wise band leader who let Noah Lewis play most of the lead and did not stand in the way of lead playing by Ashley Thompson and a bit by Hosea Woods. Part of the problem, though, was that the Jug Stompers recordings required the jug, and on the recording before Hosea Woods joined the band, Cannon, fairly new to the jug but with quite high standards of jug playing, simply could not play much banjo or on some tunes any banjo at all while playing the jug and often not much while singing either. When Woods joined the band and could play ace jug too, you have much more banjo and tunes where Cannon sings and plays energetic banjo while Woods plays jug.

Cannon's banjo sets the pace on the music that seems to echo his and Woods background as songster generation folks more into the ragtime influenced popular music of the early 20th Century and to more show business oriented blues. When we get to tunes of this nature Cannon's banjo tends to play a much bigger role, both as a lead instrument often setting the pace and style fo the instrument with an introduction or as a commenter putting in licks and fills that heighten the syncopation and swing of a piece.

writerrad - Posted - 06/15/2010:  08:17:57

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I think my view that Cannon did not play the banjo on a number of cuts is completely wrong with the possible exception of the Pig Ankle Strut. Closer analysis and the advice of wiser people has shown that what is happening is

)Cannon and Avery are playing in synch as could be expected by musicians who had worked together for a decade

2)what is going on is that Cannon's rhythm banjo playing is being picked up over Avery's guitar playing and guitar playing. Avery's style does not have the lead work or the pronounced bass runs that you get with either Ashley Thompson or Hosea Woods and he may have been playing a smaller guitar.

Remember dreadnaughts and the large rhythm guitars used in big bands had just been invented when the recordings were made and were not widely available among folk entertainers and it seems especially Black country blues musicians. The major problem of the small guitars then used was that they did not pick up well in band situations. This is why the tenor and guitar banjos were so popular in the Jazz bands if the 1920s. In fact, many of the Black bands, especially from New Orleans, switched from guitar to guitar banjo because of this, particularly for recordings,.

I also believe that for whatever reading the recording setup for the 1928 recordings with Avery was not as good as for the earlier recordings and certain not as good as the 1929 and 1930 recordings. This may also be simply a reflection of where the different musicians sat during these recordings.

What is clear on these recordings is that once Cannon played jug, his banjo playing reverted to pure boom chuck rhythm without the single string lead work associated with many of his pieces.

Most of these recordings were instrumentals and this may have been an attempt to match the kind of jazz oriented dance music the most successful jug bands, the Louisville jug bands, were making, particularly the selection of the recently recorded Jazz standard to be "Bugle Call Rag."

Selecting a tune that had already been copyrighted and published was done very, very rarely on Victor recordings supervised by Ralph Peer because Peer was not paid for his A & R work. Instead, Peer got the right to publish all the songs his recording artists recorded. This led Peer to force musicians who normally performed pop songs to perform either public domain songs that Peer could copyright or old songs they thought the copyright holders might not follow up. This tendency of Peers is responsible for a number of artists like the Carter Family recordings many PD folk songs that might not have been recorded otherwise. It also probbly why Peer's star Jimmie Rodgers recorded so many blues and why Peer got together professional songwriters to write songs for Rodgers, when Rodgers was known to perform many pop songs of the day in his live appearances and radio shows.

TT

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 06/16/2010:  10:29:34

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Here's my version of Walk Right In. Since this is for Banjo Hangout, I pared down all the extraneous stuff I was tinkering with (harmonica, kazoo etc) and concentrated on banjo.

Here's the YouTube link: youtube.com/watch?v=ez3lGYnEivw

I'll also try to put in an attachment to the video here:

VIDEO: WALK RIGHT IN (by Gus Cannon) - MARC NERENBERG (click to view)

bordertownbrown - Posted - 06/17/2010:  11:11:09

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Mark, What a great rendition of walk Right In! I've fooled around with Gus Cannon tunes for the last thirty years, never seen anybody with a right hand like yours.

Richard

writerrad - Posted - 06/18/2010:  08:09:22

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Emulation, not imitation, that is the real history of the banjo
this is lick the short lick of cannon playing the tune on youtube from oakley's bbc special the devils music where cannon finger picked the introduction and frailed the hell out of the accompaniment, although only a short portion is availalbe---anyone have more of thatm the BBC is quite stingy about that---

Cannon pretty much had the kind of ferocious control and intensity of banjo playing and music that Mark displays on this brilliant clip. Of course, in the band recording he didnt have to go it alone and had some pretty strong banjo guitar work by Hosea Woods.


What astounds me in Cannon's playing esecuakkt frin the 1920s is the delicacy and precision that he has to elict the kind of sing he wanted to move the dancers around the floor even on this, one of his hotter numbers.

He too was not afraid to integrate any number of different banjo approaches to playing a song, He was the master of so much, I think my initial contribution here is much more limited even if you are talking about the 1927-1930 recordings, He does play rolls and picking patterns on a few tunes, he does do a bit of strummingm and he seems to have three or for ways of getting one sharp slid crack of a chord, or at least the treble strings picked together with the fifth string to punctuate things.

What is interestingm given his beginnings as an old time fraier and his great frailing until his death is that there is no frailing on the recordings whatsoever, I have listened hard to Feather bed which a number of folks including me thought was frailing since it is old time and I cannot say that it is distinctive that he is frailing as opposed to finger style, does anyone have ideas.

However, I think that shows how dead the old time music was in the Missisippi delta and the Memphis area where Cannon and his bandmates worked by the late 1920s when they recorded, as well as what the record company wanted was music competitive with or in the same market as the music the Louisville Jug bands and then the Memphis Jug band made, The Louisville bands were really close to Jazz, the Memphis band also was an aggreagation of Down Home Blues Players,

Probably if Ashley Thompson had stayed in the band, the Stompers would have stayed more in the center of delta=Tennessee blues. The four tunes they recorded with Thompson are highly ranked among blues fans. Really, this is the music that people like the Greatful dead reference when they reference Gus Cannon--Viola Lee, Minglewood, Big Railroads com Blues, and perhaps walk right in only because it was a hit in pop folk,

However, what Cannon seemed equally as comfortable with was the more ragtime based music that he recorded in his solo sessions and in the 1929 and 1930 Jug Stompers recordings, this includes a blues motif first heard in the Jonestown blues and echoes in all the blues that Cannon sings on his own where there is a kind of back and forth between an on the beat ragtime sensibility to a triplet blues or jazz sensib ility, and more room for this banjo playing, because the banjo is creating the "raggy" element of the piece even if he leaves much of the lead to Noah Lewis's harmonica. You've got lots of ragginess in the music which provides alternated ways for dancers to shake and shimmy both apart and together which is the essence of black dance music, particularly for the dances that seem to have swept out of the cotton south in the 1900s through the 1920s, music that Cannon's music was aimed at.

It is a b it interesting in that generationally we can talk about the later music being an older music and more showbueinessy, but Cannon actionally knew and played with Thompson and Lewis before he ever met Woods and Avery. He moved up to Ashport TN in 1907 and lived there until 1913, meeting Avery and Woods apparently in the 1920s.

On the other hand Cannon worked day in and day out for three or four months a year in medicine shows and other travelling shows with Avery and then with Woods, Clips that I have from a 1920s paper indicate that the operation Cannon worked with in at least one of these shows was billed as being led by Hosea Woods. Woods and Cannon were housemates in the 1920s with Avery living essentially around the corner,

Thompson and Lewis never moved to Memphis, although especially Lewis was known to travel to Memphis to play and hang out a lot while Thompsons stayed home.

writerrad - Posted - 06/18/2010:  08:19:06

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Originally posted by writerrad

There are a number of the 1927-1930 recordings where Gus Cannon plays no banjo at all and only plays jug.

I am curious if anyone can argue that there is any five string banjo play on the following recordings. I have listened to them over and over at regular speed. I have listened to each a second and third time adding 100 then 200 seconds to the length of the recording with Audacity. However, I cannot hear any banjo playing by Gus Cannon or anything that sounds like any of the other recordings where he plays five-string banjo. On each of these recordings, Cannon is playing the jug and playing the jug strongly. This follows a pattern set on other recordings where Cannon starts playing the banjo usually in the introduction of a piece and either stops playing the banjo or interrupts his playing when he is singing or playing a jug solo, with perhaps a flourish or two at the end.

However, on the following recordings most of them on one single session I can note now five-string banjo playing. This contrasts rather strongly with "Riley"s Wagon" where Cannon's five string banjo playing patterns he plays on records like both recordings of Jonestown Blues and Wolf River Blues sounds loud and clear. Perhaps this is a reason why on future tunes, especially tunes where Cannon sings, Hosea Woods often plays the Jug so that the banjo can be played.

These tunes are the September 5, 1928 Recording of Pig Ankle Strut,

and on September 20, 1928 the recordings of Cairo Rag, Bugle Call Rag, and the two takes available of Viola Lee Blues.

Now on the September 20, 1928 tunes, you can hear a banjo, but it is the guitar banjo of Elijah Avery playing boom chuck backup. Even when Avery makes a flourish, or does a bit of stop time or a bass run or otherwise detracts from the boom chuck accompaniment, you do not hear any different sound that could have been made with Cannon's banjo the way you do hear Cannon's banjo differentiating from the guitar playing of Ashely Thompson or the way you can hear the difference coming between Cannon's five string and the guitar, banjo mandolin, and banjo guitar playing of Hosea Woods in the 1929 and 1930 recordings.

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What I first thought was Cannon not playing the banjo was really--besides being a reflection of the weakness of 1920s recordings practices, particularly the kind of equipet used for location recordings like Peer's recordings in Memhism was how closely Avery and Cannon played rhythm together and how much they shared music that the cmbination of banjo and guitar or banjo guitar on the tunes was one that it is hard to hear the instruments seprately,

It also gives an indication of the importance of the straight rhythm to the music particularly these instruments where Cannon prioritizes the bass rhythm notes from the jug and the pinched chords of his banjo over any attempts to play lead on the banjo,

These recordings were primarily instruments, or Blues by Noah--I will try to get to the special cases of the G blues by Noah after ashley left the band later. There must have been pressure to present instrumentals too match the jazz playing of the Louisville bands. The selection of Bugle Call Rag really speaks to that, although the stompers turn that into "my buckets got a whole in it" with an introduction.

However, in the last 1928 session, they added woods to the band and in the 1929 and 1930 sessions, Woods replaces Avery,


It might be nice to suppose that these were conscious decisions, but we do not know, We do know Cannon was close to Woods and had worked the same medicine show with him across the fall of 1929 ending up in Chicago to make the Beale Street boy recordings with him, a month or so before returning to Memphis to record for Ralph Peer with one of the Beale Street Boy selections.

All of this could have just reflected when Avery was not on the road in a Medicine show and when Woods was and vice versa. Still, I think Cannon seems to revert to music and banjo player that is more consistent with what he tried to record on his own int eh Banjo joe sessions, once Wood is playing the rhythm instrument int he band, than what was going on in the recordings with Thompson or Avery. That music had a bigger place for the five string banjo,even if it did not have the speed and flare of the first four recordings Cannon did with Lewis and Thompson.

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 06/20/2010:  09:38:29

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Many thanks for the kind comments on my Gus Cannon emulation. I have a few other Cannon's Jug Stompers tunes that I may try in the next little while. I really like having his tunes in my repertoire, so I have a context in which to talk about him on stage, during one of my occasional concerts.

I used to have a whole little bit of stage patter about him and his importance that I would use as a song introduction. The trouble is, the song I introduced with that bit was one that I think I was mistaken in attributing to him. It was the Mepmphis Jug Band song "Stealin' Stealin'", that I first encountered on an Arlo Guthrie record where it is credited to Gus Cannon. Also, if memory serves me well, Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music has Gus Cannon's picture with the Memphis Jug Band version of that song, in its liner note booklet. I've seen the song attributed to Gus Cannon elsewhere, but such attribution may trace to one or the other of these sources.

OR - Is "Stealin' Stealin'" actually a Gus Cannon song that he never recorded but was recorded by the Memphis Jug band? Does anybody know?

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Edited by - Marc Nerenberg on 06/20/2010 09:39:53

writerrad - Posted - 06/21/2010:  06:32:29

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Both the Memphis Jug Band and Cannon's jug stompers worked for Ralph Peer as their RCA Victor A & R man. Peer usually required every tune recorded by him to be copyrighted. This was because when Peer started out doing location recordings of Black blues performers and white Hillbilly artists, Victor didnt think they could make money out of it, so they refused to pay Peer a salary or give him a percentage of royalties. However, Peer told them if he could just receive the publishing rights to the material he recorded,. he would do it.

So most tunes recorded for Peer at least in the 1920s were copyrighted so that Peer could publish them if he wanted to. This led many of the people who recorded for him to record traditional tunes and many others to record old tunes that might have beenhj copyrighted previously but were assumed to have fallen into the public domain.

Peer became one of the wealthiest and most powerful people int he music industry through his Peer International publishing company. Besides people like Cannon and the Memphis Jug Band, it was Peer who masterminded the famous 1927 Bristol sessions and recorded the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers.


Getting back to Gus Cannon and the Memphis Jug band, if the Memphis Jug Band recorded "Stealin'" it is probably copyrighted by someone who worked for Ralph Peer. Neither the Jug Stompers nor the Memphis Jug band originated as a real band of musicians that did gigs anywhere, although later the Memphis Jug Band was managed in a way that units called the Memphis Jug band took advantage of the band's success and performed in Memphis and in Black theaters across the country.

However, they were all people who knew each other, got together in makeshift groups for gigs and hung out together. In the 1962 or 1963 when the Stax session guitarists couldnt play with Gus on his CD, he still knew where to find Will Shade the leader of the Memphis Jug Band to come in and back him!

It would probably mean very little since that is an old folk blues. The term 'stealin" in Black parlance originated in slavery and reflected the idea that one was stealing oneself from the master when a slave snuck off either to run away totally or snuck away to visit a wife or husband or otherr lover on another plantation.

I think the question is not whether the tune was one that Cannon recorded, but what was his style. In many ways finding a tune in the same genre and figuring out your own arrangement inspired by Gus Cannon speaks more to memoralizing his style than fingiring out how to imitate his playing and singing on this or that tune. Besides working on Cannon's tunes, I am working on an arrangement of the "St Louis Blues" and the "Memphis Blues" and the Dave McCarn song "taki9ng the girls for a ride" as part of my attempt to figure out his playing.

writerrad - Posted - 08/10/2010:  08:37:00

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Further study of Cannon shows that Cannon had a pretty hard time playing the banjo in the developed lead and obliggato single string style featured in the recordings and singing or playing the jug at the same time. The one tune where he played solo, the first "Jonestown Blues" has an extremely large amount of banjo playing and a very small portion of vocal for a blues, or compared to any of the blues that Cannon recorded with his band. On some of the Blind Blake accompanied tunes he stops playing the banjo altogether a few times while singing. On the band recordings, once Cannon starts blowing the jug, the banjo lead disappears and he begins rhythm boom chucking in unison with the guitar or guitar banjo of Elijah Avery in the way that gave me the wrong idea that Cannon did not play the jug on these pieces whatsoever.

With the Jug stompers, we have to remember that what Ralph Peer wanted was JUG BAND MUSIC to follow up the commercial success he had recording the Louisville Jug bands and then the Memphis Jug Bands. It is pretty clear with the Memphis Jug band that any aggregation of black blues and pop rag musicians that could be brought together with someone blowing on a jug produced saleable product for Peer.

On the other hand the real drive and sparkle of Cannon's music came from his banjo playing as good as he was on the jug.

Moreover, Hosea Woods appears to have been Cannon's closest buddy in the medicine shows. They were house mates and worked the medicine shows and other touring shows. We have clippings from 1919 newspapers that advertise Cannon as a member of "Prof. Wood's Jazz Band."

Even before the 1929 recordings, as soon as Woods came off the road, Cannon added him to the band playing Kazoo. Woods played trumpet and played fiddle so well that Cannon said one reason he dropped the fiddle around 1920 because Woods could always do that when they played together

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Originally posted by writerrad

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Originally posted by majikgator

You state that Cannon didn't actually play a jug ever. Is the photograph of him with a jug around his neck just that then, a prop?

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No of course not. Cannon played the jug on most of the Jug Stompers recordings vPeople who met Cannon in the 1960s report that he treasured his jug playing and that he kept the oil can he used to play jug with him in a place of honor in his home until his dying day.

. However, there are about four or five of the recordings after Hosea Woods joined the band where Hosea Woods, rather than Cannon played the jug. This contradicts the liner notes which say only Cannon played the jug.

I havent listened to identify this on the recordings of the earlier version of the band. However, it is believed that on one of the last recordings with Elijah Avery, Woods may have sat in with the band to play kazoo.

Woods was a very close friend and sometimes housemate of Cannon who worked with Cannon in medicine shows for a decade before they recorded. Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff found a clipping from the Indianapolis Freeman, an African American newspaper that focused on entertainment news, from around 1920 that describes Cannon as a member of "Professor Wood's" band. His comments during the recordings like Bob Wills's suggest that he was used to playing the role of interlocator or MC in minstrel parlance, while we have photos of Cannon acting as an End Man along with Jim Jackson. Several of the tunes that were copyrighted like "Walk Right In" were copyrighted by Woods and Cannon jointly.

You can tell Cannon is not playing the jug because there is jug playing while Cannon is singing and the banjo playing during jug playing is much more energetic than it is while Cannon plays the jug. Cannon's Jug playing is more rounded, and is more of a bass rhythm and bottom for the whole band than Woods' playing. Like his kazoo playing on several recordings, Wood's jug playing is more sputtery, less rounded and is a bit more lead oriented and is sharp. Among others instruments, Hosea Woods played the trumpet.

Curiously one of several stories Cannon told about his first encounter with a jug player was of a trumpet player like Woods playing with the trumpet mouth piece and then doing the same thing with a tin oil can. Cannon's jug playing is superb and is a bit overwhelming.

In the 1950s and 1960s Cannon developed several different stories about himself that he told at different times to folklorists and blues enthusiasts. The stories often conflict.

For example, his standard story was that he plearned to play the banjo when he was 12 years old when he had been sent to help his brother crop cotten near Clarksdale. Sometimes, Cannon said that he learned to play the banjo when he was eight years old. In both stories, Cannon claims he fashioned a banjo using an old guitar neck and "one of momma's pans." If Cannon learned the banjo when he was 12 in the Delta, his mother and her pans were back in the Hill Country. He may have begun fooling around with a banjo when he was eight years old at home where he had a brother who played the banjo and then gotten into serious picking in clarksdale. His story may also confuse fiddling which he took up first perhaps around eight years old when still at home.

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drybones - Posted - 09/12/2010:  17:20:56

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I was sitting at the reference desk today, working at the library, when a guy I know walks up and says, "Did you know today is Gus Cannon's birthday? Now that Memphis Jug band would have been something to see!"
Well that about made my day!

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