Zischkale - Posted - 07/03/2014:  06:39:30

I hadn't heard of this character, but apparently a well-known work of his is called "The Banjo." Composed way back in 1853. Down at Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Banjo_(Gottschalk)) they're suggesting that this recording might be a way to experience pre-Civil War black banjo playing. I'll have to listen again more closely, but it's an interesting premise. Anyone familiar with this piece?

Twain's full quote, the one that likens banjo music to "strychnine whisky," mentions Gottschalk (and banjoists Sam Pride and Charley Rhoades--anyone know these characters?) by name several times:

"I like Gottschalk well enough. He probably gets as much out of the piano as there is in it. But the frozen fact is, that all that he does get out of it is “tum, tum.” He gets “tum, tum,” out of the instrument thicker and faster than my landlady’s daughter, Mary Ann; but, after all, it simply amounts to “tum, tum.”

As between Gottschalk and Mary Ann, it is only a question of quantity; and so far as quantity is concerned, he beats her three to one. The piano may do for love-sick girls who lace themselves to skeletons, and lunch on chalk, pickles and slate pencils.

But give me the banjo. Gottschalk compared to Sam Pride or Charley Rhoades, is as a Dashaway cocktail to a hot whisky punch.

When you want genuine music—music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whisky, go right through you like Brandreth’s pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pin-feather pimples on a picked goose, -- when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo!

- “Enthusiastic Eloquence,” San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle, 23 June 1865"

One example:

cbcarlisle - Posted - 07/03/2014:  07:00:13

On the other hand, I've known of the Gottschalk composition most of my life but never thought of it being played on the banjo until I found this recently. youtube.com/watch?v=wRrBwObHq7Y

trapdoor2 - Posted - 07/03/2014:  09:29:24

quote:

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Originally posted by cbcarlisle

On the other hand, I've known of the Gottschalk composition most of my life but never thought of it being played on the banjo until I found this recently. youtube.com/watch?v=wRrBwObHq7Y

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That's Paul Smith, 'reverse engineering' "The Banjo" by Gottschalk, back onto the banjo. Paul wrote a thesis on the Gottschalk piece, claiming that it is indeed probably the closest we can get to actually hearing what the banjo sounded like in the period. I like that idea and I can hear a good bit of what would eventually be written for the banjo in the 1850s and 1860's in it.

Paul is a member of the ning Minstrel Banjo group and posts there occasionally. He cut two albums in the 1980's, one of them (all banjo, called "Mysterious Barricades") is still high on my list of favorites.

rudy - Posted - 07/03/2014:  09:48:42

quote:

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Originally posted by trapdoor2

quote:

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Originally posted by cbcarlisle

On the other hand, I've known of the Gottschalk composition most of my life but never thought of it being played on the banjo until I found this recently. youtube.com/watch?v=wRrBwObHq7Y

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That's Paul Smith, 'reverse engineering' "The Banjo" by Gottschalk, back onto the banjo. Paul wrote a thesis on the Gottschalk piece, claiming that it is indeed probably the closest we can get to actually hearing what the banjo sounded like in the period. I like that idea and I can hear a good bit of what would eventually be written for the banjo in the 1850s and 1860's in it.

Paul is a member of the ning Minstrel Banjo group and posts there occasionally. He cut two albums in the 1980's, one of them (all banjo, called "Mysterious Barricades") is still high on my list of favorites.

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How about the fretless version?

oldwoodchuckb - Posted - 07/03/2014:  12:35:37

I've done The Mysterious Barricades on classical guitar and was never happy with the results. The limitations of the banjo are greater and playing on fretless just turns the piece into rubble. 

try this version on piano to hear the piece flowing the way it was meant to:

youtube.com/watch?v=mI5CXRrvdUM

​I prefer it on the harpsichord but admit many modern ears have an aversion to the sound. Here is the version in my bookmarks

youtube.com/watch?v=Y7aU3aCEf5A

It is smooth, not rushed, but not dragging and has that wonderful clear harpsichord articulation lacking in the piano version above.

For the record Glenn Gould did the only Piano recording of the Goldberg Variations I can stand to listen to for more than a minute. He makes the piano articulate as well as a harpsichord. He was one of the greatest musicians of my lifetime. We are so lucky to live in an era when playing like his is preserved for those of us never in a position to see him live. I did see one live boradcast he did on PBS in the 60s (actually it was NET in those days) but I had to hold the antenna just right the whole time - VHF station - probably running at 50 watts.

For those interested in such minutia Gould's recording of the Goldbergs was the sound track for the "drifting through the park" short subject HBO used to show between features back in the mid 1970s. We went off HBO long before we moved to NC and when we came back in the 2000s they had replaced such easy to take fare with screaming commercials for upcoming programs and movies - including ads for cable channels that might not be owned by the same parent company. I pay a good deal for the privilege of having non commercial programming and here are commercials - I'm not best pleased but still not ready to give up on programs like The Wire, Treme, and Deadwood.

I now pre-record all programming on non-commercial channels to avoid all those Non-Commercials. The only program I watch on commercial channels is the national news and I pre-record that too. It is still just as timely at 7:30 as at 6:30 and we can watch everything we want in 20 minutes or less. We skip the feel good stories and the non-news items along with the commercials. Usually the national news takes us 10 to 15 minutes TOPS!

We will try The Sopranos next, but after that's done we probably will drop HBO for the foreseeable future. Boardwalk Empire ends this summer and I will watch the final season as it plays (I've watched the previous seasons on HBO on demand). Perhaps save up episodes and watch several over a week now and again. Even if HBO comes up with a great new series I prefer to wait until it is finished and then watch the whole thing over the course of a few weeks the way se saw The Wire. Dropping HBO for a while will give them time to get something going or just give up on quality series. I've not seen anything interesting when checking their newer series of late. Boardwalk Empire might be the end of a long run of excellent programming.

OTOH they might come up with a brand new series as good as Deadwood and The Wire next month. Either way doesn't matter. I've known for decades that nothing on TV ever really goes away. I figured that out seeing my kids watching The Andy Griffith show in the mid 1970s. I had avoided Griffith ever since getting stuck at a drive-in watching No Room For Sergeants. I was with a group of friends in their father's car and the walk home would have been 20 miles. 

So I'm doing video rental by mail for foreign and older quality films while Netflix is taking over more and more of my dumb tv time. These movies are without any commercials at all and no waiting for them to show up on the schedule, with no worry about losing 10 minutes of the big climax to a passing thunderstorm. We used to have the "Platinum Package" for our satellite dish with all the "Premium" channels, but we've now dropped Showtime/TMC and Stars/Encore. HBO/Cinemud is hanging on mostly by dint of the non-movie fare (Right now we are watching Deadwood at the rate of an episode a night - Best f#@kin' TV show ever, Hoopleheads).

Edited by - oldwoodchuckb on 07/03/2014 13:03:36

trapdoor2 - Posted - 07/03/2014:  12:51:50

quote:

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Originally posted by oldwoodchuckb

I've done The Mysterious Barricades on classical guitar and was never happy with the results. The limitations of teh banjo are greater and removing the frets turns the piece into rubble. 

try this version on piano to see how the piece should flow smoothly:

youtube.com/watch?v=mI5CXRrvdUM

​I prefer it on the harpsichord but admit many modern ears have an aversion to the sound. Here is the version in my bookmarks

youtube.com/watch?v=Y7aU3aCEf5A

It is smooth, not rushed, but not dragging and has that wonderful clear harpsichord articulation lacking in the piano version above.

 

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Frankly, I prefer the banjo version to the harpsichord one (that piano video is very cool...love watching the fingers!) Not that I don't like the harpsichord...I don't like the speed at which that version is played. It sounds rushed to me! Meh. It is simply personal preference either way. The things you do not like about the banjo version...the rubato, the slides, etc. are exactly what endears it to me. Paul's version on the 1980's album was played on a fretted banjo and lacks some of the lovely sliding around in the fretless version.

Edited by - trapdoor2 on 07/03/2014 12:52:45

oldwoodchuckb - Posted - 07/03/2014:  13:12:36

I would find it more tolerable if he hit the notes in tune, and if there weren't so many left hand flubs, misses and general screw-ups. I'm not saying he is any worse than the average amateur classical musician - and certainly no worse than I ever did this particular keyboard piece on guitar, but I didn't put my playing on youtube. I feel that if you can't do it well, you shouldn't do it in public. In private it is your music. Go forth and have lots of fun. Once you go public you OWE that public a performance that does not detract from the value of the piece. Tread carefully upon Scarlatti's legacy.

Edited by - oldwoodchuckb on 07/03/2014 13:14:04

etparadox - Posted - 07/03/2014:  16:07:17

quote:

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Originally posted by trapdoor2

quote:

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Originally posted by oldwoodchuckb

I've done The Mysterious Barricades on classical guitar and was never happy with the results. The limitations of teh banjo are greater and removing the frets turns the piece into rubble. 

try this version on piano to see how the piece should flow smoothly:

youtube.com/watch?v=mI5CXRrvdUM

​I prefer it on the harpsichord but admit many modern ears have an aversion to the sound. Here is the version in my bookmarks

youtube.com/watch?v=Y7aU3aCEf5A

It is smooth, not rushed, but not dragging and has that wonderful clear harpsichord articulation lacking in the piano version above.

 

---

Frankly, I prefer the banjo version to the harpsichord one (that piano video is very cool...love watching the fingers!) Not that I don't like the harpsichord...I don't like the speed at which that version is played. It sounds rushed to me! Meh. It is simply personal preference either way. The things you do not like about the banjo version...the rubato, the slides, etc. are exactly what endears it to me. Paul's version on the 1980's album was played on a fretted banjo and lacks some of the lovely sliding around in the fretless version.

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I agree on the pacing of that version. Here's one I prefer 

The Scottish guitarist Tony McManus has a great version of the piece for steel string guitar. It's not an exact transposition, but it captures the essence of the piece better than any other non-keyboard version I've heard. The same album has a number of other classical arrangements including a great take on the Goldberg Variations. There's no recording of those on youtube, but there is one of his take on Gnossiennes No. 1. 

cbcarlisle - Posted - 07/03/2014:  20:42:22

The woodchuck Meant to say, Couperin. (Scarlatti wouldn't have bothered with all that Frenchie folderol.)

G Edward Porgie - Posted - 07/06/2014:  11:20:35

Gottschalk, the original subject of this thread, was a very intesting composer, using musical ideas from this country way before the "nationalistic" school of composition ever got up on its feet. "The Banjo" wasn't the only one he wrote using banjo-like motifs; he also composed "Deuxieme [Second] Banjo." I've a very nice recording of this by Lambert Orkis, playing a period Chickering concert grand. Lambert's playing, and the instrument itself, give Gotschalk's music more of the effect it was intended to produce.

I think it should be stressed that although "The Banjo" was written as an imitation of the instrument. it was composed to be played on the piano. I've always felt that this piece brought forth not one banjo, but perhaps a group of banjos, or a banjo with other somewhat primitive Congo Square (Gottschalk was born in New Orleans) type instruments as accompaniment. That's not to say that I entirely disagree with efforts to play it on a banjo; it's just that I feel some of the sonorities are lost and so the "riffs" begin to sound redundant. One other thing of note is that the "Campdown Races" bit predates Stephen Foster's use of basically the same material.

Some other interesting things about Gotschalk are the fact that although a southerner by birth, he gave concert tours during the Civil War featuring his composition "The Union." He was a northerner by sentiment. He also made trips to Cuba and other Caribbean spots, South America (he went there to escape a scandal involving a woman) and composed music using native idioms from those exotic locales. In his music can be found traces of the tango and even some things that sound like proto-ragtime.

Zischkale - Posted - 07/06/2014:  23:22:04

In the piano piece, I can hear the off-beat note that might be representative of a 5th (or perhaps 4th) string drone. In the main theme (before the Camptown Races section) there seems to be an imitation of tremolo-picking--would this have been too early to be mimicking tenor banjo? I would assume so. Perhaps the tremolo picking I hear is the piano's interpretation of a rasgueado.

Paul Ely Smith's reverse engineering seems to make use of a sort of tremolo picking in spots to stay true to the piano piece. Not sure if this technique is faithful to what we expect 1850's banjo to have sounded like. I like it though, his intonation is very good for all the up-the-neck business.

Ol'woodchuck, Glenn Gould is indeed brilliant and his speed and accuracy can be mesmerizing. I have heard her lowered the action of his keys to get that harpsichord articulation. Some brilliant footage of his playing exists--in one memorable clip, he stops hard in the middle of a piece, stands, humming the piece note for note as he walks nervously toward the window, pacing for a moment.  He then sits and continues playing at a whirtwind speed right where he left off.

With regards to HBO, it sounds like I need to give Deadwood a shot. I can vouch for the first season of The Wire, but other than that I am terribly behind my peers when it comes to keeping up with great TV shows. Heard great things about Boardwalk Empire, and listened to a fascinating interview on the Bob Edwards show with the man who assembled the show's soundtrack (however, have also heard the music choices are a bit smarmy, schmaltzy). NetFlix will do for my wife and I, and if we can't find it on NetFlix, there are other ways of finding it.

Thank you all for your inputs on this fascinating piece. I'll need to listen to more renditions of it! Please let me know if y'all have any facts/trivia on the two banjo players Twain mentions in his famous quote.

Zischkale - Posted - 07/07/2014:  07:02:36

That you for that background, George! I'll have to track down Deuxieme Banjo. Didn't know the bit about Foster.

oldwoodchuckb - Posted - 07/07/2014:  11:05:28

Thank you CB. I've been known to use wrong names frequently of late. I suspect it is oldtimers, or something similar - like Mad Cow. It should be simple since one is French and the other Italian, but my Italian heritage probably interferes with my ability to credit the French on those rare occasions where credit is due. 

Zischkale,

The HBO backlog is about to start streaming - I've forgotten whether it will be Amazon or Netflix, but it is well worth watching for series like The Wire, Treme (which is mostly about musicians!), and Deadwood. We haven't tried The Sopranos yet. Right now we are also watching Six Feet Under - which my wife loves, but doesn't do much for me. 

All of HBOs series are pretty high quality - they make commercial TV look like amateur night. I can't say the same for our attempts to watch various series on other pay networks. The only worthwhile show we've found is Orphan Black - which is on a commercial network that I can't remember by name. We watched the first two seasons either on Netflix or on demand. The third season was either not as good or simply didn't catch with us - watching it on a once a week basis. We've decided to re-watch the entire run next year when the 4th season is ready for streaming. Orphan Black has writing right up there with the quality of an HBO series.

Edited by - oldwoodchuckb on 07/07/2014 11:24:01

G Edward Porgie - Posted - 07/07/2014:  11:16:15

Leonard Pennario recorded quite a bit of Gottschalk's music, if you're looking to hear more. Then there is the Lambert recording I mentioned earlier, which I think captures the subtleties of the music a little better due largely to the period instrument. I'm sure there are planty of Youtube renditions to choose from, too.

The tenor banjo is a 20th century invention, but there have been tremolo tecniques for stringed instuments which predate the banjo and were probably also used on the banjo. As far as what to expect in early banjo music, I don't think those "expectations" can ever be realized. Just as Aaron Copeland used cowboy tunes and Shaker hymns in his music, they have been altered and are no longer what they started out as. Playing banjo riffs on a piano would be similar, in my opinion. Also, early banjos were pretty much home made affairs, and probably varied widely in tone. Early banjo players probably also varied from region to region and in style.

oldwoodchuckb - Posted - 07/07/2014:  11:35:01

eparadox,

I find the tempo and over-dramatization of the woman playing the harpsichord downright painful. I just don't care for early Baroque music played in that manner - assuming it is an attempt at late 18th Century, early Classical, style. I have to admit, I bailed out on the video rather quickly.

oldwoodchuckb - Posted - 07/07/2014:  14:36:34

Just ran across this version by the "Pumping Nylon" guy

youtube.com/watch?v=GMGT_T6ojKU

This is the best I've found in a guitar version. And I love watching his face as he plays. He has a number of other videos on youtube.

Completely unrelated:

youtube.com/watch?v=JNEnzNHTkd8

This is a version of the Bach Chaconne in dm that I ran across in the "suggested videos column while playing the one above. I'm listening to it now and it is completely and absolutely superbe.

Edited by - oldwoodchuckb on 07/07/2014 15:02:43

bd - Posted - 07/08/2014:  05:50:35

Zischkale re: Sam Pride & Charley Rhoades HERE

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 07/08/2014:  07:07:41

One warning to anyone planning to watch Deadwood. It's a really great series - one of the best I've ever seen on television, in my opinion.

BUT -- it was unceremoniously canceled at the end of a season (don't ask me why - maybe quality doesn't sell), with the story left just hanging in the air.

I wish they would make a movie to wrap it up.

Rita - Posted - 07/10/2014:  11:20:29

Wow that guy! I really have a long way to go before....

Zischkale - Posted - 07/10/2014:  14:01:03

quote:

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Originally posted by bd

Zischkale re: Sam Pride & Charley Rhoades HERE

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Thanks for the lead! Unfortunately that site's missing some links. Interesting info, though--it'd be cool to research and find out if any more detail on Pride and Rhoades' repertoires exists.

[EDIT] I'm also going to need to look into that Days of '49 song.

Edited by - Zischkale on 07/10/2014 14:04:19

geemott - Posted - 07/10/2014:  20:09:01

Regarding the broken links:

The Bree banjo is here:

frets.com/FretsPages/Museum/Ba...bree.html

and the Bree bio is here:

hschwartz.com/banjopages/SFBan...hist.html