KingStudent - Posted - 12/11/2017:  04:55:22

Conventional wisdom (if memory serves) has it that the guitar replaced the banjo, at least in dance bands, sometime in the mid-'30's, in large part due to the new possibility of amplifying it (the guitar). But: why not just amplify the banjo? Wouldn't that have been easier and more natural? Or perhaps it was easier to amplify the guitar than the banjo? For example, it's easier to mount a magnetic pickup on a guitar - and magnetic pickups predated the modern acoustic-type pickups, as I understand it. Or was something else going on? I'm thinking about this because I feel like I'm re-living that history every night on gigs.

Emiel - Posted - 12/11/2017:  05:05:45

I think it was mainly the tenor banjo that was replaced by the guitar, especially by the f-hole archtop guitar, even before there was amplification. That type of guitar, when played hard with a flatpick, could more or less cut through a band (though not as well an a tenor banjo).

I think the switch occurred as the sound of the guitar was felt to be more modern than the banjo.

Edited by - Emiel on 12/11/2017 05:06:25

Fathand - Posted - 12/11/2017:  05:21:05

The banjo had developed a politically incorrect reputation at least partly due to minstrel shows' defamation of blacks and was considered only fit for hillbilly yokels and Vaudeville clowns. It was previously used in dance bands because of it's volume. A guitar also provides a fuller harmony to the rhythm adding most of a lower octave.

Emiel - Posted - 12/11/2017:  05:31:18

I don't think that in the 1920s or 1930s the black and white minstrel shows were already seen as politically incorrect... But to add to my pervious post: among black musicians, blues men etc.: they switched from the five-string banjo to the guitar quite early, probably as the 5-string banjo had a strong connection to plantation life and slavery.

Bradskey - Posted - 12/11/2017:  07:01:08

My 2 cents...

Banjos would have been a difficult place to start electrical amplification, considering some of the less than optimal techniques that were initially tried. To this day banjo amplification can be problematic when trying to compete with modern electric ensembles. Even most so-called electric banjos are not totally immune to issues, although Gibson prototyped one in the late 30s that was more akin to an electric guitar of the era. Banjo electric amplification was probably tried with mixed results, as was done with several other instruments. Electrically amplified guitars (lap steels really) were simply the first commercially viable electric instruments.

Guitar didn't really replace the banjo. Supplant might be more accurate, subtle though the difference may be. Guitar and banjo were both around contemporaneously in popular music, in slightly different roles. The guitar was simply being held back by the fact that nobody could hear it in a large band. Take a tenor banjo and thrash on it as hard as you can and at least a rhythm comes through in a large wind band. Guitar required amplification before it could begin to step out as a lead instrument in popular music by the late 30s and early 40s, which people were somewhat uncomfortable with at first. The banjo's role in popular music declined and eventually disappeared, which accounted for most of its general decline and visibility. In pure acoustic music, string and folk bands the banjo and guitar presence and roles remained largely the same, with the banjos virtuoso role actually growing with the advent of bluegrass. But as a slice of the total spectrum of music being made those genres have shrunken and remain small, with bluegrass alone bearing the standard for most of the other old genres.

chuckv97 - Posted - 12/11/2017:  07:05:51

Ya can’t play those Freddie Green chords on banjo

Richard Hauser - Posted - 12/11/2017:  07:17:54

I think the musical taste(s) changed. I don't think the 5 string banjo had become popular with the general public. Big bands were becoming more and more popular. Tenor banjos were still popular and were used with some types of music. Mass media and the playing of banjoists like Earl Scruggs popularized the 5 string. The movie Deliverance caught the people's attention.

I heard 2 different types of tenor banjos and a piano perform at a local event. The banjo players were excellent. If I had been younger, I might have started playing a tenor banjo instead of my 5 string.

Kenneth Logsdon - Posted - 12/11/2017:  07:32:25

The guitar is a more versatile instrument suited for playing different styles and genres of music.
Regardless of all the denials, screaming, pants wetting.. A banjo is more of a niche instrument better suited for certain types genres that were tailored/developed with/ to the banjo. (excluding classic)

warpdrive - Posted - 12/11/2017:  07:47:54

I got news for some of you that haven't picked up on a tidbit of information.



The banjo(5 string or other wise) still isn't popular with the general public, and you can't use the banjo hangout and bluegrass as " the general public"!



"WE ARE SMALL"



In relationship of size, to the rest of the world(general public) vs The Banjo Hangout and Bluegrass Music and throw in folk music for good measure.



Fill an old fashioned claw foot bath tub with water(this would be, the BHO and Bluegrass and Folk music)

Now drop that bath tub in the middle of the Ocean, and the splash it makes is how The banjo is perceived in "The General Public"!

Warp!

Edited by - warpdrive on 12/11/2017 07:48:37

The Old Timer - Posted - 12/11/2017:  08:10:46

Guitars weren't very large, or very loud, until Lloyd Loar birthed the Gibson L5. "Big" guitars didn't come along until the 1920s/30s. Then guitars became louder than banjos, and the bands were also getting bigger/louder. The guitar was an incremental gain in volume.

Banjos did just fine in the relatively smaller Dixieland jazz, early jazz, tango bands, etc. Clearly banjos co-existed with guitars in dance bands for a decade or so. The plectrum banjo was itself a creation to let guitar players perform on banjo. When guitars got louder, who needed the plectrum banjo?

Also, let's not forget, how much less problematic guitars are to own/maintain, than banjos with hide heads!!!

That's how I see it.

csacwp - Posted - 12/11/2017:  09:07:08

quote:

---

Originally posted by Richard Hauser

I think the musical taste(s) changed. I don't think the 5 string banjo had become popular with the general public. Big bands were becoming more and more popular. Tenor banjos were still popular and were used with some types of music. Mass media and the playing of banjoists like Earl Scruggs popularized the 5 string. The movie Deliverance caught the people's attention.



I heard 2 different types of tenor banjos and a piano perform at a local event. The banjo players were excellent. If I had been younger, I might have started playing a tenor banjo instead of my 5 string.

---

The 5-string had been incredibly popular with the general public, but by the 1920s the banjo boom had come to an end, and most professional 5-string players had taken up the plectrum banjo to keep paying the bills.  By the early ‘30s, softer jazz styles line big band and crooning were becoming popular, and the amplified guitar was more suited to the overall sound of these newer types of music.

The 5-string banjo was popular in the public eye from the 1840s-1920s, though it had seriously declined in the USA by the ‘20s (in England it was still going strong).  The heyday of the 5-string would have to be the 1880s-1910s, with the largest part of the banjo boom occurring in the 1890s.

While Earl is partially responsible for the popularity of bluegrass music, the music along with bluegrass banjo never came close to reaching the amount of popularity classic style banjo had acquired by 1900, when tens of thousands of original pieces of music were composed and millions of people played and listened to banjo music (the population was significantly smaller then).  The tenor banjo nearly reached the same heights in the ‘20s.  

Edited by - csacwp on 12/11/2017 09:11:25

Lew H - Posted - 12/11/2017:  09:13:08

Tony Thomas wrote an essay explaining that the guitar took over the place of the banjo among African Americans when the blues came in and became popular. The guitar was better suited for blues with its lower end range, sustain, etc.

The history might have been different among whites.

Edited by - Lew H on 12/11/2017 09:13:54

csacwp - Posted - 12/11/2017:  09:22:51

quote:

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Originally posted by The Old Timer

Guitars weren't very large, or very loud, until Lloyd Loar birthed the Gibson L5. "Big" guitars didn't come along until the 1920s/30s. Then guitars became louder than banjos, and the bands were also getting bigger/louder. The guitar was an incremental gain in volume.



Banjos did just fine in the relatively smaller Dixieland jazz, early jazz, tango bands, etc. Clearly banjos co-existed with guitars in dance bands for a decade or so. The plectrum banjo was itself a creation to let guitar players perform on banjo. When guitars got louder, who needed the plectrum banjo?



Also, let's not forget, how much less problematic guitars are to own/maintain, than banjos with hide heads!!!



That's how I see it.

---

Nope, the plectrum banjo had nothing to do with the guitarists, which by the end of WWI was still primarily a fingerstyle instrument.  The plectrum banjo (tuned CGBD) came to be as 5-string classic banjoists sought to keep up with the times and earn a living playing rhythm accompaniment  in the newer dance bands that formed around the ballroom dance craze of the late aughts and early teens.  The tenor banjo was the solution that mandolinists devised when they needed more volume to play in dance bands.  It evolved from the melody banjo, itself a variation of the mandolin banjo.     

csacwp - Posted - 12/11/2017:  09:26:57

quote:

---

Originally posted by Emiel

I don't think that in the 1920s or 1930s the black and white minstrel shows were already seen as politically incorrect... But to add to my pervious post: among black musicians, blues men etc.: they switched from the five-string banjo to the guitar quite early, probably as the 5-string banjo had a strong connection to plantation life and slavery.

---

Exactly... minstrelsy  wasn’t really accepted as politically incorrect until the Civil Rights Movement.  Minstrel shows themselves had diminished in popularity by the late 1880s, around the same time the banjo boom began.  The banjo never lost its association with African Americans though, that is until the folk revival when the instrument was re-imagined as southern, white, and hillbilly.  

Edited by - csacwp on 12/11/2017 09:28:24

chuckv97 - Posted - 12/11/2017:  10:33:45

That leads me to wonder - how many BHO members are African-American?

csacwp - Posted - 12/11/2017:  10:34:44

quote:

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Originally posted by chuckv97

That leads me to wonder - how many BHO members are African-American?

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Very, very few.  

beezaboy - Posted - 12/16/2017:  05:52:10

Several years ago I set out to research the reasons for the demise of the tenor banjo in the 1930's.
The 1920's tenor banjo was a rhythm instrument.
Here is a summary of the principal points that I found:
Harry Reser said the principal reasons for the fall of the tenor banjo were the change in the "musical cycle" and tenor banjoists "low average of musicianship". ("The Great Harry Reser" by W.W. Triggs).
By "musical cycle" I think Reser was referring to the change in 1920's popular music ("jazz") up tempo and improvisation style to a slower, smoother pace.
P. S. Kohman wrote in Vintage Guitar (Jan 2017): "Toward the end of the decade [1920] the frenetic pace of jazz age music began to give way to smoother sounds".
Social dancing embraced the smoother sound and the jazzy one-step fox trot slowed and became more sedate and graceful. The Charleston dances and their progeny fads faded away.
The former jazz age 2/4 beat changed to 4/4 to accommodate dancing and the new dance band performance style. The tuba and tenor banjo did not work well in this new environment and was supplanted by the upright bass and the guitar in the dance band's rhythm section.
Contemporaneously with these changes in musical tastes Benny Goodman observed: "... the kind of guitar that Eddie Lang played was absolutely new at the time, and his use of the instrument was pretty much responsible for its taking the place of the old banjo." ("The Kingdom of Swing" by Goodman and Kolodin).
Guitarist Hy White also observed: "Little by little the guitar overtook the banjo". (A. Berle in Guitar Player June 1978).
Reser's "musicianship low average" was highlighted by complaints that the banjo was played too loudly and was "ear battering". (J. Vincent in "The banjo in jazz": Jazz Journal June 1978. Vincent also wrote: "Traditional jazz has long been hampered by terrible banjo players."
The incoming Big Band Swing of the 1930's was not welcoming of the tenor banjo but interestingly Texas Swing retained it on a much smaller scale, of course.
Finally, William Ludwig wrote simply of the era that: "...the public was becoming tired of the banjo" (Ludwig: The Making of a Drum Company).
I read lots of books and magazines on this topic because I was curious about how the tenor banjo suddenly fell from favor. One author concluded that the tenor banjo's popularity was driven by the music of the day not the other way around. Music and dancing changed and the tenor banjo did not adapt and so became obsolete.

raybob - Posted - 12/16/2017:  07:34:55

I agree that the music itself was changing and that played a large role in the change. I think in his early days Duke Ellington had a banjo in his band. Somewhere in those early days, though, he switched it for a guitar as his music evolved.

J.Albert - Posted - 12/17/2017:  15:30:03

beezaboy wrote:

"One author concluded that the tenor banjo's popularity was driven by the music of the day not the other way around. Music and dancing changed and the tenor banjo did not adapt and so became obsolete."

I think your overall assessment is a good one.

I would also suggest that with the coming of the 1930's came the concept of "streamlining". A "smoother", flowing design that was reflected not only with things like automobiles, but with airplanes and trains as well.

And as music "streamlined", the banjo was to harsh, too edgy, and thus left behind as the large-bodied guitar came on stage.

Seems to me it was around this time that 4-string "tenor guitars" became more popular -- as a way for tenor banjo players to "move over" to another instrument and keep working...

Paul R - Posted - 12/18/2017:  10:44:58

My two cents (I expect change back). Of course, the music changed. It always does. Tastes change - in music, in art, in fashion. In classical music, the chamber orchestra gave way to increasingly larger symphony orchestras. The banjo and mandolin orchestras faded out. Dance bands grew into big bands. The electric guitar changed the blues, and spawned rock 'n' roll. Electric keyboards changed the sounds in the Seventies. Think of syn drums in the Eighties. Earl Scruggs changed the way Bluegrass (as performed by Bill Monroe) sounded.

The acoustic arch-top guitars that came to be used in big bands had an advantage in that they could project farther than flat-tops. Electrifying started with lap steels, so moving to a conventional guitar was more natural. Guitars (especially flat-tops) also tend to have more sustain. While I'm not crazy about the sound of some arch-tops, I tend to find the guitar's tone more pleasing than a banjo's, at least in solo playing (wood vs. skin/plastic).

Hollywood helped the guitar. Singing cowboys (among others) were seen with guitars, not banjos.

ceemonster - Posted - 12/18/2017:  18:06:36

RE posts opining that minstrelry was not seen as politically incorrect at the time we're discussing---This is not my understanding of the post noting that banjo came to be seen as hick-ish due to maligning of black folks in minstrel shows. I read that poster to be saying, minstrel shows (which did promote demeaning stereotypes of black folks) in addition to their other problematic aspects, were one way banjo came to be seen as hillbilly and backward. I did NOT read that poster to be saying, minstrel shows led to the banjo being regarded at that time period, as "politically incorrect."

And along with all the other factors in banjo's fade-out in favor of guitar in that era, such as band acoustics, etc., yes, there is evidence suggesting that it came for several decades to have a hicks-from-the-sticks symbology, and negative stereotypes about rural people including but not limited to those disseminated in minstrel shows, contributed to that. The racially or ethnographically offensive nature of some of those stereotypes (not only toward African-Americans) have come to be more appreciated at a later era.

Lew H - Posted - 12/18/2017:  18:33:35

I wonder what the place of the resonator guitar is in this discussion. My understanding (based on something I read ages ago but can't cite precisely now) is that the cone was meant to amplify the guitar sound. I don't know if that's true, but I always thought of Dobros and Nationals being the predecessors of the electric guitar. That function of amplification, if true, lasted only a short while before the electrics came in.

Paul R - Posted - 12/18/2017:  23:20:29

quote:

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Originally posted by Lew H

I wonder what the place of the resonator guitar is in this discussion. My understanding (based on something I read ages ago but can't cite precisely now) is that the cone was meant to amplify the guitar sound. I don't know if that's true, but I always thought of Dobros and Nationals being the predecessors of the electric guitar. That function of amplification, if true, lasted only a short while before the electrics came in.

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That would be true in the case of slide guitar. The playing technique used on lots of resonator guitars certainly applied to the then-new electric lap steels. It's a natural progression from acoustic to electric.

Emiel - Posted - 12/19/2017:  08:50:48

quote:

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Originally posted by Paul R

quote:

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Originally posted by Lew H

I wonder what the place of the resonator guitar is in this discussion. My understanding (based on something I read ages ago but can't cite precisely now) is that the cone was meant to amplify the guitar sound. I don't know if that's true, but I always thought of Dobros and Nationals being the predecessors of the electric guitar. That function of amplification, if true, lasted only a short while before the electrics came in.

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That would be true in the case of slide guitar. The playing technique used on lots of resonator guitars certainly applied to the then-new electric lap steels. It's a natural progression from acoustic to electric.

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The roundneck resonator (or resophonic) guitar was never meant for slide playing only, though it was always very popular. The idea was to make the guitar louder. Open tunings and regular tunings have always been in use.

The squareneck resonator was always meant for slide playing, of course. Originally mainly for Hawaiian music styles.

Paul R - Posted - 12/19/2017:  09:25:33

quote:

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Originally posted by Emiel

quote:

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Originally posted by Paul R

quote:

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Originally posted by Lew H

I wonder what the place of the resonator guitar is in this discussion. My understanding (based on something I read ages ago but can't cite precisely now) is that the cone was meant to amplify the guitar sound. I don't know if that's true, but I always thought of Dobros and Nationals being the predecessors of the electric guitar. That function of amplification, if true, lasted only a short while before the electrics came in.

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That would be true in the case of slide guitar. The playing technique used on lots of resonator guitars certainly applied to the then-new electric lap steels. It's a natural progression from acoustic to electric.

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The roundneck resonator (or resophonic) guitar was never meant for slide playing only, though it was always very popular. The idea was to make the guitar louder. Open tunings and regular tunings have always been in use.

The squareneck resonator was always meant for slide playing, of course. Originally mainly for Hawaiian music styles.

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Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. As slide playing was being done on resonator guitars (though not exclusively), it would be natural to develop an electric instrument for that type of playing. This would be especially apt for country slide players, whose music would probably be more familiar to the white instrument inventors/tinkerers. I'm not saying that the reso guitar was developed for slide playing. But you never know who will take an instrument in new directions.

Lew H - Posted - 12/19/2017:  09:36:07

I don't think there's a great disagreement here. @Paul R is talking about how slide resonator (blues maybe) became the rock style electric slide--what came between resonator and electric. @Emiel is confirming the need that brought the resonator guitar into being--more volume was needed as the guitar was used in new settings, such as orchestras and jazz bands. I doubt that the dreadnaught guitars were as loud as the resonators, and so were less competitive with the louder wind instruments, etc.