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janolov - Posted - 08/27/2021: 07:54:01
I have chosen John Hardy as this week’s TOTW. It is a good tune and a good song, based on an interesting story, and from the beginning it seems to have been a popular tune on the banjo. And according to the history it was a fight about 75 cents that gave rise to this good tune/song.
John Hardy was TOTW 1/21/11 presented by Bill Eickmeier (banjohangout.org/archive/197241) . I think it was a lot of good information in that thread. What got me to revisit John Hardy was that there are several interesting recordings that has become available on Internet today. There are also some interesting music theories to discuss, and I also will focus on the minor version, played in G minor tuning.
John Hardy – historical notes
"John Hardy" is a traditional American folk song based on the life of a railroad worker living in McDowell County, West Virginia in the Spring of 1893. The historical John Hardy is believed to have gotten into a drunken dispute during a craps game held near Keystone, and subsequently killed a man named Thomas Drews. It seems to have been a dispute about 75 cents! Hardy was found guilty of murder in the first degree, and was hanged on January 19, 1894, with 3,000 people allegedly in attendance. Hardy is believed to have made peace with the Lord the morning before his death by being baptized in a river.
Early folk historians confused the ballads of John Hardy and John Henry. This has led to a mixing of stories related to Hardy and Henry. In fact, the historical John Henry was a steel driver, not a railroad worker. John Harrington Cox, in an early (1919) article in The Journal of American Folklore attempts to disentangle the history of the two songs and their main characters, and provides a detailed discussion of five versions of "John Hardy."
Interestingly, most later versions of the song open with the lyric, "John Hardy was a desperate little man." But all contemporary accounts of the real John Hardy describe him as about six feet tall and strongly built. Alternate early lyrics describe him as a "brave little man" or a "brave and desperate man."
Alan Lomax, in Folk Songs of North America (1960), records:
More interesting historical notes can be found here: bluegrassmessengers.com/john-h...-cox.aspx . It is an old article in The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 32, No. 126 (Oct. - Dec., 1919), pp. 505-520. The confusion between John Hardy and John Henry was shown already then (in 1919).
Early recordings
There seems to be several early banjo versions of John Hardy. The song has been performed by numerous artists from the 1920s through the present. The earliest recordings known (by me) are:
Eva Davis 1924. It has been discussed if it is Samantha Baumgarner that accompanies on the banjo or if it is Eva Davis herself playing the banjo..
Ernest Stoneman 1925
Buell Kazee 1927 and later recording
Other recordings
John Hardy have been recorded by a lot of different artists throughout the years. Here are some that I like to listen to:
Mike Seeger, and here
Enoch Rutherford (recorded by Brad Leftwich)
Roscoe Holcomb (on guitar)
Glen Smith (from County Clawhammer Volume 3)
Leadbelly (on accordion!)
Oscar Jenkins, Fred Cockerham, Tommy Jarrell
Joshua Grant and here (on gourd banjo):
Chris Coole (six string banjo)
Josh Turknett
Music theory – Major, Mixolydian or else?
John Hardy seems to most often be played in standard G major tuning (played in G major or Mixolydian mode), or A tuning (G tuning capo 2).
The most common (?) versions seem to play the first part in Mixolydian mode (first string played on third fret = F), and the second part in major (fourth string played on fourth fret = F#), for example Miles Krassen’s book “Clawhammer Banjo” presents that version. On the other hand, some players seem to play also the second part in Mixolydian (fourth string on third fret = F).
Wade Ward (on the Library of Congress recording) seems to do both. In the second part he sometimes plays fourth string fourth fret, and sometimes fourth string third fret, see the tab book Wade Ward Clawhammer Banjo Master by Bob Carlin and Dan Levenson.
On this video from 1969 Buell Kazee is demonstrating the banjo with the first 5 – 6 frets filed down: youtube.com/watch?v=WbWD8H7IMN0 . John Hardy is played at about at about 8:32; and there you can both see and hear that he frets the first string somewhere between 3rd and 4th fret in the first part, and the same in part 2 on the fourth string. The video also contains a discussion about filing frets down at 11:04, where he tells that people used to file down the frets because they wanted other tones outside the ordinary diatonic scale and play microtones that are between the ordinary fret positions. That seems to be a common effect used on fretless banjo and fiddle and other fretless string instruments. Those microtones, or “in-between” tones are outside the ordinary 12 step diatonic scale, but usually they are related to tonic and belong to the harmonic or overtone series of the tonic (it is only one of the notes that are called blue notes, but the use of these tones are not limited to Blues only!).
Brad Leftwich presents in his book and CD Round Peak Style – Clawhammer Banjo based on Tommy Jarrell’s playing. In the second part the fourth string is indicated by 3+ meaning that the string is being “fretted” above where the 3rd fret would be.
Sometimes people also use chokes or bends to get those raised tones on fretted instruments.
My theory is that the original song were based on those microtones or “in-between” tones, but when people began to play John Hardy on fretted instruments say were bound to choose either 3rd or 4th fret.
Minor version
There are some versions in G minor tuning (gDGBbD). It is not true minor, rather Dorian mode, because the chords are Gm, C and Dm.
Mike Seeger has recorded a cool version in Gm tuning (but he seems to be a half step lower the G so actually he is in F#m tuning). He based his version of J.W. Russell recorded 1936. Since Joe Russell’s text was inaudible over the driving banjo frailing , Mike adapted the text from Carter Family’s version: youtube.com/watch?v=GRKrYlXL3vI and youtube.com/watch?v=RZM9PjhQTfU
I have also seen this minor version in two songbooks, and my first version of John Hardy played in "Seeger style up-picking" around 1970 was based on the minor version.
Tabs
As I already have mentioned there are tab in several well-known tab books, for example
I have made some tabs that I put in the BHO tab archive:
Edited by - janolov on 08/27/2021 07:59:22
janolov - Posted - 08/28/2021: 12:23:17
quote:
Originally posted by Don BorcheltA very nice, thorough TOTW presentation, Jan. Matthew, that was a great job of picking, back when you were still a youngster! I just drove through Morgantown a few weeks ago; if i had put two and two together I could have stopped and said hi, and maybe picked a few tunes. I did stop and pick up a few bottles from the Forks of Cheat Winery.
I haven't posted a TOTW entry in awhile, but I did have a John Hardy video from June, 2017, busking in Harvard Square with my pals Ed Britt and John Maguire. As many of you know, Ed passed away from Alzheimers last January, and I sure miss his beautiful clawhammer picking. My three finger version here is a little bluegrassier than usual, it's kind of hard to get out from under the influence of Earl's beautiful rendition with Doc recorded back in December of 1966. A lot of people hate Charlie McCoy's harmonica work on that album, but I loved it.
Tomorrow, John Maguire and I are going out busking in the morning in the Boston Public Garden, before it gets too hot. He'll be putting his fiddle down and playing harmonica on a few numbers.
That was a nice version.
I think you should contribute more to the TOTW. You may play a strange three-finger style 
, but you play Old-Time music, and there are a lot of BHO OT members that love your playing. I really enjoy all your recordings with Ed. He was a a real good clawhammer player, and the combination of your three-finger and his clawhammer really get the music to new dimensions!
WVDreamin - Posted - 08/28/2021: 17:15:21
You say G is too high to sing but in the video you announced you were tuned down to F. Maybe intended to sing?
ndlxs - Posted - 08/29/2021: 04:55:23
quote:
Originally posted by WVDreaminYou say G is too high to sing but in the video you announced you were tuned down to F. Maybe intended to sing?
I stated it badly; my version is in D, which feels a bit low for me. Really, I should capo up to the fifth fret to sing it in F with the same tuning. I could also tune down from G tuning, too, but I like the up the neck version that I play.
D would be a good key for a bass voice, though.
WVDreamin - Posted - 08/29/2021: 10:15:54
quote:
Originally posted by ndlxsquote:
Originally posted by WVDreaminYou say G is too high to sing but in the video you announced you were tuned down to F. Maybe intended to sing?
I stated it badly....
Nah, I did. I was referring to Uncle Clawhammer and didn't bother to quote him. You stated it clearly enough.
Mtngoat - Posted - 08/29/2021: 14:32:13
Here's a snippet of John Hardy on a homemade gourd banjo recorded this afternoon. I didn't realize until I started this post that I ran out of recording space the second time through, but you get the gist.
JanetB - Posted - 09/01/2021: 10:27:48
That was an amazing presentation, Jan! So glad to see and hear all the contributors. I really wanted to study the Carter Family version, but just plain ran out of time. This week has rolled by fast, so here's a quick and dirty John Hardy for the road, though the fellow himself never got back on the road and spent his time crying in his cell. Here's how Plinky & Plunky used to play it at jams, probably not this fast, and minus Plunky for today's recording.
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