bosborne - Posted - 05/15/2007:  21:45:17

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Also do not fail to check out Otis Taylor, for example at www.otistaylor.com. His latest, Definition Of A Circle, besides being amazing music, has a few tunes with banjo. If I'm not mistaken his first instrument was a banjo. Otis Taylor is all blues, all the time, but he's extraordinarily imaginative and he takes the blues is all sorts of directions. He's won all sorts of awards, both as blues musician and as banjo player.

writerrad - Posted - 05/16/2007:  08:33:53

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quote:

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Originally posted by bosborne

Also do not fail to check out Otis Taylor, for example at www.otistaylor.com. His latest, Definition Of A Circle, besides being amazing music, has a few tunes with banjo. If I'm not mistaken his first instrument was a banjo. Otis Taylor is all blues, all the time, but he's extraordinarily imaginative and he takes the blues is all sorts of directions. He's won all sorts of awards, both as blues musician and as banjo player.

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Yes Otis's first instrument is the five string banjo. He told me that the approach he developed to the banjo, a mixture of stroke and finger style, is the way that he plays all the other stringed instruments he plays meaning the guitar and the electric mandolin. I've seen him play a number of times and it is fascinating.



Tony Thomas, a black banjo player

writerrad - Posted - 05/16/2007:  08:47:57

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Let me pose a big question that is historically related tothis discourse. Granted that we can all play the blues on the banjo and some right bluesy music came onthe banjo, but why did the five string banjo not get taken into the arsenal of blues playing musicians.

That is to say that with the exception of Gus Cannon, no recording blues artists used the five-string banjo. Research on African American music indicates that the traditional string band repertoire was replaced by blues based music and dancing in a period between the 1890s and the 1930. It is with the inception of the blues that five string banjos disappear from the active playing repertoire of African Americans.

It cannot just be that the banjo was "old fashioned" or that the banjo was identified with the string band repertoire. After all, the fiddle is probably much older than the banjo and was the chief instrument of the old string band dance music. Similarly, the mandolin was used in the string bands too. Yet, both instruments continued to be used in blues playing bands, at least until the music went electric after WWII,

Some people might just it is the tuning of banjos, but from the most sophisticated. urbane, and jazz oriented like Lonnie Johnson to the most rootsy players like Charlie Patton, many guitarists of the blues put their guitars into G tuning, the most popular banjo tuning. Many other blues guitarists used the Open D or Sebastopol tunning, often used by banjoists. Even some of the most obscure banjo tunings like Tommy Jarrel's DfADf# was used by blues guitarist Skip James.

Why did blues musicians not use the five-string banjo?

Tony Thomas, a black banjo player

gbkyser - Posted - 05/22/2007:  13:05:42

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OK, I'll speculate... The guitar has longer sustain and doesn't need to be plucked as often to keep the sound going, so it is easier to use as accompaniment, especially in solo performance and even more so with slow songs. Maybe too blues musicians preferred the style of lead playing, with sustained, bent notes, that the guitar made possible.

GUY

writerrad - Posted - 05/22/2007:  13:48:08

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quote:

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Originally posted by gbkyser

OK, I'll speculate... The guitar has longer sustain and doesn't need to be plucked as often to keep the sound going, so it is easier to use as accompaniment, especially in solo performance and even more so with slow songs. Maybe too blues musicians preferred the style of lead playing, with sustained, bent notes, that the guitar made possible.

GUY

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//

I think there is alot of truth to that. It is especially true that guitar provides that level of sustain at lower pitch and has a lot of bass which makes it possible to provide a beat while playing a syncopated lead and still allow for dancing. This is particularly true as most blues for dancing, but not all, is fairly slow. Giving the dancers enough on a slow song by finger picking or claw hammering blues would seem pretty hard on the banjo, but not that difficult on a guitar.

Depending on how the banjo is set up, you can usually bend the strings on a banjo too, but they don't sustain as well as distinctly. The musicians doing this were doing this to include notes on scales originally from Africa that were hard to reach on a fretted guitar, although a secondary reason may have been that some blues players had such lousy guitars that they had to bend the string to get the proper tone.

You can get a lot of the same effects on a five string banjo in either blues or old time picking. However, the best strings to bend are the bass strings, the third and fourth strings.

Still, like you point out, when I try to bend a string and get a note there, playing clawhammer or finger style, it is hard to let that note bleed for a while because playing the banjo you are usually stroking it pretty quickly to keep things going.

Thanks a lot.



Tony Thomas, a black banjo player

gbkyser - Posted - 05/22/2007:  14:02:10

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quote:

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Originally posted by writerrad

Depending on how the banjo is set up, you can usually bend the strings on a banjo too, but they don't sustain as well as distinctly.

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They go "doink" instead of "doinggg"

Norand - Posted - 05/24/2007:  07:32:35

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Try listening to Crooked Still's version of Robert Johnssons "Come on in my kithcen". It can be found on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB1ZGels-dY.

I'm a huge fan of Greg Liszt's blazing banjo skills. He plays bluegrassriffs like no one else, and I don't think blues banjo gets much better than this.
I was very lucky to get to se them a few weeks ago, and I was awestruck! Great musicians, nice people!

Regards
Anders

banjovy - Posted - 05/24/2007:  11:37:42

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I've heard him play it live. Kicks serious butt.

gordsgold - Posted - 05/31/2007:  00:38:58

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quote:

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Originally posted by writerrad

Let me pose a big question that is historically related tothis discourse. Granted that we can all play the blues on the banjo and some right bluesy music came onthe banjo, but why did the five string banjo not get taken into the arsenal of blues playing musicians.

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Wasn't the music scene in the South (New Orleans primarily) beginning to switch to more a more Jazz oriented sound wih horns and brass instruments that were loud? And so along went the banjo, because of the sound projection. It is one of the few instruments that can hold it's own in this ensemble.

Maybe once the "Jazz" folks began to use the banjo, it fell out of favor with the blues traditionalists.......

Eddie Collins - Posted - 05/31/2007:  23:14:58

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[quote]Originally posted by travis_towle

I have heard this can be done. Does anyone know where I can find more info on how to do it and techniques on the style to make the BLUES sound on a banjo? I have a 5 string and play Scrugs Style now.


Travis E. Towle
Travis, I just now came across this thread. Playing blues on a 5-sting in Scruggs style in standard G tuning is a passion of mine. Banjo players with extensive background in guitar picking tend to be the best "roll" models. Number 1 would be Don Reno. He had tunes such as Double Banjo blues and others that demo his technique. I have a section in my book, Beyond The Basics of Bluegrass Banjo that deals with this and other elements of jazzing up standard bluegrass picking, which includes learning blues scales, playing in the Dorian mode and using triplets in your leads. I would be interested in knowing if you have come up with any useful material since you first posted this....Happ picking,

Eddie Collins

travis_towle - Posted - 06/09/2007:  16:16:11

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Wow - lots of great info here! Thanks for the input - I have some learning to do now.


Travis E. Towle
Topeka, Kansas

I am LOOKING for a great condition USED Morgan Monroe Riverking and Admiral Banjo !!!

brokenstrings - Posted - 06/09/2007:  18:52:46

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Tony, don't forget that a lot of black musicians were dumping the banjo like a hot potato because of its minstrel show associations. Couldn't that have been a factor also?

Jessy

Frailaway, ladies, frailaway!

Scarecrow - Posted - 06/10/2007:  11:53:14

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Jessy's point here is the one I always thought was the main reason that the banjo largely disappeared from the blues, although in itself it cannot explain why white blues musicians didn't use it much; it does, however, help to explain the limited market for recordings.
The association with medicine shows and blackface comedy links Gus Cannon, or Banjo Joe as he was known, to an earlier age. He was on the road with those shows from 1914 to 1928. To make a living, he (and a great many musicians) had to be versatile, blues making up just a fraction of his repertoire. His Jug Stompers had a brief recording career that never re-started after the Depression years; the jug band style was now "old hat" and people looked for what they saw as a little more sophistication in the syncopated styles of acoustic guitar and the amplified guitar in bands.
When I dabbled in 5-string playing I thought the blues sounded great in standard G tuning.

http://www.myspace.com/uglymugjugband
www.radiojazz.co.uk/index.htm

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Edited by - Scarecrow on 06/10/2007 12:13:16

emu rag - Posted - 06/11/2007:  04:57:27

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Hey Travis,
My answer to is There Blues styles for banjo= is that there is an abundance of it? Heaps of Scruggs,s music is hevely blues based(nashville blues john henry,foggymountainspeical,ext,. Along with the great Don Reno and his famous duble banjo blues. There is great blues based bluegrass players that have played with both Bill Monroe and Jimmy Martin from Blake Williams too Allan Munde too JD crow.
My Faverite Player who uses blues to great affect is ROBBIE MCCOURY .
Find usefull blues notes on all the third fret strings. Practice the blues and mixolydian scale and adept them to your playing whilst improvising

Albatross Cabinets Building the best Kitchens,Vanities and Laundries in Melbourne.

geraldjones - Posted - 06/15/2007:  02:25:13

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I taught a blues banjo workshop with Bill Evans and Danny Barnes a couple of weeks ago at the Midwest Banjo Camp. I hope to have a short video on working blues into your banjo playing soon...

Let's Pick!

Gerald Jones
214-236-0783

Join Us at Acoustic Music Camp Aug 16-18 2007 in Dallas TX
Teachers include; David Talbot & Terry Baucom- Banjo,
Brad Davis - Guitar/Mandolin, Robert Bowlin - Fiddle/Guitar,
Jim "Texas Shorty" Chancellor - Fiddle
Joe Carr- Harmony Vocals, Gerald Jones - Banjo/Mandolin
Wil Maring -Songwriting
For more info go to: http://AcousticMusicCamp.com

http://TheGeraldJones.com • http://MySpace.com/TheGeraldJones
http://BanjoSessions.com • http://AcousticMusician.com

prossignol - Posted - 06/19/2007:  13:31:20

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Jammed with a friend of mine who is a a knowledgeable blues guitarist. Managed to find some common ground on "salty dog". this song usually known as "old salty dog blues" in BG circles is an adaptation from an old blues tune known by the same (or similar) name.

"...where whiskeys' made out of corn and women don't smell like talcum powder."

Ronnie - Posted - 06/20/2007:  15:48:25

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Blues is very popular here in west Tennessee. www.downtownjackson.com/Bluesfest/index.html The event has already been held, but there will be another next year.

I did a recording session last night with the banjo, working with a local blues harmonica player on some of his original blues compositions. As soon as the final mix is worked out and copyright issues are dealt with, I'll try let y'all give a listen.

http://www.banjohangout.org/forum/rules.asp

www.bobbythompsonbanjo.com

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Edited by - Ronnie on 06/20/2007 15:49:40

brokenstrings - Posted - 06/23/2007:  23:09:56

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Looking forward to it, Ronnie.

Jessy

Frailaway, ladies, frailaway!

writerrad - Posted - 06/26/2007:  18:07:26

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quote:

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Originally posted by brokenstrings

Tony, don't forget that a lot of black musicians were dumping the banjo like a hot potato because of its minstrel show associations. Couldn't that have been a factor also?

Jessy

Frailaway, ladies, frailaway!

---

This is an entirely untrue myth. After the civil war, white minstrelsy in the US began a long decline with the competition of Black minstrel companies on the one hand and vaudeville on the other hand. During the period that the motion away from the five string banjo took place between 1900 and around 1930, African American minstrel companies were at the center of entertainment especially in the South. Most of the early female blues singers were associated with minstrel companies. Black minstrelsy modernized itself switching with other musicians to tenor banjos, jazz combos etc. The companies remained very popular with the Black community in this era,usually being feted by African American civic and fraternal leaders when they arrived in Southern towns.
While white minstrel companies more or less fell apart across the 1920s,
the major African American minstrel companies kept going until the early 1950s when like many types of earlier entertainment they succumbed to television.

No one has ever produced any evidence that there was a single person who abandoned the banjo because of its alledged association with minstrelsy. no oNE.

Tony Thomas, a black banjo player

writerrad - Posted - 06/26/2007:  18:30:43

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quote:

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Originally posted by Scarecrow

Jessy's point here is the one I always thought was the main reason that the banjo largely disappeared from the blues, although in itself it cannot explain why white blues musicians didn't use it much; it does, however, help to explain the limited market for recordings.
The association with medicine shows and blackface comedy links Gus Cannon, or Banjo Joe as he was known, to an earlier age. He was on the road with those shows from 1914 to 1928. To make a living, he (and a great many musicians) had to be versatile, blues making up just a fraction of his repertoire. His Jug Stompers had a brief recording career that never re-started after the Depression years; the jug band style was now "old hat" and people looked for what they saw as a little more sophistication in the syncopated styles of acoustic guitar and the amplified guitar in bands.
When I dabbled in 5-string playing I thought the blues sounded great in standard G tuning.

http://www.myspace.com/uglymugjugband
www.radiojazz.co.uk/index.htm

---

//
Cannon was the only five-string banjo player who ever had a career in recorded blues. Some players of tenor and six string banjo recorded blues, but no other five-string players.

Most of Cannon's music was not straight blues by versions of pop rag time tunes that had been around since the 1880s which were the chief form of popular African American music during those years. Cannon only worked full-timewithn minstrel shows when he was a young man before WWI. He maintained odd jobs and at times patronage jobs with the city for almost all of his life, working on the side as a musician.

His approach to the blues despite his brilliants illustrates the chief problems of blues playing with a five string banjo. If you listen to his few blues--as opposed to rag time tunes--the ones that sound right and balances are the onces where the jug band with its jug and guitar provide some bottom. On his solo pieces, the high register that the banjo plays in, and the block chord gapping he uses that resembles a tenor banjo, sounds too high to really get behind the voice. It does not provide the required bass beat that blues players either got out of the piano's left hand or the bass strings of a guitar.

Cannon is one of two known five string banjo players in the 1920s and 1930s to have recorded slide playing. Like Doc Walsh who recorded a religious song this way, instead of holding the banjo in the usual way and combining slide with regular fretting much as most slide guitarists did, Cannon raised the bridge of his banjo--I dont know whether he raised his nut as well--and played the banjo in his lap like a player of a Hawaiian guitar would, producing full chords. It is beautiful music, but miles away from what slide guitarists did and the only example of an African American playing this way on record.

Medicine shows were different from minstrelsy. One veteran of Black entertainment put it this way that if the medicine shows were kindergarten, the minstrel shows were college. 20th Century Black Minstel shows had large companies of singers, dancers, comedians, and people who did the kind of tricks or who had the kinds of animals associated with the circus (the cirucses banned any black performers in the big top until about 1970, although most medium and large circuses carried Black minstrel shows that performed as part of the side show).
The bands with the big Black minstrel companies were fairly large band of trained musicians who could read music and performed everything from rag time and early Jazz to symphonies and accompaniment for opera selections that were often part of the show. Along with the black circus bands they were seen as among the top bands of any kind until commercial Black jazz orchestras started to be assembled, often with many members from minstrel companies, in the late 1920s.

A very telling discussion of what it took to be a minstrel musician in those years is given by WC Handy in his autobiography where he discusses the excellence of the musicians in the minstrel bands he belong to and subsequently directed.

A folk musician like Gus Cannon could only dream of being taken on by a Black minstrel company. In fact the Black minstrel companies were the chief employers of the Black female classic blues singers who were accompanied by Jazz combos. One of the larger companies just before WWI included Ma Rainey, Clara Smith, and Bessie Smith among many others on its bill.

Black minstrelsy was the starting point for a large number of African American 20th Century music stars and comedians including folks like Louis Jordan, Rufus Thjomas, and Dizzy Gillespie.

There is a lot of foolish ignorance and assumption floating around about minstrelsy by folks who dont know anything about it or Black entertainment history.

Fortunatelly Lynn Abbot and Doug Seroff have published two masterpieces Out of Sight and Ragged But Right that give an almost week by week picture of mintrelsy and other forms of black popular entertainment from about 1889 until the 20s, going into the 1950s to complete the story of Black minstrelsy.

Tony Thomas, a black banjo player

writerrad - Posted - 06/26/2007:  18:34:34

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quote:

---

Originally posted by emu rag

Hey Travis,
My answer to is There Blues styles for banjo= is that there is an abundance of it? Heaps of Scruggs,s music is hevely blues based(nashville blues john henry,foggymountainspeical,ext,. Along with the great Don Reno and his famous duble banjo blues. There is great blues based bluegrass players that have played with both Bill Monroe and Jimmy Martin from Blake Williams too Allan Munde too JD crow.
My Faverite Player who uses blues to great affect is ROBBIE MCCOURY .
Find usefull blues notes on all the third fret strings. Practice the blues and mixolydian scale and adept them to your playing whilst improvising]]


Albatross Cabinets Building the best Kitchens,Vanities and Laundries in Melbourne.

---

Yes, the best real blues playing on the five string banjo comes from white banjo players, but particularly those who follow THE GREAT GENIUS EARLY SCRUGGS one of the betteer blues players on any instrument.

Because white banjoists do not have to satisfy the different needs of the blues desired by African American dancers, they were much more able to integrate the banjo into blues music and playing the blues is an essential part of bluesgrass especially if your idea of bluegrass is Bill Monroe and Lester and Earl.


Tony Thomas, a black banjo player

writerrad - Posted - 06/26/2007:  19:24:09

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I've been working on this for a long time now and have gotten the help and hearing of some very serious scholars of the blues and of the banjo. I had a good chance to talk these things out at Mars Hill this year where I was able to get Bob Buckingham, Pete Peterson, and Bob Carlin involved in my classes on the subject. Here in a nut shell is what I think, also the thesis for a chapter of a book by the Duke UP I have to have in by Monday!

1. banjo playing declined by African Americans because the musics associated with it, the traditional string band repertoire, were placed by other kinds of music and the dances that music was played for was replaced by different kinds of dances.

2. The five string banjo was never a factor in African American blues pereformance. Other than the aforementioned recordings of Cannon, we have no recordings of Black banjoists who were blues performers or blues performers who were banjoists. Many who we know from field recordings, recording careers, or personal interviews, played both the guitar and the banjo, played the banjo for the old time string band repertoire and used the guitar for blues.

3. The eruption of the blues and the availability of inexpensive STEEL STRING guitars seemed to have happened at the same time. The earliest examples of blues players ever reported are all of blues guitarists, usually playing slide or bottleneck guitar. There are no reports of an earlier period of blues playing where the five string banjo was used by blues players.

4. This contrasts with other instruments associated with the old string bands like the fiddle and the mandolin which remained a part of blues performances until African American blues went electric and added saxophones after world war II. This also contrasts with the six-string banjo (the instrument played by Poppa Charlie Jackson the first recorded African American male blues singer) and the tenor banjo which were used by individual blues recording artists and by Jazz bands that played some oif the greatest blues ever played. Even uke banjos were used fairly often by blues string bands some of whom gained noteriety as jug bands.

5. Intrinsic to the early blues, especially as the guitar blues, is the set of musical approaches that were preserved among African Americans in various instruments descended from African bows, not bows played for bowing other instruments, but powers that were played by the hand, the mouth, or some sort of slider. The most widespread one in North America appears to have been the diddley bow or jitterbug, an instrument almost every early Blues guitarist seems to have played before the guitar. Whethere in Mississippi or in the Southeast, early blues guitar stylings and whatever happened to be the first guitar song blues players were taught were songs using slide almost in the manner of the diddley bow. This could not have been done as easily or loud enough for acoustic audiences with gut string acoustic guitars or with five string banjos. The banjo lacks the sustain to play this music, while cheap high action, crudely made guitars are often the best instruments for playing slide.

6. A deep and resonant drumlike bass seems to be a key component of what Blues musicians look for. Blues scholars suggests this may reflect influes of the drum part that persisted in African American folk music especially in the mississippi valley. This became an iimportant part of blues playing as it merged with boogie-woogie piano playing that developed out of folk rag time. This sound could be achieved with the bass strings of the guitar and the left hand of the piano. But no such bass existed on the five string banjo.

7. Other areas where five-string banjos once reigned such as in dance orchestras were taken by the four string and six string banjos that did not have fifth strings to complicate forming chords and developing more advance harmony that was demanded by the more advanced ragtime, the onset of Latin music as in the tango craze from around 1912 to 1918, and finally Jazz.

Other than the piano, the guitar became the appropriate instrument for instrumental blues from its beginnings while the banjo was never considered as the instrument for blues, even by musicians who continued to play the five string banjo. In time musics like jazz and blues where the five string banjo was not used, usually again in preference for the guitar, became dominant among African Americans. This was an uneven process that took from the 1890s until the 1930s or 1940s, Although individual vestigial players remained alive, particularly in North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia until the 1990s, almost all of them would say that it was at some point before the second world war, the most some point in the late 1920s or early 1930s when their banjo playing was more than a hold over from previous days.

Thjs does not mean that after the fact, one cannot create blues on the banjo, but it does give a more accurate picture of the relationship between African Americans and the five-string banjo.

Tony Thomas, a black banjo player

Jim Yates - Posted - 06/27/2007:  15:50:11

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Thanks for your contributions Tony. It's always a pleasure to hear from someone who has really studied his/her area of folklore in depth. I always learn something from your posts.

banjofanatico - Posted - 06/29/2007:  14:01:28

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I enjoyed it too. It's nice to hear from someone who knows the history of these things, rather than the second-rate sociologizing that's the usual. Thanks for posting.

David

writerrad - Posted - 07/01/2007:  16:29:59

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quote:

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Originally posted by banjofanatico

I enjoyed it too. It's nice to hear from someone who knows the history of these things, rather than the second-rate sociologizing that's the usual. Thanks for posting.

David

---

A very big problem on the five-string banjo, especially in regard to old-time music is that there is very little published information in accessible places about this history. Whatever knowledge exists seems to be trapped in the heads of a lot of different people, a lot of web discourse, or conversations between people, or at things like the Banjo collectors gathering.

This also makes it possible for people to say all kinds of things. Publishing, particularly for a schoarly audience makes it necessary to have information that is supported by verifiable facts, and takes place in an atmosphere where there is collegial criticism and support in the information.

Not much work has been published on the five string banjo. There are a few important books that everyone should have:African Banjo Echoes in the Appalachians by Cece Conway, The Half-Barbaric Twang by Linn, America's Instrument by Gura and Bollman, the recent Joe Sweeney book by Bob Carlin, and Banjo On My Knee by Rex Ellis. These books unfortunately don't cover everything because more books about more subjects are needed.

So, people develop all sorts of ideas and conjectures that fly about as accepted information that no one has investigated. The thing about Blacks getting rid of the banjo due to white minstrelsy playing it is a good example. No one ever presented any evidence for this in the form of a person who decided not to play the banjo because of this alledged association. In fact, in the periods when racist images involving Black people with banjos was at its height, nobody was abandoning any banjos. Moreover, while white minstrelsy faded out, Black minstrelsy became much more vibrant in the late 19th century, and in the 20th century. In fact, Black minstrelsy lasted into the 1950s. Minstrelsy black and white modernized its instrumentation according to the times and didnt stay with the banjos of Joe Sweeny. The early female Blue singers who were the biggest singers of the blues all began their careers and stayed with the biggest Black minstrel troupes, accompanied by jazz combos, not Black face banjoists.

But, you dont know these things until you look.



When I started this research, I thought I would find that people played blues on the banjo a lot in the early days and that some transition would take place for whatever reason. However, except perhaps at the very start of the blues before steel string guitars became available around 1900, there is absolutely no record of people playing the blues on a five-string banjo.

People who wanted to play the blues, played guitars, pianos, or harmonicas, by and large. In the acoustic days of the blues a few people continued with fiddles and mandolins and in blues string bands some people used tenor banjos, uke banjos, and mandolin banjos, but that was something that disappeared by and large when electric instruments and saxophones joined the blues after WWII.

A very large number of the last generation of Black five-string banjo players also played the guitar. The usual division of labor was that they played string band music with the banjo and played blues or even mor emodern music with the guitar.


Of course, that does not mean that you can't play blues on the banjo. African American banjoists and white banjoists did play the blues on the banjo. However, this was mainly playing blues that were played at the pace of string band music for the same kind of dancing that was used for other tunes.

Nowadays in a largely post blues work, you can play blues on a five string banjo as people have remarked throughout this forum. We do have amplification at venues that didnt exist when musicians had to select the guitar because its slide could be heard, while slide on a banjo cound not.

Tony Thomas, a black banjo player

voodoo_chilly - Posted - 07/02/2007:  01:19:14

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A few months back, I read "The Bluegrass Reader" and I vaguely remember a few small sections on blues on the banjo.

John M

geraldjones - Posted - 07/10/2007:  00:17:37

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I put up some simple blues stuff at http://banjosessions.com/apr06/bluesbanjo.html last year. It's basically guitar stuff...

Let's Pick!

Gerald Jones
214-236-0783

Join Us at Acoustic Music Camp Aug 16-18 2007 in Dallas TX
Teachers include; David Talbot & Terry Baucom- Banjo,
Brad Davis & Tim May - Guitar/Mandolin, Robert Bowlin - Fiddle/Guitar,
Jim "Texas Shorty" Chancellor - Fiddle
Joe Carr- Harmony Vocals, Gerald Jones - Banjo/Mandolin
Wil Maring -Songwriting
For more info go to: http://AcousticMusicCamp.com

http://TheGeraldJones.com • http://MySpace.com/TheGeraldJones
http://BanjoSessions.com • http://AcousticMusician.com

Wes Lassiter - Posted - 05/12/2008:  12:58:24

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Keepimg this forum


Banjo Wes
All things excellent are difficult as they are rare.

Spinoza

Wes Lassiter - Posted - 05/12/2008:  15:35:32

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going

Banjo Wes
All things excellent are difficult as they are rare.

Spinoza

Tom Hanway - Posted - 05/12/2008:  21:35:32

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Tony, it is so wonderful to read your posts and think about them. I am wondering if you know of any specific contributions that Reverend Gary Davis made to the five-string banjo. I have always wondered about this, since I have taken some of his guitar techniques, using two fingers on the right hand (thumb-index), and employing slides, sometimes double-stops - like the way he played 'Sally, where'd you get your liquor from' and put that on a five string banjo. I get these techniques from his guitar playing, but he also played banjo, so I'm wondering about what that connection is. Any ideas or suggestions?

I understand that Reverend Gary has been quoted by Roy Book Binder and Stefan Grossman as not being into slide guitar ("... no cheap stuff"). I saw Book Binder last week in my hometown of Larchmont, NY, and he mentioned hat he accompanied Reverend Gary, toured with him, and that Reverend Gary used to like to hang out backstage with the other blues musicians, smoke cigars, but would often fall asleep. Slide guitar didn't hold his interest. Very funny anecdotes Mr. Roy Book Binder has....

But I'm wondering about the guitar-banjo connection in the hands of Reverend Gary Davis. I can ask Roy about this, but I want to ask you if you have any thoughts on the matter. Much appreciated.

Happy pickin',

Tom

http://www.tomhanway.com

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Edited by - Tom Hanway on 05/22/2008 06:37:26

granderman - Posted - 05/13/2008:  02:19:29

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thanks Gerald , Eddie and Tom all good stuff, i love blues delta blues make you hurt all the way to your soul blues . i have Eddie's book and has helped i have Tom's book and it has helped at times i feel like a drunken irishman with the blues ! Thats is when i here Keb' Mo saying play what you feel ! i am even having a acoustic banjo build so i can have a different sound . that gave my wife the blues so i think i am feeling the pain of the blues, now if i can get the groove .

aloha Bradah T

Tom Hanway - Posted - 05/13/2008:  22:54:58

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quote:

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Originally posted by granderman

thanks Gerald , Eddie and Tom all good stuff, i love blues delta blues make you hurt all the way to your soul blues . i have Eddie's book and has helped i have Tom's book and it has helped at times i feel like a drunken irishman with the blues ! Thats is when i here Keb' Mo saying play what you feel ! i am even having a acoustic banjo build so i can have a different sound . that gave my wife the blues so i think i am feeling the pain of the blues, now if i can get the groove .

aloha Bradah T

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I love the Delta and all the regional blues styles too. Some folks call East Coast blues "Piedmont", which I guess distinguishes acoustic forms from more urban electric guitar styles. I like to break it down even further by specific artist and region, e.g., Delta, Texas, West Coast, Florida, etc.

I was a fingerpicking acoustic blues guitarist long before picking up the banjo, and that's where I first learned about personal and regional styles of picking. My blues and country rags training gave me a lot of tools in learning the banjo, especially single-string work, playing instrumentals, dance tunes, melodic lines and the like.

Check it out: If you fool around with Irish tunes in Dorian mode, you will see that this mode is almost the blues scale. A good example of an Irish (or Celtic) tune in Dorian is 'The Star of Munster', which really zips along at sessions.

Because of the historic connections of early Celtic-American musical forms to African American instruments (the banjo itself) I had to define "blue tonality" in the Glossary to Complete Book of Irish & Celtic 5-String Banjo, thus:

"As sung or played on an instrument, blue tonality is achieved by flatting (and often bending) pitches, typically the third and seventh tones of the major scale, so that the resulting sound is neither major nor minor. In fact, a blues mode can simply be achieved by flatting the fourth degree of the Dorian mode, which already has a flatted third and seventh. The fifth may be flatted for a jazzier blue tonality. See also accidentals, Dorian, mode, tonality."

Example in G - try this sequence of tones (single-string), picking steady eighth notes - drive it:

||: G G A Bb B D E D | F F E F E D Bb B :||

Sound familiar? You can play the same pattern starting on a C note, using the same tone relationships, then on a D note (same pattern again) in a 12-bar blues structure. And you can go even simpler or more complex, varying it to suit your personal tastes.

||:G / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | C / / / | / / / / |
.| G./ / / | / / / / | D / / / | / / / / | G / / / | / / / /:||

I'll always wonder about Reverend Gary Davis's connection to the banjo. Did he use older banjo techniques on the guitar, or is it the other way around, or is it something else, perhaps a combination of techniques unique to Reverend Gary? I don't know myself, but I am curious about his banjo playing. I wonder what he thought of the banjo? I'll never know that, but maybe there are some clues out there.

Up-picking (as opposed to downstroke or stroke style) on a banjo, it can be argued, has its roots in (is) a "guitar style", and it was taught and labeled as such in a monumental seminal 19th-century banjo tutor, i.e., Converse's Method for Banjo (1865). At the same time, up-picking (finger-picking) was similarly described as a "harp" technique, and it is a natural way to pluck a stringed instrument, whether it's of European or African descent, a harp or a lute family instrument. Harp and lute family instruments are close cousins and found throughout the world, as are major and minor pentatonic and hexatonic scales.

Check out Gerald Jones' stuff above (the Mel Bay link). It's worth a look and a practice, and then some. Good thread ... who knew?

Happy pickin',

Tom

http://www.tomhanway.com

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Edited by - Tom Hanway on 05/14/2008 15:30:05

granderman - Posted - 05/14/2008:  17:38:38

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thanks for that Tom , Son House and Tampa Red and of course Bob Brozman have mastered the slide . Me i just love the way it makes you feel to play those tones. I have listened to your stuff on the web mighty fine !

aloha Bradah T

R Buck - Posted - 05/16/2008:  14:20:50

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I play blues on the banjo sometimes even using a slide. I did some on my CD My Friend is a Mule in Mine where I copied Otis Spann piano licks on clawhammer, even quoting a trumpet line. Mostly clawhammer. Sometimes it is easier to slide into two finger then back into clawhammer and back to two finger. but the over all feel is old time. Earl Played great blues with BillM. They had a swinging outfit back in the day with lots of fun rhythms.

OF course there are great field recordings of everyone from old Black banjo pickers to Frank Proffitt and Virgil Anderson playing blues on the banjo.

RBuck

Music; the best way to count time.
www.blueridgerounders.com

granderman - Posted - 05/22/2008:  02:23:16

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ok here is my plan , i am going to look at some of Roy BookBinders stuff and see if i can pull his style over to the banjo . any body see any thing that would help , seems like blues is bound to come out of me and my blue banjo

aloha Bradah T

Tom Hanway - Posted - 05/22/2008:  06:43:06

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I was just listening to one of his new CDs, "Live at the Fur Peace Station", and he spells his last name Book Binder - two words. Jorma Kaukonen gives a very funny introduction and pauses after his first name "Roy" and cracks a joke about him having three names. This CD actually has 29 tracks, a bargain. It's a quality recording by one of the reigning acoustic blues kings at the height of his powers.

I can tell you right off the bat that, in theory, you'll be able to locate most of the treble notes, but not the bass notes, because the banjo doesn't have those strings. Having said that, you can play alternate bass notes, but you'll have to play a lot of different chord inversions to simulate the movement of bass notes that fall naturally on the guitar.

Many of the bass notes you would have to transpose up an octave, which is doable and worthy of careful study. The bass notes are similar to the notes that a "barrelhouse blues" piano player would use. I won't be easy, but it's worth getting the ragtimey guitar chords that fall on the D, G, B and E (first four strings).

Tip: In a lot of cases, you can just "add two" on the first string, or go to a higher inversion. Roy Book Binder has lots of great new CDs, and I would recommend all of them. It's the same style, just different tunes in each package.


Happy pickin',

Tom

http://www.tomhanway.com

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Edited by - Tom Hanway on 04/20/2009 04:48:51

obamabanjo - Posted - 05/22/2008:  07:30:56

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Before country blues players played on the guitar they played it on the banjo. For the past year I've been working on this, finding cliche riffs, lessons on the internet, practicing scales, and playing with blues guitarists trading riffs.
There's a lesson on blues scales on the Hangout. Ryan Cavanaugh's lessons on Music Moose were great. The Frailin' the Blues link someone posted earlier was a good lesson as well. Learning to adapt a slide to the banjo has been a lot of fun and will allow you to access a whole new range of blues riffs. There's a whole website devoted to blues on the banjo, I've lost the link but google it and you'll find it. Folk of the Woods also has a lesson on banjo blues.

When I first went looking to develop a more blues-based style on the banjo, I missed a very important point; bluegrass and blues are integral to each other. Bill Monroe took some of his first lessons and gigs with an old slide guitarist named Arnold Schultz. Many of his signature riffs and much of his work in the fifties was heavily blues influenced. Many of Earl's signature licks have a basis in blues scales. Listen to FMB, Satly Dog Blues, or FM Special , and Nashville Blues, Carolina Boogie with a new ear. JD developed some fantastic blues licks when he was playing with Jimmy Martin. Peter Wernick, plays some pretty nifty blues licks, too (check out Country Blues with Hot Rize.) So does Alan Munde (I'm thinking of Deep Ellum Blues.)

Listen to Muddy, Blind Willie, Son House, even Little Walter's harmonica licks and work out some of those riffs. FInaly, once you have some of the basic ideas down, spend a lot of time making sure to create your own sound, your own riffs. Get a jam track of a twelve bar blues and play them over it. Record yourself banjoin' around and then listen and mark what sounds good to you!

"The definition of a gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo, and doesn''t."
Mark Twain

Tom Hanway - Posted - 05/22/2008:  08:37:43

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Originally posted by obamabanjo

Before country blues players played on the guitar they played it on the banjo.

*******

Can you give a bunch of examples of players and tunes?

Happy pickin'',

Tom

http://www.tomhanway.com

writerrad - Posted - 05/22/2008:  11:01:41

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[quote]Originally posted by Tom Hanway

Originally posted by obamabanjo

Before country blues players played on the guitar they played it on the banjo.

*******

Can you give a bunch of examples of players and tunes?

Happy pickin'',//

There are simply no examples of African American five-string banjoists playing the Blues in the style of African American Downhome Blues other than the recordings of Gus Cannon. There are blues performances by four-string, six-string, and mandolin banjoists especially in the blues playing string bands that were prevelant until around 1940.

I have spent the months since my last post on this thread, doing an intensive study of this issue, involving some of the leading experts on the Blues such as David Evans and Jeff Titon. The guitar proved to be much more suitable for blues playing than the five-string banjo and was identified with the blues from the first days of blues playing while the five string banjo's use was limited to accompanying tunes in Ragtime and the old time Banjo-fiddle dance repertoire.

The blues swept the Black South in the first twenty years of the 20th Century. That is to say this mostly AFTER 1900 when steel string guitars at low cost became available throughout the South. Most banjos other than mandolin banjos still had gut strings.

Resonators and steel strings on banjos did not become common until the era of the tenor banjo that began around 1910, an era that led to the decline of five string production. This is one reason why prewar Gibson RBs are so expensive. Gibson made about 8,000 banjos between 1919 and 1941, but only 500 of them were five-string banjos.

Guitars provided two channels treble strings and bass strings that can provide a dialog which is essential to the blues. The banjo on the other hand has no true bass and has a timber that works best in the treble. The guitar has bass strings that can provide a steady but slow beat for Blues dancers and dancing was the primary role for both instruments.
We cannot underestimate the importance of the piano to the Blues and especially in Mississippi, the importance of the drum to all Black traditional music. The bass strings of a guitar canplay figures similar to those produced by the piano's bass strings and by a drum. The banjo simply cannot.

Gut or fabric string banjos are not as good for slide playing as steel stringed guitars, especially if one wanted to hear in a noisy juke joint on playing on the street corner, venues not well known to the five-string banjo. Guitars have no fifth string to limit tunings and to push the instrument into a higher treble layer. This factor is importatn given that while the five-string banjo more or less disappeared as Blues and pop Jazz and Ragtime advanced, scores of recordings from the 1920s through the 1940s include blues players with plectrum, tenor, mandolin, and guitar banjos played with picks.

Event in the early days at the close of the 19th Century when blues was in a very formative stage and not known even throughout the South, when banjos were still the primary stringed instrument for every kind of music Black or White, we can point to no examples of five-string banjoists who came upon the Blues and played the new music on the banjo, save Gus Cannon. The progression is usually that musicians learned the guitar to play the new Blues music and may have kept playing the banjo to play string band dance music to the extent that this music continued to be danced to in their areas.

By playing the Blues, I mean playing Blues in the general rhythms that were popular among African Americans for dancing across the US from around 1900 until the advent of Soul in the 1950s. The term country blues is not a very useful one for serious musicology, I prefer Jeff Titon's delineation of Downhome Blues as a term for this kind of music. There are a number of five-string Black banjoisst who do play blues, but most of them do not play the blues in a manner resembling the Downhome Blues, but played blues in the rhythms that old time string band music can be danced to, although this was relatively rare.
Even the last generation of living traditional Black banjoists who all grew up in an era when the Blues and musics derived from it were dominant among Black people, tended to play banjo ons tring band dance music only. Many them did play the guitar for Blues and Blues based musics, although a few are recorded having played the piano, the organ, or other instruments.

This was not a dropping of the banjo because of any historical association or because it had been identified with the older musics of Ragtime and the string band repertoire. The fiddle which was certainly a more popular instrument among Blacks than the banjo during slavery and which reached back further in the US and the West Indies than the banjo, was often used in Blues recordings until the blues went electric. As I have recounted, so were the mandolin, the mandolin, banjo, the tenor banjo, and the plectrum banjo at least as band instruments.

Since the folk revival, African American blues players have picked up the five-string banjo both for traditional string band music and as an instrument to be used to play the Blues. Sparky Rucker, Taj Mahal, Otis Taylor, Corey Harris, and my humble self are among many who have done this. In doing this we often used modern banjos or old banjos equipped with steel strings that they were not designed to use. We may draw upon some techniques of old time banjo playing, we may also draw from blues played to string band beats we can find played by the traditional Black banjoists of the upper South. Yet, very much of what we play comes out of what we have learned from the century of Blues guitar playing, much of it done in tunings used by banjoists.
The fruit of this is the excellent Recapturing the Banjo Album which everyone should buy.

Tony Thomas, a black banjo pla

Tom Hanway - Posted - 05/22/2008:  15:11:03

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quote:

---

Originally posted by writerrad

[quote]Originally posted by Tom Hanway

Originally posted by obamabanjo

Before country blues players played on the guitar they played it on the banjo.

*******

Can you give a bunch of examples of players and tunes?

Happy pickin'',//

There are simply no examples of African American five-string banjoists playing the Blues in the style of African American Downhome Blues other than the recordings of Gus Cannon. There are blues performances by four-string, six-string, and mandolin banjoists especially in the blues playing string bands that were prevelant until around 1940.

I have spent the months since my last post on this thread, doing an intensive study of this issue, involving some of the leading experts on the Blues such as David Evans and Jeff Titon. The guitar proved to be much more suitable for blues playing than the five-string banjo and was identified with the blues from the first days of blues playing while the five string banjo's use was limited to accompanying tunes in Ragtime and the old time Banjo-fiddle dance repertoire.

The blues swept the Black South in the first twenty years of the 20th Century. That is to say this mostly AFTER 1900 when steel string guitars at low cost became available throughout the South. Most banjos other than mandolin banjos still had gut strings.

Resonators and steel strings on banjos did not become common until the era of the tenor banjo that began around 1910, an era that led to the decline of five string production. This is one reason why prewar Gibson RBs are so expensive. Gibson made about 8,000 banjos between 1919 and 1941, but only 500 of them were five-string banjos.

Guitars provided two channels treble strings and bass strings that can provide a dialog which is essential to the blues. The banjo on the other hand has no true bass and has a timber that works best in the treble. The guitar has bass strings that can provide a steady but slow beat for Blues dancers and dancing was the primary role for both instruments.
We cannot underestimate the importance of the piano to the Blues and especially in Mississippi, the importance of the drum to all Black traditional music. The bass strings of a guitar canplay figures similar to those produced by the piano's bass strings and by a drum. The banjo simply cannot.

Gut or fabric string banjos are not as good for slide playing as steel stringed guitars, especially if one wanted to hear in a noisy juke joint on playing on the street corner, venues not well known to the five-string banjo. Guitars have no fifth string to limit tunings and to push the instrument into a higher treble layer. This factor is importatn given that while the five-string banjo more or less disappeared as Blues and pop Jazz and Ragtime advanced, scores of recordings from the 1920s through the 1940s include blues players with plectrum, tenor, mandolin, and guitar banjos played with picks.

Event in the early days at the close of the 19th Century when blues was in a very formative stage and not known even throughout the South, when banjos were still the primary stringed instrument for every kind of music Black or White, we can point to no examples of five-string banjoists who came upon the Blues and played the new music on the banjo, save Gus Cannon. The progression is usually that musicians learned the guitar to play the new Blues music and may have kept playing the banjo to play string band dance music to the extent that this music continued to be danced to in their areas.

By playing the Blues, I mean playing Blues in the general rhythms that were popular among African Americans for dancing across the US from around 1900 until the advent of Soul in the 1950s. The term country blues is not a very useful one for serious musicology, I prefer Jeff Titon's delineation of Downhome Blues as a term for this kind of music. There are a number of five-string Black banjoisst who do play blues, but most of them do not play the blues in a manner resembling the Downhome Blues, but played blues in the rhythms that old time string band music can be danced to, although this was relatively rare.
Even the last generation of living traditional Black banjoists who all grew up in an era when the Blues and musics derived from it were dominant among Black people, tended to play banjo ons tring band dance music only. Many them did play the guitar for Blues and Blues based musics, although a few are recorded having played the piano, the organ, or other instruments.

This was not a dropping of the banjo because of any historical association or because it had been identified with the older musics of Ragtime and the string band repertoire. The fiddle which was certainly a more popular instrument among Blacks than the banjo during slavery and which reached back further in the US and the West Indies than the banjo, was often used in Blues recordings until the blues went electric. As I have recounted, so were the mandolin, the mandolin, banjo, the tenor banjo, and the plectrum banjo at least as band instruments.

Since the folk revival, African American blues players have picked up the five-string banjo both for traditional string band music and as an instrument to be used to play the Blues. Sparky Rucker, Taj Mahal, Otis Taylor, Corey Harris, and my humble self are among many who have done this. In doing this we often used modern banjos or old banjos equipped with steel strings that they were not designed to use. We may draw upon some techniques of old time banjo playing, we may also draw from blues played to string band beats we can find played by the traditional Black banjoists of the upper South. Yet, very much of what we play comes out of what we have learned from the century of Blues guitar playing, much of it done in tunings used by banjoists.
The fruit of this is the excellent Recapturing the Banjo Album which everyone should buy.

Tony Thomas, a black banjo player

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Great stuff. Amen.

Happy pickin'',

Tom

http://www.tomhanway.com

ScottK - Posted - 05/22/2008:  18:26:57

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Hey Tony, thanks for all the great information!

I can't add anything to the conversation, but I will point out a couple videos on the web from Frank Lee and Randy Wilson that demonstrate some bottleneck blues type banjo playing. Randy Wilson works with Appalshop in Kentucky and was out to the Pacific Northwest for Fiddle Tunes last year.

Frank Lee
http://greatsmokymountains.tv/Frank%20Lee.html

Randy Wilson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BWo4jumjWU

Scott

Tom Hanway - Posted - 05/22/2008:  18:36:57

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quote:

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Originally posted by ScottK

Hey Tony, thanks for all the great information!

I can't add anything to the conversation, but I will point out a couple videos on the web from Frank Lee and Randy Wilson that demonstrate some bottleneck blues type banjo playing. Randy Wilson works with Appalshop in Kentucky and was out to the Pacific Northwest for Fiddle Tunes last year.

Frank Lee
http://greatsmokymountains.tv/Frank%20Lee.html

Randy Wilson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BWo4jumjWU

Scott

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That's real bluesy. Stewball gets around. Thank you for that. Good to hear and see it!

Happy pickin'',

Tom

http://www.tomhanway.com

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Edited by - Tom Hanway on 05/22/2008 18:43:05

banjofanatico - Posted - 05/29/2008:  14:17:14

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I find that 5-string banjos do have bass notes, especially if you tune the 4th string down to C. And the tenor banjo has the same range as the guitar, even though it only has four strings, so you definitely notice a bass-treble separation going on with it (CGDA tuning).

David

stevejay - Posted - 05/31/2008:  20:17:49

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Bluegrass borrows heavily from blues already, all those chokes and bends, what are they if not the blues. Cluck old hen is blusy, Midnight Special is blues, Bluegrass is saturated with the blues, and so is banjo.

writerrad - Posted - 06/01/2008:  12:35:08

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quote:

---

Originally posted by ScottK

Hey Tony, thanks for all the great information!

I can't add anything to the conversation, but I will point out a couple videos on the web from Frank Lee and Randy Wilson that demonstrate some bottleneck blues type banjo playing. Randy Wilson works with Appalshop in Kentucky and was out to the Pacific Northwest for Fiddle Tunes last year.

Frank Lee
http://greatsmokymountains.tv/Frank%20Lee.html

Randy Wilson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BWo4jumjWU

Scott

---

Frank is a great bottleneck blues guitar and slide guitar player. Many people think he is much greater at that than at banjo. I have dialoged with him over these issues over the past few years.; He has been quit eencouraging to me in getting to the bottom of these things

He is one of those musicians on either instrument that makes you think you either need to give up playing or do nothing else but practice and listen to his music. Hats off to Frank Lee who will also make you tee shirts with his great designs.

Tony Thomas, a black banjo pla

writerrad - Posted - 06/01/2008:  12:50:51

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quote:

---

Originally posted by banjofanatico

I find that 5-string banjos do have bass notes, especially if you tune the 4th string down to C. And the tenor banjo has the same range as the guitar, even though it only has four strings, so you definitely notice a bass-treble separation going on with it (CGDA tuning).

David

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Tenor banjos because of the possibility of plectrum and conversely their ability to do high block chords were very popular with Blues based string bands that flourished in the South and border states from the turn of the century until the 1940s and were recorded. Probably the most well know to those who havent looked deeply into this are the ones that called themselves Jug bands. Though a specific tradition of jug bands was strong in Louisville and other towns, many existing blues string bands added jugs to their lineup to get in on the recording boom. However, many Black string bands featuring tenor, mandolin, ukulele, and guitar banjos were recorded during those years. Most of them had fiddles, and a few added horns or very good horn imatators.

These banjos flourished during the jazz age. This is marked by the way banjo production went. Very few five-string banjos wer e produced by both high end and low end banjo manufacturers between 1915 and 1945, while 70/80 or 90 percent of banjos produced were tenor banjos.

The lack of a fifth string made all of the various plectral banjos very much suited to the kind of rhythm playing and harmonic accompaniment required by 20th century music, whereas the five-string suffered. Although the tenor suffered from the same problems of timbre as the five string, its very treble sound matched frequencies that made it stand out on the early pre-electronic and early electronic recording equipment.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the tenor went out as 4beat swing came in across the music universe and as larger guitars and better amplification for venues and recording studios and finally the electric guitar made the tenor obsolte.

The guitar offers a bass range about one octive below the banjo. Moreover, the timbre of the instrument is inclined to the treble. there is simply no way to back dancers with a five-string banjo tto ,music for the slow drag or the shimyshewabble, two of the major dances that Blacks say replaced flat fotting and square dances when the blues came in, the way you can with the bass strings of a guitar or with guitar chords. Listen to Gus Cannon, the only blues performer recorded with a five-string banjo, although one can say much of gus's work echoed four string banjo players. Ithe banjo sounds too high and doesnt work well on the solo pieces, only on the pieces where his jug playing and a guitar provide bass.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. There are no recorded Blues records by people playing five-string banjos other than Gus Cannon in the style of blues popular among African Americans. There are some folklorist recorded blues of Black five-string banjoists but it is all to a beat that you can dance flat foot or square dances to. Also there are one or two who simply play the banjo like a guitar.

I am not putting the banjo down. The first thing I did when I got my first GoodTime out of the box was to tune it to G and play the blues. When I began my research on this question about 5 years ago, I expected to unearth a tradition and recordings of Black folk playing the blues on the five string banjo. However, the instrument was almost never used by African Americans to play blues music, though the tenor and other plectral banjos were. However, these banjos were almost never used for solo blues, except the guitar banjo, and they sound most awkward when they do.

Again, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If you can show me Blues players between 1900 and 1930 who used five-string banjos, that would be great. I would like there to have been such a banjo tradition. I went out looking for it for years, but found something else.

Tony Thomas, a black banjo pla

writerrad - Posted - 06/01/2008:  13:02:52

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quote:

---

Originally posted by stevejay

Bluegrass borrows heavily from blues already, all those chokes and bends, what are they if not the blues. Cluck old hen is blusy, Midnight Special is blues, Bluegrass is saturated with the blues, and so is banjo.

---

One has to differentiate African American music and musical influences and the Blues, whereas many folks tend to blend them together and call everything the Blues. Not just Bluegrass was influenced by Black music, but the entire Southern white banjo tradition was influenced almost directly by the Black banjo tradition. Cluck Old Hen, for example, is believed to be a completely African tune that has been collected (with different words) from folks in West Africa and was played by Black an dwhite people before the Blues.

This said, my belief is that you will find more Blues playing with the five string banjo by white players even before Bluegrass because white dancers still flat foot and square dance and thus find it quite nice to find blues tunes written to those beats. If you listen to Bill Monroe's band in the late 1930s and 1940s, you will find that the Blues songs he does sound like Bluegrass whereas the other tunes don't sound like Bluegrass until he has Lester, Earl, and Cedric Rainwater. The first tune Earl records and also his hit on the Opry is Heavy Traffic Ahead, a blues. Earl certainly had been listening to Blues as played on guitar, as played by tenor banjoists, and as well as stuff that was part of the heavily Black influenced North Carolina banjo style.

The big hole we have in studies of Black banjo lore is the finger style banjo playing African Americans have been noted to play since the mid 19th century. We know many of the African instruments that got fused into the banjo were instruments played finger style in styles similar to what some of the early Blues players played. We know that white banjo players like Dock Boggs and Roscoe Holcomb say they were influenced by Black banjoists and blues guitarist to play finger style, but we have little information or music from Black finger style players to find that influence as we have with Black clawhammer.

Among African Americans the story of the Blues is the story of the introduction of new-old dances that replaced that dancing. If you go to interviews with Black banjoists and fiddlers they mark the end of their time when new dancing swept through their communities when Blues, jazz, or ragtime, depending on the area, came through. You have people like Lucious Smith who played with Syd Hemphill saying everything went bad back in 1910-13 when people started asking for Handy's Memphis Blues (really a ragtime piece) instead of "Walking in the Parlor." You will find folks in North Carolina saying up there all the dancing changed in the 1930s after Blind Boy Fuller's Step it Upand Go hit. You will even find some folk wjho will say the dancing didnt change until the electric guitars came in in the 1940s..

Yet, folks still flat foot and square dance to Bluegrass

Tony Thomas, a black banjo pla

Hillbilly Gypsies - Posted - 06/02/2008:  09:04:37

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quote:

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Originally posted by banjovy

Just dont think because one plays a blues scale or minor pentatonic that one can "play" the blues. That annoys me so much. To me, to be a real blues player(im not) one would have to totally focus on just blues. Live it, immerse in it, etc. Its a way of life.

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Very well said.. Blues IS a way of life. All of the blues cats that I know truly live the blues lifestyle. You can learn scales and licks but to truly be the blues one has to live the lifestyle...

Trae Buckner ~ ''The Hillbilly Gypsies''

http://www.thehillbillygypsies.com/

Hillbilly Gypsies - Posted - 06/02/2008:  09:18:32

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Oh I forgot to mention... Check out Deford Bailey.. He was one of the first stars of early country music.. He was called the first 'Black' star of country music but in reality he was the first star. Well he and Dave Macon both. Deford was so popular that back in Bill Monroe's early days he would tour with Deford because Deford would draw large crowds if he was advertised. Deford was best known for his harmonica playing (AMAZING!!!) but he also did alot of great bluesy banjo stuff too :) He played what he called 'Black Hillbilly Music'. It was mountain music that was greatly influenced by the blues. Check him out.



Trae Buckner ~ ''The Hillbilly Gypsies''

http://www.thehillbillygypsies.com/

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Edited by - Hillbilly Gypsies on 06/02/2008 09:19:26