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Tom Hanway - Posted - 08/04/2008: 04:10:51
Tony,
Wow, small world! I agree with Tony about Norris Bennet, who really is a consummate banjo player (actually multi-instrumentalist), playing in both down- and up-stroke styles, and a true stage professional who knows how to handle and entertain audiences wherever he goes. I've played folk songs and ballads with Tony, bluesy country numbers with Tony, old-time and bluegrass with Tony, and even Irish tunes with Tony, at Paddy Reilly's Music Bar, Dempsey's, The Baggot Inn, Tribeca Blues and others. I have tons of festival photos, which I need to dig up.
Two of our favourites songs to do are 'Snowbird' and 'Angel Band'. Norris can play anything and has a vast song repertoire of sacred and secular songs. We used to do a duo together, playing brunches and evening gigs in Brooklyn and Manhattan, taking turns on guitar and banjo, just making it up the set as we went along. I don''t think we ever wrote down a set list. We just played. 
Tony, it took me a lot of trial and error before I was finally able to access photos from Pictures (on my hard drive) and move them into the Hangout Photo Album, and then to imbed them in these replies. Go here for a detailed explanation of how to get them, first into the Photo Album, then second, into posts - I go back here because I still forget how to do it - so I have these two bookmarked:
1. http://www.banjohangout.org/forum/t...PIC_ID=78113
2. http://www.banjohangout.org/forum/t...PIC_ID=87775
Tony, I will try to find Norris and ask him about blues numbers on the banjo. It may be a big tricky finding him, but I have a few leads, and a very old phone number. We'll see. Do you have contact info for him. Maybe the Ebony Hillbillies page has a contact number, and I can start there.
Okay, I just signed up on the Ebony Hillbilly's page, and I will get an email confirmation, and work from there:
http://eh.singersauce.com/
Happy pickin,
Tom
http://www.tomhanway.com
Edited by - Tom Hanway on 08/04/2008 04:41:38
banjovy - Posted - 08/05/2008: 09:33:23
WOW!! Thank you guys for such brilliant posts! This thread seems to be one of my favorite threads I can remember.. Rick
Julies Music - Posted - 08/16/2008: 08:31:43
I have the earlier pubcation of that book, My favorites is "House of the Rising Sun", "Albene", "Gambling Blues" and "Down But Not Out Blues"
quote:
Originally posted by Banjo
This book has a few good blues tunes in it.
"GIECO, ------- So easy a Banjo Picker could do it...............................Maybe."
God bless ya all
"I am so I pick" or is it "I Pick so I am"??
Keep on Pickin''
Leibe
Julie
www.julies-music.comwww.myspace.com/juliesmusic60
Edited by - Julies Music on 08/16/2008 08:42:16
akcarter - Posted - 08/16/2008: 12:28:56
you need to jam with a blus guitarist
Jason Skinner - Posted - 08/17/2008: 13:51:58
If you want to play blues on the banjo, start with the original blues and "rock n roll" banjo player...Mr. Don Reno. I am a big fan of classic country, "rock n roll" and bluesy numbers. Which is why I like Reno and Smiley so much. They covered it all. The "I Know You're Married" kick off is pure rock n roll. Chuck Berry had nothing on him!
He did countless tunes and breaks that were rockin' bluesy masterpieces. The man was a genius! I just posted a tune called "Half A Mind" to my BHO page that has a lot of bluesy Reno licks in it if you want to give it a listen.
http://www.banjohangout.org/myhango....asp?id=9067
No matter what level or how bad a picker is, they will have something you can learn from them.
For my Reno Style Instruction DVDs: www.skinnerfamilyband.com
The Don Reno Fan Club: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheDonRenoFanClub
For rare Don Reno videos go here: www.youtube.com/user/renopicker
arfive - Posted - 08/19/2008: 09:45:20
quote:
[i]
Great job Amy! Great rock and roll on the banjo!! We did almost the same tune but it's called Memphis Five String. Don Reno recorded it originally. Here's our version. http://www.banjohangout.org/myhango...musicid=7644
Very nice! The second part of your tune also sounds like Mama Don't Allow. Give Me Back My Wig is a Hound Dog Taylor (1915-1975) song. Blues and early rock & roll are definatley evident in Don Reno's playing. But wasn't Don also a guitar player?
1928 Mastertone
hobogal - Posted - 09/01/2008: 13:08:14
Yeah, the Otis Taylor and also John White 'Banjo Blues' cd's are brilliant. I also like William Elliott Whitmore (brilliant live). Also check out Tony Ellis playing Dawson George and The Hangman's Song on the Farewell My Home cd...and there's a surprise bluesy banjo instrumental ('Free Interval') on Chris Whitely's 'Hotel Vast Horizon' album.
The Eddie Collins instruction books are really good and contain some useful stuff on playing blues on the banjo. Definitely worth checking out.
Happy pickin
Hobogal
banjofanatico - Posted - 09/04/2008: 14:53:23
I was thinking that the Don Reno style might be used to good effect in "Western Swing" playing. Seems like it would blend in with that style.
David
"Journey of thousand miles begin with first step" - Shopenhauer
KI4PRK - Posted - 09/07/2008: 19:47:06
randomly sticking this in:
I have tab for Blind Boy Fuller's "Ain't it a Cryin' Shame" if any one wants it, and I have "Rattlesnakin' Daddy" and Mississippi John Hurt's "Spike Driver blues" and "Ain't no tellin'" on deck, if any one wants them. The first one might be a little tough for a beginner, but the others, with the possible exception of "ain't no tellin", should be easy.
73, Brennen KI4PRK age 14
Tom Hanway - Posted - 09/08/2008: 03:28:04
A great way to get into Southern blues banjo is to play some regional blues guitar styles (experimenting with guitar), including tunings, then move the songs and licks over to banjo, using, say, standard open G, open D, open E and open Double-C tunings. There are many country blues guitar styles to get into, all of which can inform playing blues on a banjo (any banjo).
I do a Son House Delta-thing on banjo, using Double-C tuning (g C G C E), which is really a standard old-time tuning (especially for "D" tunes), and makes bottleneck slide playing relatively simple, though one may give the slide a pass, and just pick out the notes. This is such a blues tuning, all one has to do is play barre chords at the second and third frets to hear it.
Also, Double-C tuning makes slide-playing virtually idiot-proof. 
Yessir, I prefer an 11/16 deep socket wrench attachment (NAPA/USA) for the slide. The weight (mass) of it, gives a better tone than does a glass slide, e.g., a Coricidin bottle, especially on an acoustic banjo with lighter strings (than a guitar).
All the insightful posts about Reno-style playing for blues banjo make perfect sense. Reno-style banjo, with its rock'n'roll double-stops, slides, pentatonics and bluesy bends is a prerequisite for blues banjo in G or D tuning. Mastering Reno's 'Double Banjo Blues' (G) and 'Green Mountain Hop' (D) are just two springboards. The chokes Reno uses on the second string in 'Green Mountain Hop' are substitutable for the generic bends used in guitar versions of 'Poor Boy (Long Way from Home)'.
I would also go back to the bluesier sides of Eddie Adcock and Raymond Fairchild for more ideas along these lines (especially single-string work).
Bluegrass, as so many have pointed out, already incorporates a lot of blues, especially in the 12-bar and 16-bar blues compositions of Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs. I still think Tony Trischka's 'Bloozinee' (12 bars blues) is a must-learn for folks who want to experiment with blues in E without a capo.
For me, the blues is primarily a vocal and song tradition, not divorced from whatever instrument one chooses to play it on. One's instrument, of course, can be one's "voice", if one is not inclined to sing blues. That's cool, too.
We have a joke back in NYC, referring to whether one is in the union or not (most of us).
"You are either a bluesman (underpaid) or a Broadway guy ($$)!"
};^D>
Happy pickin,
Tom
http://www.tomhanway.com
Sultans of Claw - Posted - 09/08/2008: 19:19:16
[quote]Originally posted by Tom Hanway
I do a Son House Delta-thing on banjo, using Double-C tuning (g C G C E),
That's Open C, isn't it?
Lee Callicutt
Tom Hanway - Posted - 09/08/2008: 21:30:04
Lee,
Right. It's a kind of open C, and on guitar it would be CGCGCE, great for smashing down with the thumb or playing octave lines, whether descending or ascending. I like it for singing since C suits my range between the growling low notes and the falsetto whoops, groans and hollers. C banjo, yeah, I'm all for it! It's another one. One can tune to this and simply capo up to play in other keys, or not.
Happy pickin,
Tom
http://www.tomhanway.com
Edited by - Tom Hanway on 09/08/2008 21:34:48
Sultans of Claw - Posted - 09/09/2008: 05:33:31
Yeah that's the tuning I use and I play a lot of blues riffs. It also seems to have a "Celtic" sound to me as well.
Lee Callicutt
Tom Hanway - Posted - 09/10/2008: 21:39:53
Well, Celtic, blues, rock'n'roll, Reggae, even jazz, all like to go back to those Chinese pentatonic scales. Hexatonic too, if you want to add some colour.
Happy pickin,
Tom
http://www.tomhanway.com
writerrad - Posted - 09/11/2008: 11:48:01
Sorry I havent been able to keep up with the discourse here. I have been busy with a new semester of students and doing some writing for yet another chapter in another book on Black banjo history. Here is a quick bunch of responses
1. White Bluesgrass banjoists are going to be the place where you can find the most blues on the banjo, because white music kept to a rhythm that you could dance to the five-string while Black did not. This goes all the way from recordings in the 1920s to recordings last night.
2. Also lots of contemporary banjoists who play performance not dance music
3. In this whole discussion we have overlooked the most significant Black blues banjoist, Gus Cannon. Cannon is the only five-string Black banjoists who made commercial recordings in the Blues genre, 38 recordings including his both solo and band recordings. Every one of them was good. Cannon really represents a style of banjo playing that was prominent among Blacks from the late 1890s until his time, based on Ragtime and popuilar finger styles. If you look at Dock Boggs style who said he was inspired by Black banjoists and Black finger style guitarists, you see a similar mix of picking, gapping, and strumming.
Cannon originally learned Clawhammer and still played great Clawhammer when Stax recorded him in 1970, but the style he used on his records combined finger picking and strumming or brushing the banjo. This seems to be a way a number of other Black banjoists tried to deal with the rhythm problems of Blues and associated musics. I have unissued field recordings of Lucius Smith playing in the same manner, although Smith is a bit hostile to the Blues. He thinks the world ended around 1914 when people started asking for Blues tunes instead of "Walking in the Parlor." The great Virginia Black banjoist Josh Thomas who plays a lot of blues and has a lot of blues sounding music in his non Blues tunes mixes great clawhammer with strumming the banjo back and forth to try to fit into the new rhythm.
To me Cannon is very important because he was able to answer the challenge of the new music that African Americans created in the early 20th Century with the five string banjo and was commercially recorded and made great music. Most of the other traditional Black banjoists were people who still played music more or less in the 19th Century style of frailing and related forms of finger picking with the possible exception of Big Lou Hairston of Virginia who developed a two-finger style that sounds very much like Bluegrass and had a repertoire of songs mixing up the Black mountain tradition from the Coal fields of Virginia and West Virgininia with the Flatt and Scruggs Reprtoire.
He's on the digital library of the Appalachians, the bgest single source for free downloadable Black banjo music and almost any other kind of appalachian folk music
Tony Thomas black banjo player
writerrad - Posted - 09/11/2008: 11:50:08
HAS ANYONE MASTERED PLAYING GUS CANNON'S TUNES IN HIS STYLE OR SEEN ANY TAB ON THAT?
Tony Thomas black banjo player
Tom Hanway - Posted - 09/12/2008: 11:58:16
quote:
Originally posted by writerrad
HAS ANYONE MASTERED PLAYING GUS CANNON'S TUNES IN HIS STYLE OR SEEN ANY TAB ON THAT?
Tony Thomas black banjo player
Tony,
That's spot on. Thank you for the heads-up. Have you produced any tabs for Cannon, or would you be willing to transcribe something for us? Have you any ideas about where to begin (tunes)?
I will gladly follow up on the music of Gus Cannon, also Lucius Smith, Josh Thomas, Big Lou Hairston and others. Keep 'em coming. I'm more familiar with one contemporary black banjoist and multi-instrumentalist, African American blues artist Taj Mahal, whose music I love. I am aware of Gus Cannon, but have never encountered a Cannon banjo tab, blues or otherwise. I wonder why this is so.
I hear you loud and clear. As a full-time roots/trad musician, I'm inspired by your focus on the generally overlooked contributions of African Americans who were the seminal minstrel, blues, jug band, country ragtime and jazz banjoists and guitarists. We need to go back to black musical pioneers to discover the origins of these deep traditions. I also see and hear a strong connection between blues piano and fingerpicked guitar in African American traditions.
I am also interested in horn players, not just string musicians. Blues goes beyond stringed instruments and string (lute family) players. We don't have to focus solely upon banjo players, or black banjo players to learn about the blues and African American musical traditions. I think we would be wise to look at ragtime, blues, boogie-woogie and stride piano players, in particular. Good articles here about these African American traditions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogie-woogie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stride_piano
I make it a point to teach my young guitar students (in Ireland) a classic blues number, usually their first, one that Cannon's Jug Stompers recorded, 'Big Railroad Blues'.
Check out Cannon's Jug Stompers' version here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JULZ9xlOuw#
The still popular 'Walk Right In', where you can at times hear Cannon's banjo well enough to tab it, is found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wLPGYhib0g&NR=1
Maybe the closest I've gotten to Gus Cannon's musical milieu, beyond working as a scrappy banjo player in a few jug bands, was exploring the guitar fingerstyle music of Blind Blake, who backed Cannon, e.g., 'Poor Boy Long Ways from Home'. In review, see the guitar tab of this and Reno's 'Green Mountain Hop', exploring the connection between blues guitar and blues banjo - both in open D tuning. These passages are reflections of one another and one could use the 'Poor Boy' lick - minus the bass drones - in 'Green Mountain Hop' (and I often do).
Prototypical Blues Guitar lick from 'Poor Boy', with chokes:
|-----0--7------|---0----9—-7---|-----0--7------|---0--------0--|
|-8~----------8~|---------------|-8~----------8~|---------2-----|
|---------------|---------------|---------------|---------------|
|-----0-----0---|-----0-----0---|-----0-----0---|------0-----0--|
|---------------|-----|-----|---|-----|---------|------|-----|--|
|-0------0------|-0---|--0--|---|-0---|--0------|-0----|--4--|--|
..|...|..|......|.....|..|..|...|.|...|..|......|......|..|..|..|
Reno Blues Banjo lick from 'Green Mountain Hop', with chokes:
|-----0--7----0-|-----0---—0---0|-----0--7------|-0-------0^^0--|
|-7~-----|------|-7~-----2^0----|-7~-----|----7~|-----2^0-|--|--|
|-|------|------|---------------|-|------|------|---------|--|--|
|-|------|------|---------------|-|------|------|---------|--|--|
|-|-0----|-0----|---0---0----0--|-|-0----|--0---|---0-----|--|--|
..|......|......|...............|.|......|......|.........|..|..|
Years ago I spent a lot of time woodshedding on Blake's sophisticated finger style guitar, one of my favourite tunes being 'Police Dog Blues'; I also took notice of his jazz chords, bass lines and improvisations. He was quite a sophisticated spur of the moment guitar arranger, and it's very liberating to have that kind of freedom on five-string banjo as well, also played in an up-picked finger style. Lonnie Johnson also comes to mind. And so many others.
I am very fortunate to have a personal connection to African American musical traditions, and I believe that I am a more musically connected banjoist because I have studied so many African American blues guitarists, including 2-finger up-picking, people like Rev. Gary Davis (my biggest influence), Mississippi John Hurt, Lightnin' Hopkins, Blind Blake, Elizabeth Cotten (I love her music), Larry Johnson, Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy, Brownie McGee, and on and on.
Also, I studied at the Guitar StudiyCenter at the New School for Social Research in NYC with Jorma Kaukonen (Airplane/Hot Tuna) and performed with Jorma on Broadway (Town Hall), playing 5-string banjo, a huge honour for me, surrounded by stacks of Marshalls and blues guitarists (Jorma, Warren Haynes), a grand piano (Pete Sears) and an organ (Merl Saunders). (It's hard to cut through on an acoustic banjo when you're surrounded by electric blues-rock musicians, but I managed to pull it off by having a Gallien-Krueger backline and using a good AKG condenser microphone.) Jorma, by the way, cites Mance Lipscomb, "The Rev.", Lightnin' Hopkins, Pink Anderson and so many other great African American blues men.
I became familiar with folks like Gus Cannon, Cannon's Jug Stompers and the Memphis Jug Band, first through the music of the Grateful Dead; go here for some very interesting background about Cannon:
http://taco.com/roots/cannon.html
After college, I invested my life savings in a Stelling and also started playing kazoo, ha ha, and worked in a few acoustic country and jug bands, most notably the Provincetown Jug Band and Sun Mountain Band, where I used to play 'Pig Ankle Rag' and 'Dill Pickles' on the banjo. These, if I am not mistaken, are tunes that go back to the late 19th- and early 20th-century country rags that Cannon and seminal (African American) banjoists would have had in their dance music repertoires.
The blues, cakewalks, country ragtime and similar dance music are African American to the core, and early blues and ragtime music crosses over into African American jazz. I would love to explore these connections and musical diversions in more depth and detail. I already spend a lot of time focusing on the similarities and differences between historic and contemporary Celtic styles, so I have a methodology for getting inside regional styles and musical subcultures - one tune at a time. 
I have recently started attending traditional jazz jams in Dublin (mainly horn players), where I hope to sit in on five-string banjo (if they let me), guitar and even tenor banjo. I'm working up fine old blues and jazz standards, e.g., New Orleans tunes, Louis Armstrong tunes, etc., and now you have brought into focus the music of Gus Cannon, Cannon's Jug Stompers, also the Memphis Jug Band, and so many intriguing African American fingerstyle string players. I'm all over it, Tony. I love this stuff, and I live for it - no better man, as we say in Ireland.
I'll see about tabbing some Cannon tunes - you got me hooked! I have a strong hunch that 2-finger up-picking, African and American in origin, with downward brushes, will come into play. I got this technique many moons ago through Jorma Kaukonen (pronounced COW-kuh-nin) and Reverend Gary Davis. Pete Seeger too. Great man.
Once gain, thanks Tony, for your focus. unique ideas, attention to detail and enthusiasm, which is contagious. I love a new musical challenge. (Btw, I never caught up with our friend Norris Bennett when I was back home in NYC.)Happy pickin,
Tom
http://www.tomhanway.com
Supertone - Posted - 09/14/2008: 11:02:21
I did a transcription of Gus Cannon's Hollywood Rag. It is in tabledit format. Drop me a PM if interested.
I put up a quick and dirty recording of my arrangement here:
http://www.banjohangout.org/myhango...asp?id=16946
Edited by - Supertone on 09/14/2008 11:11:15
Tom Hanway - Posted - 09/15/2008: 04:18:57
quote:
Originally posted by Supertone
I did a transcription of Gus Cannon's Hollywood Rag. It is in tabledit format. Drop me a PM if interested.
I put up a quick and dirty recording of my arrangement here:
http://www.banjohangout.org/myhango...asp?id=16946
Coolness. You know, it sounds like another tune, maybe 'Pig Angle Rag' - I must check. It is 'Pig Ankle Rag', though I know this tune in the key of D (starts on an A7). I'll work it up again, bring it back from the archives of my one-brain-cell, and put it up a tab (as a photo) on my BH Homepage ... later in the week. It's more of an OT country rag than a blues thing, but it's still a great old number.Happy pickin,
Tom
http://www.tomhanway.com
Edited by - Tom Hanway on 09/17/2008 03:46:00
Tom Hanway - Posted - 09/18/2008: 04:05:24
quote:
Originally posted by Supertone
I did a transcription of Gus Cannon's Hollywood Rag. It is in tabledit format. Drop me a PM if interested. I put up a quick and dirty recording of my arrangement here:
http://www.banjohangout.org/myhango...asp?id=16946
Now that I've heard the original Cannon version, I appreciate your personal touches even more. Great feel and interpretation.
I was surfing around to find 'Hollywood Rag' and also found 'Pig Ankle Strut' at a neat Cannon site, where you can hear the two tunes and other classics:
http://www.jango.com/music/Cannon+s...Stompers?l=0
These are separate tracks and quite distinct tunes, but not completely different, and the resemblance - at least to my ears - is uncanny, though one is more of a harmonica tune ('Pig Ankle Strut') while the other is more of a banjo tune ('Hollywood Rag'). Both are country rags with parallel chord changes and interchangeable licks: One could pull melodic contours out of one tune and use them in another, as with so many country rags.
Now, here's what got me: Even more interesting for BLUES banjo are tunes like 'Wolf River Blues', which has banjo licks similar to Jimmie Rodgers guitar runs - in fact - Jimmie Rodgers took a lot from African American blues artists, check out his 'T for Texas' on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEIBmGZxAhg
And then there is 'Viola Lee Blues'. Personally, I wouldn't be interested in mimicking the original chord structure to closely, because it is such a period piece and I don't do re-enactments and eschew note-for-note, anal-nostalgic covers. (You gotta make it your own - add your own personal touches - make your own mistakes.)
Having said that, I would be happy to glean the bare bones melody, phrasing and lyrics for this powerful rendition of 'Viola Lee Blues', update the structure and instrumentation, perhaps playing an electric banjo to bring Cannon's music into the 21st century. There's a timeless powerful melody and story here.
Deadheads and modern blues band aficionados might be interested in listening to the Grateful Dead's version, from the eponymous release, their first recording on the Warner Bros. label. Happy pickin,
Tom
http://www.tomhanway.com/discog.htmhttp://www.tomhanway.com
writerrad - Posted - 09/18/2008: 05:11:42
quote:
Originally posted by Banjocoltrane
Earlier this week, i was figuring out a Robert Johnson song on the guitar and vocally.......lo and behold in the song is the same exact shape for the D7 lick that Bill Keith/Noah Cross made famous in the banjo world...
-----------------------------------------------------------
What i find MOST interesting is:
It looks like there would have been a GRADUAL change from banjo to guitar and there would have existed at least a few recordings of blues 5 string banjoists...BUT that simply didnt happen, it appears to have been a sudden one...WHAM!
Anywhoo, am GREATLY enjoying this thread as this is something i have been interested in for awhile now.
"TAB is like Gerbers.....music can''t be spoon-fed to ya forever."
http://www.jodyhughesmusic.com
Tony Thomas black banjo player
writerrad - Posted - 09/18/2008: 05:46:49
While there obviously must be some relationship between finger style guitarists like Blake and fingerstyle banjoists including Cannon, Cannon's more likely source is the extremely developed finger style of banjo playing that had become the dominant stage and performance style of banjo playing in the late 19th century, based on classic banjo repertoire.
Again, there are much more developed finger picked Ragtime pieces played by the masters pf this music on the web that can be listened to and it is amazing and startling. As I have tried to say this music was a big part of what Ragtime was about with Joplin and other Ragtime composers dedicating rags and portions of Rags to Ragtime banjoists Black and white.
Cannon's style mixes together this approach to the banjo with breaks in it where he strums the banjo and other breaks in it where he gaps the banjo (that is to play a chord all at the same time with several fingers.)
Cannon's playing is very similar to the classic banjoist style in that when playing his finger style, he makes little use of the fifth string unless it appears as a note in the tune, rather than using it as a drone o rhythm maker as is done in both clawhammer and folk-based forms of finger picking leading all the way up to Bluegrass.
On the other hand, if you listen to Blake's recordings that are accompanied by Cannon, you can see how much his banjo sounds like a tenor banjo. In fact, the first time I heard these recordings on the radio, I wanted to find out what tenor banjoist was accompanying Blake. When Cannon was playing, the tenor banjo was much more popular among musicians of his type than the five string. It would not be surprising if Cannon felt the need to sound like a tenor player.
Cannon did not know or play with Blake other than in the studio. It was common for the studios to ask whoever was hanging around to accompany each other if they thought it would fit.
So a search for Cannon's style goes backward to the fingerstyle banjoists who predominated the banjo world of entertainment during his time. It is also interesting to note that many of his songs seem to be dated. They are not what was considered up to date in 1927 but seem to be much olders. This seems common in the early days of both Blues and old time recording.
Blues recordings of Southern-sounding blues did not start until the late 1920s. Yet, many performers had been performing for decades before they got a chance to record. A lot of them recorded tunes that they had worked ount decades before, but had no chance to record. We know Charlie Patton recorded his signature songs in the late 1920s, but had been well known for his arrangements of them 1910-1915.
Many of Cannon's songs sound like they date to the days before World War I when he worked in a travelling minstrel shows and refer to events current 20 years or more before they were recorded. This was back in the heyday of finger styled ragtime banjo.
Tony Thomas black banjo player
writerrad - Posted - 09/18/2008: 06:00:49
What i find MOST interesting is:
It looks like there would have been a GRADUAL change from banjo to guitar and there would have existed at least a few recordings of blues 5 string banjoists...BUT that simply didnt happen, it appears to have been a sudden one...WHAM!
-----
There is a difference between changes in music and how they were refelected in recordings. The move away from the five-string banjo began in the 1880s among urban African Americans where guitar playing was never rare. In popular commercial entertainment by Blacks, the 1880s has been called a time when there was a glut in guitar playing.
The blues arose sometime in the 1880s or 1890s and did not become a generalized music among African Americans, although by 1908 they had begun to be a trend in white as well as Black commercial music and white cylinder recorders. These were blues written by commercial songwriters performed close to styles sung by performers on the vaudeville and minstrel stage called "coon shouters," probably the most famous of them being Sophie Tucker.
All this while guitar players, pianists, harmonica players, fiddlers, mandolin players, and tenor, mandolin, and six-string banjo players were playing an all-together different kind of blues, but they were not being recorded.
There is no sign at the initial stages that there was Blues being played by banjo players that was part of the real evolution of the blues. Many people think the blues simply came out of old time music. However, in the last years of the 19th Century and the early 20th centurty there was an explosion of muisc which can be described as pop and folk music influenced by Ragtime.
Even in the 1920s and 1930s, much of what passed for Blues was really some variant of this music rather than Blues narrowly defined. The early recorded Blues singers who reflected the generation making the transition to the Blues were more likely to be playing this kind of music along with their Blues, than the old string band repertoire.
Guitar playing seems to have spread with this music, although there were certain great banjo players who played Ragtime itself. Google the Van Ossman cylinders on the UC Santa Barbara web site. Ragtime virtuosi banjo playing was one of th emost popular genres of music recorded during the cylinder period. In fact, many more banjo recordings of ragtime were made during those days than piano records, in part because the primitive recording techniques found it hard to pick up piano music without gross distortion. On the other hand banjos--then with gut strings--probably picked up and recorded better than most other instruments.
Some of these performers remained popular into the era of disk recordings in the 1920s. However, if you listen to these recordings you find that the banjo plays a different role than in old time music. The banjo playing is a fast high pitched lead, not a rhythm and not as low as old time banjo where banjoists often tuned a step or two below standard pitch. In the banjo orchestras and regular orchestras that existed at the time, the five-string banjo was not played as a rhythm instrument, but a lead or accompanying instrument where the banjoist often plays the part of the violin or sax in the written scores they had at the time.
In fact the great Van Ossman used a trio including a pianists and drums to back him up with rhythm and depth (back in those days a string bass probably would not have picked up on the records). This never solved the problem of the Blue's need for slow low but solid beats for dancers.
Cheap steel string guitars began to be available in the Rural South around 1900 just in time to be used in the new music. They became cheaper than store-bought banjos when just a few years before they had been more expensive. They also had a lot of advantages among rural players because up to this time many rural banjoists played home made banjos.
Recording companies did not begin to record AFrican American country-style blues performers until the late 1920s, around 1925 or 1926, maybe 1927 (I dont have my library here at work, LOL). Until then they recorded the African American women performers who sang with small Jazz combos or with pianos in styles reflecting vaudeville. Black male performers who played in this urban style like Lonnie Johnson and Poppa Charlie Jackson were also recorded during this period.
While Bessie Smith was a performer who had spent years in Minstrel Shows and Black Vaudeville, she sang the blues in a style similar to Black southern folk performers. Her recordings were wildly successful selling ten or twenty times what some of the other singers sold. This gave the record companies the idea of recording Southern Blues singers, especially after one of the first to be recorded Blind Lemon Jefferson was wildly successful.
Since the record of Southern-oriented Black blues performers starts after this point, it looks like when blues began to be recorded the guitar as well as the piano had become the dominant instruments of Blues without any of the gradualism you speak of.
Really this is an illusion because of the fact that the Blues did not begin then. The recording revcord of Southern Blues players began 25 years after the Blues arose and also 25 years after the cheap steel stringed factory guitars began changing everything.
It is as if, there were no recordings between 1937 and 25 years later in 1962. In every field except Bluegrass, it would have shown that the banjo and the acoustic guitar had been replaced by the electric guitar. Whatever gradualism was involved in this process, especially in the late 1930s and 1940s would not be recorded. Our earliest recordings would show electric guitars even if they were of 1950s rock and blues artists who only began to be recorded in early 1960s. We would ask the same questions about why does the change seem so abrupt.
However, it is important to say that it does not look like it was a switch of one instrument for another. The record shows that particularly in the early 1900s but also into the 1980s, players did not drop the banjo for the guitar or see the two instruments as being counter-posed. Music that people associated with the five-string banjo became less and less popular.
Music played using guitars became more popular, although over the time guitar techniques grew to being able to accompany music once associated with five-string banjos as well. The record is of banjo players learning to play the new guitar playing who played banjo on the old time repertoire and guitar on the new repertoire. Of course, over time, the popularity of the old time repertoire declined and disappeared while guitar oriented music grew,.
Tony Thomas black banjo player
writerrad - Posted - 09/18/2008: 06:03:17
[
The blues arose sometime in the 1880s or 1890s and did not become a generalized music among African Americans, although by 1908 they had begun to be a trend in white as well as Black commercial music and white cylinder recorders.
This should read like this:
The blues arose sometime in the 1880s or 1890s and did not become a generalized music among African Americans across the country unti1 1900 or so. By 1908 they had begun to be a trend in white as well as Black commercial music and white cylinder recorders.
Tony Thomas black banjo player
Supertone - Posted - 09/18/2008: 07:42:34
Another interesting observation....The Jug Stompers stuff is all uppicking by Cannon. In the couple video clips I've seen of him as an old man, he seems to be playing in a downpicking style. I wonder if he played that way because he had lost some facility just due to getting old. (I think he lived well into his 90's)
I would love to see a clip of him in his prime. Apparently he did appear in the King Vidor produced film, Hallelujah! (1929), during the late night wedding scene.
Has anyone seen this?
writerrad - Posted - 09/18/2008: 14:36:56
Cannon said that he learned to play clawhammer first and that was the native style that was popular before he got out into the world, probably before he was exposed to Rag time and Blues. I just spent the weekend with someone who visited him in the early 1970s who said that his banjo playing was showing the signs of his age and ill health. Of course, I will be lucky if I can stand up unaided when I am that age.
I also have gained the impression when talking to people who visited him in the 1960s and 1970s that with the folk revival there were more pressure on him to play a folkier type of music. However, on that last Stax Album, he does some of the finger picking he was known for.
There is one selection in the 1920s where he does frail, a tune that sounds more like OTM.
I know nothing on that. I bet it is hard to get otherwise someone would have posted the footage on Youtube.
TT
Tony Thomas black banjo player
writerrad - Posted - 09/18/2008: 14:54:10
quote:
Originally posted by Supertone
Another interesting observation....The Jug Stompers stuff is all uppicking by Cannon. In the couple video clips I've seen of him as an old man, he seems to be playing in a downpicking style. I wonder if he played that way because he had lost some facility just due to getting old. (I think he lived well into his 90's)as anyone seen this?
He was never a pure up picker. He usually combined up picking with strumming the banjo and with gapping more like a tenor player would play.
What we have to look at is that as far as I know, HE WAS THE ONLY FIVE STRING PLAYER TO MAKE REAL BLUES RECORDS. He was doing something no one idid who got recorded, and was good enough to be asked to do more than 30 recordings, even though he got into things just as the recording industry collapsed due to the Depression.
Whatever he was doing uniquely answers a problem that other five-string banjoists we know about did not solve. He also points tot he idea that he might not have been unique but represented Black banjoists who solved the problem who we have not looked for and found, chiefly because banjo research has centered on banjoists who represent the oldest traditions.
The rhythm needed for Black blues and associated musics was the biggest threat for the banjo. Pitch and timbre were also problems as well. You get this feeling when you listen to his singing even with the jug stompers which added a guitar or two and his jug as bass, that things are just pitched too high for his singing, a problem I run into when playing in G on the banjo that I do not run into when playing and singing in G on a guitar.
He seemns to have solved the problem by making the banjo a lead instrument on his recordings, rather than the rhythm instrument it was on the traditional string band recordings. He plays a real rag-time oriented form of lead but he keeps the beat by breaking out of that picking to strum or gap the instrument. More like a classic banjo player--and this was the style that a lot of Rag time banjoists played--when he is both picking and strumming, he ignores the fifth string except when it fits into the harmonics of the tune, and then some. Traditional forms of Black and white finger picking leading all up to Bluegrass use the thumb as a rhythm and drone maker like clawhammer does.
While I have heard few Black banjoists who were up picker, Cannon's solution recalls what Charlie Poole did, even if in most of his standard band recordings Poole used the banjo chiefly as a rhythm instrument, although he also recorded and was known to play classic banjo piecess by masters like Ossman. Poole also recorded a lot of music that sounded more like pop ragtime than traditional OTM and recorded a number of pieces that were popular song pieces from the era when this was the music as well as Ragtime Pieces.
Dock Boggs also elaborated an approach that combined finger picking unison playing and brushes on the banjo to play pieces he learned from Vaudville Blues recordings.
All of this points to a lot of stuff that we do not know about.
Bob Winans who I spent the weekend with explained to me he is writing a chapter for a book he is editing about banjoists he discovered iin the 1970s in North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia, and Pennsylvania who played string band music using the classic style. They were all of an age that they would have learned this way when they were teenagers or in the early 20s around the time of WWI. Most had put the music down until retirement. Some claimed to be Bluegrass players, some played in old time groups at the time. All liked tunes that were out of the showoff repertoire of the time like Under the Double Eagle.
The frustrating and the promising thing about delving into banjo history is that so little hard evidence has been saved and published, and there is so much information out there that needs to be found and digested, that you feel like you can open one door and find a thousand other doors on the other side.
Being able to discuss this in this forum and to interact with people who are doing this as banjoists is a good opportunity, although I have found that most banjo scholars are terrific banjo players too.
Tony Thomas black banjo player
Supertone - Posted - 09/19/2008: 08:51:36
Tony et al,
Have you heard Nathan Frazier's version of "Corrine" on the Altamont recording?
(Rounder 0238)
banjopocolypse - Posted - 09/19/2008: 09:38:44
HINT: If you browse by keyword and type "banjo" its a bit easier!
writerrad - Posted - 09/19/2008: 10:30:33
[quote]Originally posted by Supertone
Tony et al,
Have you heard Nathan Frazier's version of "Corrine" on the Altamont recording?
(Rounder 0238)
Yes of course. I had the opportunityt o spends some time and talk to STu Jamison who recorded that about the whole thing. It was very interesting.
Frazier is a fantastic finger picker, but he plays in the standard style of finger picking that seems derived from Clawhammer or at least adapted by its players to play songs that were originally clawhammer. He's the best I have ever heard playing in that style.
He should be mentioned in my writing, because he represents what was out there no one knew about it. Stu told that in the 40s when he did these recordings no one in the "folk" or folklore world cared much about how banjoists and fiddlers in the tradition played. He said there were even some who just thought the real question especially for fiddlers would be to teach them the standard aproach for violin!
Stu and his friend Margret Mayo both had family in the South in Tennessee and Kentucky respectively who had played banjo and dulcimore even though they were both living in New York city. They went do and simply visited their families to get on the trail of traditional music.
STu knew nothing about Black string bands when he arrived. However, everyone in the local area insisted that the Fraser Patterson band was the best string band of any kind on the planet. Even though a lot of the local whites were quite racist about it, they were in awe of their music.
STu said he and his aunt who lived in the area did get grief because STu shook hands with Frazier and Patterson and gave them a lift home after the recordings. The recordings were done in the local general store. A large crowd of whites only jammed the place. At first people stomped their feel and yelled when the music began, so Stu had to get up and say they couldnt record if they could not do this. He had to invoke that they were doing this for the US Congress in Washington to give an official stamp to their demand for silence. (The Lomaxes frequently used this to enter people's homes and demand information when people did want it. STu and Margret were not working for the Library of Congress but Lomax had loaned them some outmode recording equipment that belonged to the library.
Thanks for reminding me of this.
While it is a great recording, it is pretty standard the way that old time banjoists played the blues, Black and white, filtered through the playing of a great banjoist. Unlike Cannon, Fraser plays the tune at the pace and beat required not by Black blues dancing which we can see in the original recording of the song by the Mississippi Sheiks, or for that matter the covers of the tune by Milton Brown, and the series of covers from the 1930s to the 1960s by Bob Wills, but to the speed and pace of the old time dances.
There is a lot of thumbing of the fifth an alternate strings like in clawhammer, quite different from Cannon.
But thanks for reminding me of this.
Frankly Fraser's banjo playing is so fing good that it is hard to listen to him because after you do, you feel why should anyone listen to you when they can listen to that!
Tony Thomas black banjo player
Supertone - Posted - 09/19/2008: 11:28:09
Very cool that you got an opportunity to chat with S Jamieson!
I thought though that the Nathan Frasier stuff was recorded by John Work in '42. Was Jamieson at that session as well as the '46 recordings of Gribble/York/Lusk?
writerrad - Posted - 09/19/2008: 16:45:14
quote:
Originally posted by Supertone
Very cool that you got an opportunity to chat with S Jamieson!
I thought though that the Nathan Frasier stuff was recorded by John Work in '42. Was Jamieson at that session as well as the '46 recordings of Gribble/York/Lusk?
I was talking about the 1946 sessions. Sorry about that. I was very very tired after a bad day at work and got totally mixed up. LOL LOL.
But that does remind me that I have some of Work's papers on Frazier and Patterson. They actually barely knew each other and only played together during the recordings and a couple exhibitions for students and the public that Work put on. There were actually so few Black old time string bands in Nashville at the time, that Work put together the fiddler and the banjo player to have a string band. He says in one of his introductions to a program with both of them that both were such hot musicians that they never could find a guitar player who was comfortable keeping up with them. He introduces the guitar player on one show they did for students by saying he feels sorry for him.
I teach English composition part time at the local college. When I make gaffs like that I remind my young students that THERE IS ONLY ONE CURE FOR SENILITY, BUT I AM NOT READY FOR IT YET
THANKS FOR CORRECTING ME
Tony Thomas black banjo player
Tom Hanway - Posted - 09/21/2008: 15:24:56
quote:
Originally posted by writerrad
The blues arose sometime in the 1880s or 1890s and did not become a generalized music among African Americans across the country unti1 1900 or so. *snip*
Tony Thomas black banjo player
quote:
Originally posted by writerrad
Cannon said that he learned to play clawhammer first and that was the native style that was popular before he got out into the world, probably before he was exposed to Rag time and Blues. *snip*
There is one selection in the 1920s where he does frail, a tune that sounds more like OTM [Old-time music].
I know nothing on that. I bet it is hard to get, otherwise someone would have posted the footage on Youtube.
Tony Thomas black banjo player
I like where Tony is generally taking this, but I have come to a "crossroads". For historical precision and to be fair, I think a full assessment about "playing the BLUES on a banjo" would have to encompass more than the scant recorded music of seminal African American 5-string banjoists. To get the full texture and fabric of the music history, we have to look all around - and not just look in one direction. For example, all types of banjos (various 5-strings, 4-string, plectrum, hybrids and others) would need to be examined. Remember that the tenor and plectrum banjos were (and are) used in traditional jazz, which has the blues at its core.
Looking beyond recordings, which don't go back far enough (only to the turn of the 20th century), we would be wise to look at really early African dance traditions in the New World, particularly the types of dances that were connected with evolving African American music styles (going back to drumming, not limited to banjo and pre-dating the blues by a century and more), e.g., the "ring shout", juba, and only much later, cakewalks and country rags.
We would need to explore the evolving and complex social processes and historical connections between African-American and European dance music cultures, e.g., use of gapped scales (modes), dance rhythms and steps. In particular, African American cakewalks derived from the "chalk line walk" (c. 1850). Cakewalks involved couples engaging in "dignified walking, flirting, prancing, strutting, bowing low, waving canes, doffing hats, done in a high kicking grand promenade ... mimicking [white] high society". Source: http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3cake1.htm
I have made some observations about what I detect as a few of the HIDDEN OPERATING ASSUMPTIONS and potential blind spots (highlighted) that I feel we need to take into account for a more productive discussion, one which gets into concrete examples of real blues playing on the banjo, not limited to a single-strand history of banjo-blues-playing. We need not confine ourselves to any particular player, e.g., Gus Cannon, 5-string banjo tablature or even the 5-string itself, and we can look at standard notation, particularly scores of early blues piano, other blues banjo (tenor and plectrum), fiddle, mandolin as well as blues guitar (acoustic and electric styles).
1. A study of blues banjo, to be fair, needs to be traced to its African American origins, i.e., black banjo players. What did African Americans pick up from European folk culture, music and dance traditions, including popular songs from sheet music? What did African Americans already bring with them from African cultures? To wit: The "call and response" that we hear in so much African American music has origins in African social dance traditions.
2. A study of the seminal historic recordings of African-American banjo players will give us the roots (essentials) of how to play blues on the banjo. Before blues came into being in African American society, especially through the piano, white actors, as blackface minstrels had taken the banjo in a commercial direction, parodying European American and African American cultures and causing quite a sensation in theaters in major cities in America and as far away as London. It is not hard to imagine that with the hijacking of black minstrelsy and African American banjo culture, creative black music and dance artists would have sought original, more fulfilling and creative outlets. (That is my personal assumption and I have no historical evidence to back that up. Interestingly, Scott Joplin's mother Florence played banjo but made sure that Scott got proper instruction in piano - classical, not ragtime - by working and bartering for his lessons.)
Also go here for an overview: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2...6600914.html
3. We can gather essential information about seminal African American blues forms by studying the 5-string banjo. A thorough study of African American blues would need to look at its places of origin, oral and written sources, and would need to take into account social environments, playing "venues", and more specifically, the defining instruments that the blues was created and spread upon, e.g., piano, guitars, mandolin, and various types of banjos.
4. We can learn (perhaps master) the blues by focusing our study on seminal "blues banjo" (read African American) players. At the heart of African American jazz is the blues, and learning jazz standards, many of which adhere to blues structures, is a tried and true way to develop a blues vocabulary and song repertoire. The banjo, as played by blacks and whites, has done exceedingly well as an accompaniment instrument, in early (traditional) jazz, dixieland, jug band, country ragtime music, OT, bluegrass and in guitar blues, especially when backing bottleneck and fingerstyle guitar players.
In sum, I think we need to broaden the discussion before this thread gets bogged down in a muddy area where historical evidence is scant, even if we long for tomes of germane information with transcriptions. (I know I do.) For example, although white banjoist Vess Ossman was recording just before the turn of the 20th century, seminal black blues banjo recordings from the 19th century are non-existent. There is so much room for conjecture about what people used to play, might have played or should have played; meanwhile, we could be focusing on real examples of blues playing in the here and now - that is, what historical and contemporary blues musicians have played and what we can learn today about playing and developing blues techniques, licks and repertoire on the banjo.
About playing the BLUES on a banjo? Let's not turn a deaf ear to jazz or rock'n'roll. Happy pickin,
Tom
http://www.tomhanway.com/discog.htmhttp://www.tomhanway.com
writerrad - Posted - 09/21/2008: 16:10:35
All of my remarks refer to the five-string banjo.
I have not just thought this up for discussion in this list, but am giving you the conclusion of years of work that I have done in collaboration with leading scholars of the five string banjo like my collaborators in banjo scholarship Cece Conway and Bob Winans and the leading living scholars of the Blues like my friends David Evans, Jeff Titon, and Elijah Wald who have helped me come to my conclusions. Both David and Bob Winans have edited my work on a word by word basis.
I have discussed my ideas about this and they have edited my work on this subject which is now scheduled for publication in an anthology on Black people and country music forthcoming from Duke University. Other work will appear in the first scholarly anthology on the five-string banjo which Bob Winans is editing for U of Illinois press. I have developed these conclusions in scholarly documented arguments that have been intensively peer reviewed by serious scholars.
I should say that my participation in both books to write on this subject was requested specifically by the editors because I am the acknowledged authority on this and related questions on an international level.
Mr. Hathaway then lists all sorts of things having connection with Black music in the United States and says we should take them into account. I heartily agree and have been doing so for years and indeed have worked with scholars of such particular areas and dance. The most advanced workers on the African origin of the banjo Daniel Jatta, Shlomo Petscoe, Greg Adams who I visited with last weekend, and the great Ulf Jagfors have been my friends and collaborators in this any many efforts for years.
I have also had the benefits of the extensive field recordings and interviews with Black banjoists both those available publicly and materials given to me by field workers such as Bob Winans and Cece Conway and discussions with people like Stu Jamison who made the Altamont recordings.
It must be said that scholars do not usually use regular encyclopedia articles as sources. I have read hundreds of books, surveyed about 200 articles from scholarly journals, talked to many scholars, discussed these issues with leading African American banjoists like Don Vappie, Otis Taylor, Corey Harris, Sule Greg Wilson, and Dom Flemmons.
You may never have confronted these issues, but I have been working on this over the past 5 years.
It is not for nothing that the Pete Pzego and Hank Schwartz the conveners of the Banjo Collectors Gathering, the most prestigious even in banjo history circles have asked me to make a presentation about my conclusions as part of this year’s program. It is not for nothing that I will present at the first scholarly discussion on the history of the five string banjo.
There is nothing Hathaway mentions in his article that my collaborators and I have not done, not on the level of a chat list bs or internet links, but with the leading scholars on these matters in the United States, Europe, and Africa.
My first article on these themes contains nine pages of bibliography and footnotes documenting what I have written, although I have consulted about 20 sources since then.
Again, I do not reach conclusions on my own, but in consultation with other scholars, not just of the banjo, but of Blues, African American culture, dance, and sociology and history.
That Hathaway has discovered these complex things and can a long disordered discussion of many factors with no exact point is good. He should do this, not on the level that he suggests, but on a level of serious scholarship as I have done.
Tony Thomas black banjo player
Sultans of Claw - Posted - 09/21/2008: 18:19:16
quote:
Originally posted by writerrad
That Hathaway has discovered these complex things and can a long disordered discussion of many factors with no exact point is good. He should do this, not on the level that he suggests, but on a level of serious scholarship as I have done.Tony Thomas black banjo player
Huh?
Lee Callicutt
writerrad - Posted - 09/22/2008: 05:18:52
quote:
Originally posted by Tom Hanway
quote:
Originally posted by writerrad
All of my remarks refer to the five-string banjo.
I have not just thought this up for discussion in this list, but am giving you the conclusion of years of work that I have done in collaboration with leading scholars of the five string banjo like my collaborators in banjo scholarship Cece Conway and Bob Winans and the leading living scholars of the Blues like my friends David Evans, Jeff Titon, and Elijah Wald who have helped me come to my conclusions. Both David and Bob Winans have edited my work on a word by word basis.
I have discussed my ideas about this and they have edited my work on this subject which is now scheduled for publication in an anthology on Black people and country music forthcoming from Duke University. Other work will appear in the first scholarly anthology on the five-string banjo which Bob Winans is editing for U of Illinois press. I have developed these conclusions in scholarly documented arguments that have been intensively peer reviewed by serious scholars.
I should say that my participation in both books to write on this subject was requested specifically by the editors because I am the acknowledged authority on this and related questions on an international level.
Mr. Hathaway then lists all sorts of things having connection with Black music in the United States and says we should take them into account. I heartily agree and have been doing so for years and indeed have worked with scholars of such particular areas and dance. The most advanced workers on the African origin of the banjo Daniel Jatta, Shlomo Petscoe, Greg Adams who I visited with last weekend, and the great Ulf Jagfors have been my friends and collaborators in this any many efforts for years.
I have also had the benefits of the extensive field recordings and interviews with Black banjoists both those available publicly and materials given to me by field workers such as Bob Winans and Cece Conway and discussions with people like Stu Jamison who made the Altamont recordings.
It must be said that scholars do not usually use regular encyclopedia articles as sources. I have read hundreds of books, surveyed about 200 articles from scholarly journals, talked to many scholars, discussed these issues with leading African American banjoists like Don Vappie, Otis Taylor, Corey Harris, Sule Greg Wilson, and Dom Flemmons.
You may never have confronted these issues, but I have been working on this over the past 5 years.
It is not for nothing that the Pete Pzego and Hank Schwartz the conveners of the Banjo Collectors Gathering, the most prestigious even in banjo history circles have asked me to make a presentation about my conclusions as part of this year’s program. It is not for nothing that I will present at the first scholarly discussion on the history of the five string banjo.
There is nothing Hathaway mentions in his article that my collaborators and I have not done, not on the level of a chat list bs or internet links, but with the leading scholars on these matters in the United States, Europe, and Africa.
My first article on these themes contains nine pages of bibliography and footnotes documenting what I have written, although I have consulted about 20 sources since then.
Again, I do not reach conclusions on my own, but in consultation with other scholars, not just of the banjo, but of Blues, African American culture, dance, and sociology and history.
That Hathaway has discovered these complex things and can a long disordered discussion of many factors with no exact point is good. He should do this, not on the level that he suggests, but on a level of serious scholarship as I have done.
Tony Thomas black banjo player
Whoa unto you scholars and Mr. Thomas, please slow down sir - chill brother. That's some screed and quite a bit of name dropping.
Probably you don't know who any of those names are, which indicates where you are in all this//
To reiterate my central thesis in my previous post: Without toadying up to anybody, one can learn American JAZZ to get a great education in the BLUES, and it doesn't revolve around a specific jugband musician (e.g., Gus Cannon) that somebody and his cronies are championing. //
I am not championing any performer. This isnt a question of bookings,. I have never said that in trying to learn to play the blues on the banjo one has to study Gus Cannon, but that in the work that I am my colleagues are engaged with to understand the development of African American banjo playing and African American folk music in the period, Cannon occupies a crucial condition. Understanding his playing is something that needs to be integrated into thinking and discussion on this subject which has hitherto focused on down picking folk musicians, but has left what must have been the dominant strain in Black banjo performance from the 1880s until the 1920s out of the picture.
My opinion is that there is no single best way to play the blues on a banjo because there are so many different ways to do it. I have never had any problem with it because I played blues guitar for 35 years before I ever owned a banjo. Actually, I had to stop playing blues on the banjo for a year or two, so I could learn real banjo repertoire and not just do things on the banjo that I did on guitar. Listen to a lot of blues playing on slide guitar guitar using the Spanish tuning and you will pick up a reprtoire of blues licks, although listening to Earl Scruggs can supply a lot of those licks too. The more you play them, the more you will find a convergence even if the rhythm is different.
I used to play a lot of tunes in double D and open D tunings on the guitar that I transferred on to the banjo although I am more enclined to G. A lot of the less usual D tuneings like dDGAD or dDAAD are pretty good for more of skip james approach. I can play a lot of Skip james material on the banjo finger style like that that I could never get to my total satisfaction after trying to pick them on the guitar for 40 years.
Is this thread in danger of being hijacked into a discussion, or worse yet, a monologue about a legendary jug band musician, who mixed in blues with country ragtime and early jazz music, or will it recede into a discussion of somebody's academic credentials and cronies? //
The thread has been whatever anyone wants to post on this subject. If your blather and bluster without much knowledge gets questioned by someone who has dedicated his life to studying these questions, you should learn from that. I always have when such things happen.
It's not about a person's résumé or academic degree here: We're talking about the blues, not the Academy. So, putting this in context: This is the Banjo Hangout, not Current Ethnomusicology, or a university debating society, and there is no fiat to submit academic papers in this forum. Basic courtesy, free thinking and plain speaking will suffice. This is a tempest in a teapot. //
I didnt start this, you did in your last post.
You assume people are at your level or that people havent done work on things because you just thought of them.
As for basic scholarship and common courtesy, who is Mr. Hathaway? Never heard of that academician. I know a Mr. Hanway who is on your Friends List and is a fan of yours.
For the record: Playing the blues, teaching the blues, and being able to help others to think broadmindedly about playing blues, on any instrument, by gleaning materials from a variety of sources, including JAZZ, has nothing to do with namedropping well-known scholars or writing academic papers for publication. The blues is whole lot more than an academic exercise. Gus Cannon and Henry Thomas didn't need academic credentials to play blues on the banjo, or talk about the blues, and neither does anybody else.//
Ignorance never helped anyone.
Speaking of blues in jazz, Thelonius Monk has a great 12-bar blues called 'Misterioso', and it can be played on a banjo without capoing - check it out:
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb5G3cHObXo
Also check out Bobby McFerrin scatting it - wonderful stuff - he evens gets the crowd to "trade off" with him in a call-and-response fashion - no big deal:
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=LK3tj...ture=related
B.B. King once said - and it doesn't make it any less valid because you can find it on the Internet - though maybe not in any dusty academic journals:
“The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.”
... not even a scholar.
Hey, what does Tom Hanway know - he's just a banjo player - also a composer and book author who does his research quite literally in the field. Bill Keith, a colleague and good friend, reviewed his work in May 2000: http://www.tomhanway.com/billkeith.htm
Mr. Hanway calls 'em as he sees 'em, in my earlier observations. I suggest folks re-read what he wrote and think about it before reacting. No one, not even Mr. Hathaway, whoever that is, is attacking anyone's purported scholarship or impending works.
Mr. Hathaway - I would check that citation - is not the ghostwriter of any posts that Mr. Hanway wrote. That was obviously a typographical error made in haste. Hey, I call 'em as I see 'em
Seriously, advice to beginning banjo students: Listen to everything folks, and keep your eyes and ears open to new learning and new ideas. It's not all in the past. but in the process, i.e., the learning process. I got this from the BlackBanjo website, which is precisely the type of open-minded approach I was alluding to in my earlier post:
quote:
Due to the paucity of recordings featuring African-American folk
banjoists, perhaps some of this research might consider comparative
studies with early "songster" or "music physicianer" guitarists such
as Henry Thomas or Pink Anderson? I also wonder if there is any
evidence suggesting that some of the early songsters initially played
the banjo but switched to the guitar before being recorded? What if
anything do early African-American guitar styles suggest about either
banjo techniques or performance practices in ensembles? Surely as the
guitar supplanted the banjo in the African-American South that these
two instruments overlapped in ways besides a common repertoire?
Paz y Musica,
[name withheld to protect the innocent] 
Yours sincerely,
... and keep on pickin' and a-grinnin',
Tom Hanway
http://www.tomhanway.com/discog
http://www.tomhanway.com
Tony Thomas black banjo player
Tom Hanway - Posted - 09/22/2008: 05:40:10
quote:
Originally posted by writerrad
All of my remarks refer to the five-string banjo.
I have not just thought this up for discussion in this list, but am giving you the conclusion of years of work that I have done in collaboration with leading scholars of the five string banjo like my collaborators in banjo scholarship Cece Conway and Bob Winans and the leading living scholars of the Blues like my friends David Evans, Jeff Titon, and Elijah Wald who have helped me come to my conclusions. Both David and Bob Winans have edited my work on a word by word basis.
I have discussed my ideas about this and they have edited my work on this subject which is now scheduled for publication in an anthology on Black people and country music forthcoming from Duke University. Other work will appear in the first scholarly anthology on the five-string banjo which Bob Winans is editing for U of Illinois press. I have developed these conclusions in scholarly documented arguments that have been intensively peer reviewed by serious scholars.
I should say that my participation in both books to write on this subject was requested specifically by the editors because I am the acknowledged authority on this and related questions on an international level.
Mr. Hathaway then lists all sorts of things having connection with Black music in the United States and says we should take them into account. I heartily agree and have been doing so for years and indeed have worked with scholars of such particular areas and dance. The most advanced workers on the African origin of the banjo Daniel Jatta, Shlomo Petscoe, Greg Adams who I visited with last weekend, and the great Ulf Jagfors have been my friends and collaborators in this any many efforts for years.
I have also had the benefits of the extensive field recordings and interviews with Black banjoists both those available publicly and materials given to me by field workers such as Bob Winans and Cece Conway and discussions with people like Stu Jamison who made the Altamont recordings.
It must be said that scholars do not usually use regular encyclopedia articles as sources. I have read hundreds of books, surveyed about 200 articles from scholarly journals, talked to many scholars, discussed these issues with leading African American banjoists like Don Vappie, Otis Taylor, Corey Harris, Sule Greg Wilson, and Dom Flemmons.
You may never have confronted these issues, but I have been working on this over the past 5 years.
It is not for nothing that the Pete Pzego and Hank Schwartz the conveners of the Banjo Collectors Gathering, the most prestigious even in banjo history circles have asked me to make a presentation about my conclusions as part of this year’s program. It is not for nothing that I will present at the first scholarly discussion on the history of the five string banjo.
There is nothing Hathaway mentions in his article that my collaborators and I have not done, not on the level of a chat list bs or internet links, but with the leading scholars on these matters in the United States, Europe, and Africa.
My first article on these themes contains nine pages of bibliography and footnotes documenting what I have written, although I have consulted about 20 sources since then.
Again, I do not reach conclusions on my own, but in consultation with other scholars, not just of the banjo, but of Blues, African American culture, dance, and sociology and history.
That Hathaway has discovered these complex things and can a long disordered discussion of many factors with no exact point is good. He should do this, not on the level that he suggests, but on a level of serious scholarship as I have done.
Tony Thomas black banjo player
Whoa unto you scholars and Mr. Thomas, please slow down sir - chill brother. That's some screed and quite a bit of name dropping. I wasn't finished adding germane links to my last post, but here it is, with an updated link, many thanks to Ross Nickerson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgz095tLvMY&NR=1
To reiterate my central thesis in my previous post: Without toadying up to anybody, one can learn American JAZZ to get a great education in the BLUES, and it doesn't revolve around a specific jugband musician (e.g., Gus Cannon) that somebody and his cronies are championing. There's learning everywhere - seek and ye shall find.
Mr. Thomas, did somebody named Mr. Hathaway impeach your scholarship or call into question your academic credentials or works? With whom are you competing - certainly not Mr. Hanway?
Is this thread in danger of being hijacked into a discussion, or worse yet, a monologue about a legendary jug band musician, who mixed in blues with country ragtime and early jazz music, or will it recede into a discussion of somebody's academic credentials and cronies?
It's not about a person's résumé or academic degree here: We're talking about the blues, not the Academy. So, putting this in context: This is the Banjo Hangout, not Current Ethnomusicology, or a university debating society, and there is no fiat to submit academic papers in this forum. Basic courtesy, free thinking and plain speaking will suffice. This all seems a tempest in a teapot. LOL.
As for basic scholarship and common courtesy, who is Mr. Hathaway? Never heard of that academician. I know a Tom. Hanway who is on your Friends List and is a fan of yours.
For the record: Playing the blues, teaching the blues, and being able to help others to think broadmindedly about playing blues, on any instrument, by gleaning materials from a variety of sources, including JAZZ, has nothing to do with namedropping well-known scholars or writing academic papers for publication. The blues is whole lot more than an academic exercise. Gus Cannon and Henry Thomas didn't need academic credentials to play blues on the banjo, or talk about the blues, and neither does anybody else.
Speaking of blues in jazz, Thelonius Monk has a great 12-bar blues called 'Misterioso', and it can be played on a banjo without capoing - check it out:
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb5G3cHObXo
Also check out Bobby McFerrin scatting it - wonderful stuff - he evens gets the crowd to "trade off" with him in a call-and-response fashion - no big deal:
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=LK3tj...ture=related
B.B. King once said - and it doesn't make it any less valid because you can find it on the Internet - though maybe not in any dusty academic journals:
“The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.”
... not even a scholar.
Hey, what does Tom Hanway know? He's a full-time professional banjo picker- also a composer and published author who does his research quite literally in the field. Bill Keith, a picking pal, reviewed his Mel Bay book in May 2000:
http://www.tomhanway.com/billkeith.htm
Mr. Hanway suggests that folks examine his previous posts in the Banjo Hangout about playing the blues. He has never met Mr. Hathaway, whoever that is, and has reservations about impeaching anyone's purported scholarship or impending works.
Mr. Hathaway - someone needs to check that citation - is not the ghostwriter of any posts that Mr. Hanway has written. So any person using that name was probably making a typographical error. I suggest that folks who have Mr. Hanway on their Friends List spell his name correctly in the future so their scholarship and credibility won't be called into question.
Seriously, advice to beginning banjo students: Listen to everything folks, and keep your eyes and ears open to new learning and new ideas. It's not all in the past. but in the process, i.e., the learning process. I got this from the BlackBanjo website, which is precisely the type of open-minded approach I was alluding to in my earlier post:
quote:
Due to the paucity of recordings featuring African-American folk
banjoists, perhaps some of this research might consider comparative
studies with early "songster" or "music physicianer" guitarists such
as Henry Thomas or Pink Anderson? I also wonder if there is any
evidence suggesting that some of the early songsters initially played
the banjo but switched to the guitar before being recorded? What if
anything do early African-American guitar styles suggest about either
banjo techniques or performance practices in ensembles? Surely as the
guitar supplanted the banjo in the African-American South that these
two instruments overlapped in ways besides a common repertoire?
Paz y Musica,
[name withheld to protect the innocent]
Yours sincerely,
... and keep on pickin' and a-grinnin',
Tom Hanway
http://www.tomhanway.com/discog
http://www.tomhanway.com
Happy pickin,
Tom
http://www.tomhanway.com/discog.htm
http://www.tomhanway.com
Tom Hanway - Posted - 09/22/2008: 06:17:00
quote:
Originally posted by Sultans of Claw
quote:
Originally posted by writerrad
That Hathaway has discovered these complex things and can a long disordered discussion of many factors with no exact point is good. He should do this, not on the level that he suggests, but on a level of serious scholarship as I have done.Tony Thomas black banjo player
Huh?
Lee Callicutt
Exactly, this is not a shining example of what I would term "clear concise writing".
Mr. Thomas, a word to the wise: You have to learn not to intersperse your ideas into the body of another's writing, unless you are going to make it clear which ideas are yours. To do otherwise, i.e., not give proper citations, is to appear to be plagiarizing, and no scholar wants to appear to be doing that. Everybody needs to be on the lookout for that, especially in forums where it is easy to quote or inadvertently forget to quote someone. In citing others' ideas, a good rule of thumb is, if it is more than five words long, to make explicit who the original author is, either by setting the original quote off by quotation marks, or by some other clear method of citation. People shouldn't be made to guess or infer who is actually saying what. That's inane!
What's more, it is misleading to readers and questionable decorum to mock a post within a post without identifying yourself as the author.
Mr. Thomas, I've heard of, or read all the people that you name drop and I read more than you know sir, so please do not not riddle my posts with confusing sophomoric insinuations about my musical prowess or academic legerdemain - but that's not the point. I am the "product of an American education", as Jorma would say, and I'm proud of it. Hahaha.
As for your interesting use of the word "ignorance", which you cavalierly insinuated into the body of my post, confusing readers (even me), I will say this, sir, and allow me to be terse and explicit: Rudeness is the cousin of ignorance.
I still think this turbulence is a tempest in a teapot. Respect, tolerance and patience are all that is needed.
I'm offering new ideas here and giving concrete examples (tabs). I have a lot more to say, and since I don't see anyone putting any Gus Cannon tabs out there, I think I'll go in that direction myself. As I said in a previous post, I already teach all my guitar students the classic 'Big Railroad Blues', their first blues-guitar piece, so why not learn some Cannon banjo bits? They're pretty much chord arpeggios anyway - not particularly demanding, and more like accompaniment than bluesy improvisation, or blues for that matter. I can think of much scarier sources for DEEP BLUES, and I have a stack of them next to me, for tomorrow. I already worship Son House and Robert Johnson, and then some. I suggest folks read music journalist Robert Palmer's important work, and another seminal work germane to the discussion of blues (on any instrument), by Dena Epstein:
~Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta by Robert Palmer
~Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War (Music in American Life) by Dena J. Epstein
As for "Mr. Hathaway" - someone needs to check that citation - he is not the ghostwriter of any posts that Mr. Hanway has written. I suggest that folks who have Mr. Hanway on their Friends List spell his name correctly in the future so their credibility and common sense won't be called into question. Or, at least: Don't let your enemies know whom they are. - Old Jewish proverb
Let's move on and get into blues banjo playing, the real topic here. I'm working on some blues and jazz-blues tabs that, hopefully, folks can use. All will be revealed. Happy pickin,
Tom
http://www.tomhanway.com/discog.htmhttp://www.tomhanway.com
Edited by - Tom Hanway on 09/23/2008 08:40:40
Sultans of Claw - Posted - 09/22/2008: 06:21:59
Let the scholastic record show that Mr. Hanway is a fine gentleman, musician, published author and sharing member of this forum, while Mr. Hathaway was and forever shall be the father of Milburn Drysdale's secretary on "The Beverly Hillbillies."
Lee Callicutt
RyanHerr - Posted - 09/22/2008: 07:24:55
To echo and verify what others have pointed out: Tony Thomas, in your last post, it is quite impossible to tell which words are yours and which are Tom Hanway's.
One way to indicate a quote is to highlight the quoted text, and then click the Insert Quote icon (the icon showing a page with a red arrow pointing out.)
Another way, perhaps even easier, would be to simply type:
Tom said: ....
I reply: ...
- Ryan.
Edited by - RyanHerr on 09/22/2008 07:27:58
Banjoman - Posted - 09/22/2008: 10:57:49
This is a very intersting topic and I'd hate to end it so please, lets keep to the rules.
No personal attacks. If you don't agree with what someone posted, debate their post... not the person that posted it. Criticizing a concept is ok--criticizing the person is not.
Hugh
Picking since 1964
“...Bobby Thompson? He is the future! He has this whole new style-you can hear the melody! ''Hard Hearted'' ''Dixie Hoedown!'' Oh my!”---John Updike
Click Here: Banjo Hangout Rules & Guidelines.
Click Here: Bobby Thompson''s Home Page
Edited by - Banjoman on 09/22/2008 10:58:38
writerrad - Posted - 09/24/2008: 05:59:54
Since Imentioned him and that mention brought some interest both on and off list, I have the sad news to tell you that Stu Jamison folklorist, banjoist, traditional dancer, one of the major electrical engineers of our time whose inventions and designs were essential to everything from modern traffic control systems to US Lunar and Space Probes died Sunday Morning in his hospice near Orlando, Florida. Stu had been in bad health for 5 or 6 years.
He recorded the Altamont recordings and Old Time banjoist Kentucky banjoist Rufus Crisp. Stu told me in the late mid 1940s when he set about this work unpaid--still bouncing around between the US Army and going back to school under the GI Bill, no one even in the folklore and folk music community seemed to care about how real traditional musicians played their instruments. It was difficult for him and his friend Margret Mayo to borrow even the most outmoded recording equipment from the library of Congress to do their recordings.
He told me that there was so little interest in the five string banjo in those days that it became easy for him to get into conversations and get tips on the banjo from Dave Macom at the Grand Ole Opry because Uncle Dave was so surprised that a bright and handsome young man like Stu was in the 1940s cared so much about the banjo.
Stu's interest in traditional music came out of family tradition. Part of his family came from North Carolina and Tennessee and his grandfather played the banjo, while his mother played the dulcimer even when the family was forced to move to NYC. His grandfather and father were missionaries in a remote part of China and taught their converts hymms some to words of old traditional hymns, some to old time folk songs, all in Chinese. When STu was able to vist China in the early 1990s, he found some of these hymns were still being used. When he returned to the US and played them for a prominent folklorist of religious music, he was told that they were listening to people singing songs whose tunes no one living had heard sung in English. When he and Margret Mayo went on their collecting trips, they simply went to their family members and found banjoists and string bands in their communities.
He seemed dedicated in his last years to getting people to think scientifically and to get out every piece of information that was inside his brain about music and tradition to as many people as he could.
TT in mourning
Tony Thomas black banjo player
writerrad - Posted - 09/24/2008: 06:02:52
If there is a place on banjo hangout to do so, I can post my Bibliography for my last article which is about 8 pages long, although I have found several very important works since then that I will try to add since I have to do them up in bibliographic style anyway/
When can I post a Word file that big that we can all see it.
TT
Tony Thomas black banjo player
Banjo T - Posted - 09/24/2008: 10:05:04
You Gentleman have a very interesting post here. Hope you keep it going very informative. R.I.P. Mr. Jamison
Tom Hanway - Posted - 09/24/2008: 13:22:53
In review, in case anyone is still paying attention, I turn to Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary: Piano, n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience.
Let's get down to business and talk about some real blues composers, pioneers and patrons. Let’s make a few connections between musics and traditions.
Blues has always been an important part of jazz, and jazz is a reality that must be admitted into a serious discussion of playing the blues. Eight-, twelve- and sixteen-bar blues have become standard forms in popular music. Blues forms, especially as played by black guitarists, are often idiosyncratic and do not conform strictly to eight, twelve or sixteen-bar structures.
12-bar blues is still at the heart of jazz, a standard form used by blues and jazz composers. It goes all the way back to W.C. Handy’s ‘Memphis Blues’ and the forms of the verses in ‘St. Louis Blues’ (1914), a hit for Bessie Smith in 1925. Handy asked her to appear and sing it in the eponymous film (1929), which has James P. Johnson on piano (uncredited). In Harlem, NYC, Johnson and Luckey Roberts developed what is known today as "stride" piano. Johnson's own influence on subsequent modern jazz piano player's is enormous.
Find out more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_P._Johnson
See and hear Bessie Smith singing 'St. Louis Blues' here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb_68v_WDd4#
Check out ‘St. Louis Blues’ here, from California banjoist Craig Smith – a contemporary example of tasty blues-playing on the banjo:
http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx...ig+Smith.htm
12-bar blues is familiar terrain where jazz musicians improvise, develop their skills and trade-off. Just like their jazz counterparts, bluegrass musicians also compose and jam out on the blues, e.g., ‘Bluegrass Twist’ and ‘Rocky Road Blues’ (Bill Monroe), ‘Foggy Mountain Special’ (Earl Scruggs), ‘Shuckin’ the Corn’ (Graves, Certain, Stacy), ‘Double Banjo Blues’ (Don Reno) and ‘Bloozinee’ (Tony Trischka).
‘Rocky Road Blues’, a swinging 12-bar blues (released in 1946), was the first shot out of the cannon when Bill Monroe switched over to the Columbia label, and it was recorded in one take. According to Neil V. Rosenberg and Charles K. Wolfe, it “shares its title and the first line of the first verse with bluesman Kokomo Arnold’s recording of the same name.” See Neil V. Rosenberg, Charles K. Wolfe, The Music of Bill Monroe (University of Illinois Press, 2007), 47.
In his groundbreaking book The Story of Jazz (Oxford University Press, 1956), Marshall W. Stearns outlines how West African musical heritage connected with classical European forms in the New World to give birth to such popular music styles as piano ragtime, Dixieland (what he describes as a “largely orchestral ragtime, formally simplified and rhythmically complicated”, p. 148), blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock’n’roll. He doesn’t mention bluegrass or Bill Monroe; however, in discussing boogie-woogie piano, he lucidly observes:
quote:
“the house-rent-party pianists are just as important to jazz as the guitar-picking colleagues of Huddie Ledbetter [Leadbelly].... Pine Top Smith, who roomed with Albert Ammons and Mead Lux Lewis in Chicago, used a left-hand figure that has become standard in boogie-woogie. And when Mead Lux lewis improvised his ‘Honky Tonk Train Blues’, an impressionistic interpretation of the railroad trains passing back and forth on the South Side – which has been favorably compared to Honegger’s ‘Pacific 231’ – he was creating a subtle version of the guitar picker’s ‘Goin’ where the Southern cross’ the Dog’. (Later, Duke Ellington’s ‘Daybreak Express’ and ‘Happy Go Lucky Local’ furnished more complex samples of the same tradition.)
The early boogie-woogie, honky-tonk, barrelhouse, house-rent-party pianists worked out their style without the slightest notion of how the European concert tradition ruled that a piano should be played. (Ragtime was different and incorporated more European influences.) Like Leadbelly, but with a piano instead of a guitar [or banjo], they kept as much of the field-holler, the work song, and the ring-shout as they could, and the effect was highly percussive.” See Marshall W. Stearns, The Story of Jazz (Oxford University Press, 1956), 169-170.
Educated at Harvard and Yale, Marshall W. Stearns lectured extensively on jazz and was Professor of English Literature at Hunter College in NYC. He was also a founder and executive director of the Institute of Jazz Studies in New York. Duke Ellington wrote of his work, “Here is the basic history of jazz we have all been waiting for ... as an introduction to the subject for the intelligent reader it is unsurpassed.”
A seasoned bluegrass banjo player might find great inspiration, not just in country ragtime, but in early honky-tonk (jazz) piano, stride piano, e.g., James P. Johnson, as well as rhythm and blues, e.g., Louis Jordan.
The significance of the expression “where the Southern cross’ the dog” goes back to W.C. Handy, who heard these lyrics in 1903, while waiting for a train in Tutwiler, Mississippi. He heard a black musician singing the words while playing the guitar with a knife, and recalls:
quote:
”A lean loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept... As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars....The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard.” See William Christopher Handy, Father of the Blues (MacMillan, 1941), 74.
Or go here for some background on W.C. Handy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W.C._Handy
http://www.triplethreatbluesband.com/wchandy.htm
This was not popular or ragtime music that Handy heard. It was homespun country blues singing and guitar-playing. Handy’s ‘St. Louis Blues’, inspired by such rural blues, has 12-bar blues in the verses, but the bridge is sixteen bars and uses a habanara rhythm, an Afro-Caribbean flavour similar to a tango rhythm.
Handy, had classical training, and though he didn’t invent the blues, he was a pioneering and prolific blues composer. Through his own publishing company and contacts, he helped bring the blues into the mainstream, singlehandedly bridging the gap between European American and African American music cultures. He was also a bandleader, patron and friend to musically illiterate musicians, including Memphis’s Gus Cannon and Furry Lewis. You can still buy Handy’s seminal work today; in fact, he has several important works, which you can look up at your leisure - here's just one:
http://www.amazon.com/Blues-Da-Capo...p/0306804115
For a short but telling biography of W.C. Handy go here:
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/mus....php?id=7388
Finally, “where the Southern cross’ the dog” refers to a place in Mississippi, “...Moorhead, where the Southern Railroad crossed the Yazoo Delta Line, known colloquially as the Yellow Dog, or just the Dog.” See Edward L. Airs, Southern Crossing: A History of the American South, 1877-1906 (Oxford University Press US, 1995), 238. Fun link here about Moorhead, MS:
http://www.mrjumbo.com/contents/del...oorhead.html
Happy pickin,
Tom
http://www.tomhanway.com/discog.htm
http://www.tomhanway.com
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