RyanHerr - Posted - 04/09/2007:  14:05:10

It might be a blasphemous idea to some, but I am looking for recorded examples, whether old or new, of banjo accompaniment on really old traditionally acapella religious songs, such as those of the Sacred Harp tradition.

It's not clawhammer, but Bill Evans has recorded a version of Wondrous Love that is just banjo and vocals. With Wondrous Love being such a well-known song, I'm surprised that this is the only version I've heard with banjo, other than my own.

From a different tradition of old acapella religious songs ... The Duhks' newest album Migrations has two Georgia islands "shout songs," Moses Don't Get Lost and Turtle Dove. (They are called "Pharoah's Host Got Lost and Eve and Adam on this album: http://www.folkways.si.edu/search/A....aspx?ID=782) Leonard Podolak supplies the clawhammer banjo.

Wondering if anyone can point to other examples of this sort of thing, or if you've done it yourself.

-Ryan.

fictioneer - Posted - 04/09/2007:  14:24:34

Roscoe Holcomb recorded "Wayfaring Stranger" with banjo (and a couple of other old hymnbook pieces with guitar), and Dock Boggs did a number of older religious songs as well. "Prodigal Son," "Little Black Train" (a rather unusual version), and "Calvary" (aka "On a Hill Lone and Gray") are all strong performances using his D-modal tuning. I don't personally consider "Oh, Death" a religious song, though some do. Dock was likely the first person who ever set it to banjo, also in his D-modal tuning.

Uncle Dave recorded quite a bit of religious music, though much of it (a la his Dixie Sacred Singers group tracks) tends to be pretty straight hymnbook stuff. He didn't recompose the material, as Dock Boggs was prone to do. My favorite off-trail religious songs of UDM's are "Poor Sinners, Fare You Well" and "From Jerusalem to Jericho." The first is a black congregantional hymn adapted to banjo, and the second would not have been out of place in one of George P Jackson's compilations.

ndlxs - Posted - 04/09/2007:  14:26:22

I do this all the time when I play at church.

My favorite on banjo is "Promised Land", the minor version, with a bit of "Farewell My Friends" in the middle. I heard Curt Bourterse do this set on the radio 27 years ago; he was playing dulcimer.

I do Wondrous Love in double C; I have also done The Parting Hand in gGGBD tuning. I was trying to imitate the recording of Fiddlin' John Carson playing it on solo fiddle.

Andy Alexis
Sacramento, California
"The Pearl of the Central Valley"
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