Yep...lots.... ;0)

Love it too..

Here is a 1927 recording of Gus Cannon playing slide banjo, one of my first inspirations to play the banjo.

youtube.com/watch?v=LuU91T4xVJs

Rick Mckeon has tried it. Dont know if he stuck with it....but check him out and ask him. Great guy and loves to teach.

Bela Fleck has some nice slide tunes on various works.

Gus Cannon and Doc Walsh.

Yes, I have, and yes, in G. It quite intrigued a banjo player in the audience.

Allman Bros "Pony Boy" sounds great on a 5-string with a slide.

I like using Needle nose pliers ever so seldom==

It's kind of like the natural curiousity of a new married couple. Slide and banjo and blues, that's a good start.

quote:

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Originally posted by britcarfan

Since most people tune there 5 string in open g tuning. Has anyone tried playing slide banjo?

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Lots of contemporary players have tried slide banjo.  I know I did and even recorded one side piece about 20 years ago when I made a CD mainly for fund raising after my instruments got stolen.  I have done a bit of researcy on it given the work I have done on Gus Cannon ssince about 2008.  The problem of slide banjo is that on most banjos, you have to set up the banjo differently to get effective slide.  Cannon and one or two mainly white old time musicians who did this in the 1920s and early 30s had to raise the bridge, using coins under the bridge to have the kind of action you need to get it.    While Cannon made his famous recording of Poor Boy this way, he complained that this method was not practical for regular performances,  many of which he did were busking  or playing in medicine shows because to return to playing his normal repertoire, he had to untune the banjo, take the coins from under the bridge,  reset the bridge and retune the banjo.   Unlike many of us today, like me,  Cannon seemed to have performed with just one banjo at a time.          A

Another example of this came at the 2005 Black Banjo Gathering.  Mike Seeger wanted to do a slide banjo version of Dock Boggs "Down South Blues."  I had just been given a Fairbanks Electric from 1894 by banjo collectors in thanks for my services to banjo history.  Unfortunately this banjo had been sitting hung up on the wall of a banjo collector's home for 40 years, and its neck and finger board was out of shape.  It only worked with high action and then had terrible intonation.  It took YEARS of collaborative work of several wonderful luthiers here in Florida working together to bring this banjo back into fine playing shape it has been in the past 10-12 years.  \

Getting back to the Black Banjo Gathering, Mike had a couple of his banjos, and the creme de la creme of old time banjoists were there with their banjos, all of whom would have loved to have Mike play theirs.   However, Mike asked me if he could borrow my messed up Fairbanks that I had just gotten into my hands that day to play slide, and he played a magnificent slide solo on it.

Slide banjo really isnt something viable unless you are in shape to set up a banjo for playing it and not play anything else.,  I do think that if you had an electric banjo or one with a pickup that could alter the sound you might get more resonance without some of these tricks, but in regard to actual playing,  banjos aren't really good for slide playing.  You can do nice things once in a while, but in history this never happened very much even though 5-string banjo playing was very popular in Hawaii in the late 19th century and early 20th century where slide playing evolved and spread around the west of the world.  In my research I discovered that Gus Cannon and Black guitarists of his early 20th century era considered Slide, "Hawaiian"  playing.

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Originally posted by EulalieBlue

Here is a 1927 recording of Gus Cannon playing slide banjo, one of my first inspirations to play the banjo.

youtube.com/watch?v=LuU91T4xVJs

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As I point out below,  I have done years and years of research on Cannon.   While this was something he learned to do from a guitarist when he lived in Clarksdale and gets magnificent sounds from retuning his banjo for the Paramount recording,  he found it was not a practical thing for him to do in his work as a banjoist because to get the sound he got to play what he called Hawaiian, he had to untune the banjo, and place coins under his bridge to raise the action,  tighten the strings so they effectively held down the bridge, and retune in a different tuning from the drop C he normally tuned.   He said it was impractical for the life he had as a performer which involved a lot of busking, and performance otherwise, This playing was popular with the blues revivalists who first came upon Cannon in the late 1950s and 60s, but except when asked to do this, there is no sign this was part of his regular performance or that he ever played any other tune this way, even though while his physical health held up, he played a variety of banjo styles and all of them well.

I came to banjo playing about 22 years ago after having played the guitar more than 30 years including a lot of blues and some slide on both electric and acoustic guitars.   I naturally thought the banjo would be something I could do easy slide with and did find it great for blues playing from the first night I took a banjo home!   I did make a few performances playing slide--in many ways because I could transfer my open G and open D guitar blues playing to the banjo quicker than I could learn how to actually play the banjo, but it sounded pretty scratchy and didnt have the depth that Cannon gets here, which I had not heard at that point.  I was actually using a Gretch "Bacon" Belmont, the exact last banjo the Gus Cannon had owned.

Slide banjo never caught on, but I think if a person wanted to do it today, you would get an old banjo with a tone ring (Cannon used either a Washburn "Professional" or a  Van Eps Recording Banjo on Poor Boy) and high action.   Resonator banjos tend to have strings that are too thin to get more than a shakey sound playing slide.  The other alternative is to get an electric banjo.  

Some nice slide banjo on this one,, a very fine tune too.
youtu.be/U4yYOATYgdM

I like the way this fellow keeps the bum ditty going with slide...
youtu.be/3jSR5z9yjxQ

Thanks for sharing your work, Tony.  I love the clarity of Gus Cannon"s playing in general but wondered how he managed such good tone on his slide recording of Poor Boy.  I always got fret rattle, and a raised bridge explains it. 

I think Cannon's playing in general is a perfect combination of the popular parlor styles from the 19th century and the more punctuated rhythm in his blusier numbers.  I probably wouldn't be playing banjo at all if not for his influence.

RA

quote:

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Originally posted by writerrad

As I point out below,  I have done years and years of research on Cannon.   While this was something he learned to do from a guitarist when he lived in Clarksdale and gets magnificent sounds from retuning his banjo for the Paramount recording,  he found it was not a practical thing for him to do in his work as a banjoist because to get the sound he got to play what he called Hawaiian, he had to untune the banjo, and place coins under his bridge to raise the action,  tighten the strings so they effectively held down the bridge, and retune in a different tuning from the drop C he normally tuned. 

quote:

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Originally posted by writerrad

quote:

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Originally posted by britcarfan

Since most people tune there 5 string in open g tuning. Has anyone tried playing slide banjo?

---

Lots of contemporary players have tried slide banjo.  I know I did and even recorded one side piece about 20 years ago when I made a CD mainly for fund raising after my instruments got stolen.  I have done a bit of researcy on it given the work I have done on Gus Cannon ssince about 2008.  The problem of slide banjo is that on most banjos, you have to set up the banjo differently to get effective slide.  Cannon and one or two mainly white old time musicians who did this in the 1920s and early 30s had to raise the bridge, using coins under the bridge to have the kind of action you need to get it.    While Cannon made his famous recording of Poor Boy this way, he complained that this method was not practical for regular performances,  many of which he did were busking  or playing in medicine shows because to return to playing his normal repertoire, he had to untune the banjo, take the coins from under the bridge,  reset the bridge and retune the banjo.   Unlike many of us today, like me,  Cannon seemed to have performed with just one banjo at a time.          A

Another example of this came at the 2005 Black Banjo Gathering.  Mike Seeger wanted to do a slide banjo version of Dock Boggs "Down South Blues."  I had just been given a Fairbanks Electric from 1894 by banjo collectors in thanks for my services to banjo history.  Unfortunately this banjo had been sitting hung up on the wall of a banjo collector's home for 40 years, and its neck and finger board was out of shape.  It only worked with high action and then had terrible intonation.  It took YEARS of collaborative work of several wonderful luthiers here in Florida working together to bring this banjo back into fine playing shape it has been in the past 10-12 years.  \

Getting back to the Black Banjo Gathering, Mike had a couple of his banjos, and the creme de la creme of old time banjoists were there with their banjos, all of whom would have loved to have Mike play theirs.   However, Mike asked me if he could borrow my messed up Fairbanks that I had just gotten into my hands that day to play slide, and he played a magnificent slide solo on it.

Slide banjo really isnt something viable unless you are in shape to set up a banjo for playing it and not play anything else.,  I do think that if you had an electric banjo or one with a pickup that could alter the sound you might get more resonance without some of these tricks, but in regard to actual playing,  banjos aren't really good for slide playing.  You can do nice things once in a while, but in history this never happened very much even though 5-string banjo playing was very popular in Hawaii in the late 19th century and early 20th century where slide playing evolved and spread around the west of the world.  In my research I discovered that Gus Cannon and Black guitarists of his early 20th century era considered Slide, "Hawaiian"  playing.

I would add that I guess you could function doing it regularly by having a special bridge or some permanent device to raise the strings as some guitarists do, but it is something that never became regular for banjoists even in Hawaii where slide playing began in the current historical stretch.,   Earlier historians like David Evans, who helped me a lot about Cannon, once thought that slide guitar and related music had African origin, but David and almost others believe that whatever African antecedants it may have, the general wave of playing slide was chiefly influenced by the huge passion for Hawaiian slide music in the late 19th and early 20th Century.  Gus Cannon always called slide playing "Hawaiian" playing.

The banjo style that Cannon played was not Parlor banjo. What has passed as Parlor banjo since the late 19th century and has been continued most nobly by the American Banjo Fraternity represents "parlor banjo" as it was developed by banjo marketeers like the Dobsons and most notably SS Stewart and later the guild, is not simply a banjo technique, but a cultural or musical movement that used one of the several banjo techniques that emerged in the mid 19th century, the guitar banjo style which involves plucking upwards on the banjo with two or more fingers, generally striking downward with the thumb in combinations of single note playing, pinches, and rolls. When this method of playing the banjo was introduced in the 1850s, it was called "guitar banjo." Often banjo instruction books were divided between those that used the stroke or banjo method roughly equivalent to what we call frailing, and the guitar method this method. That is the proper name for this technique. This includes a range of playing styles and cultural locations including Parlor banjo enthusiasts who continue a cultural and musical movement invented by American and British banjo entrepeneurs and entertainers that was successful in forms of music, most nobly represented by the American Banjo fraternity. However, the guitar banjo technique was also used by players of ragtime--more ragtime recordings were made of banjoists than pianistsm-what became old time music with people like Charlie Poole and Black music of all kinds. In the second decade of the 20th century, most of the forms of music that the guitar banjo style was used for declined in the face of new instruments like various plectrum banjos, the rise of the guitar, and the rise of people not playing music but listening to media. Parlor banjo enthusiasts gatthered in the glorious American Banjo Fraternity appeared to be the primary exponents of this technique, and for many people guitar banjo became identified with parlor banjo. In relatity, the guitar style had its final victory, at first lurking in players like Uncle Dave and Poole and Cannon, but much of the banjo was saved by a young mill hand from the border of North and South Carolina region where banjoists adapted the guitar banjo style to old time music, his name was Earl Scruggs. Bluegrass banjo playing like what is called Parlor banjo, and several other style such as the way ragtime was played on the banjo, are but different forms not of Parlor banjo but of the guitar banjo style.

One  easy issue comparing say Cannon or for that matter Mack Wolbright who was a big Early influence on Earl Scruggs is that parlor banjo following Stewart did not support the early 20th century move to steel or other metal strung banjos,  preferring Gut and then nylon, etc.  Another was a preference for sheet music and music education, whereas say Gus Cannon was both musically and verbally illiterate. Earl Scruggs was a brilliant man with a keen mind and a knowledge of all kinds of music, and technically advanced, flying his own airplane, but he never learned to read music, and really needed Bill Keith to tab out his music to create his banjo instructor, a book even clawhammer and 2 finger pickers like me should have and review.    To confuse matters even more,  Eli Kaufman, a great man who saved much of banjo legacy by taking the leadership of the American banjo Fraternity for so many years, disliked the term which the ABF embraced and used.  He led it to adopt the term "classic banjo" to describe itself and its approach, even though you cannot find any reference to that as a description of banjo playing in the late 19th or early 20th Century.  Eli was reputed to have said, you don't call Bluegrass parking lot banjo, why shoud we call what we play parlor banjo.

One thing about Cannon's clarity.  Very much of Cannon's banjo living was playing the banjo either busking, or playing outside in medicine shows and similar performances where you had to play loud and clear to gather a crowd and sometimes to be heard versus other similar operations.  He preferred quite loud banjos.  In one interview, I have, someone asked him if he ever used finger picks.  He said he tried that once but he played so hard that he broke them.   He liked loud banjos when he could obtain them, including a Van Eps Recording Banjo and later a Grestch Broadcaster resonator.

Cannon was not really a folk player.   He felt superior to what we would call traditional banjoists.  Even though he was illiterate with both reading words and reading music, other musicians of his era including those who could sight read, considered Cannon to be a musician who knew ,music.   

He grew up in the Mississippi Delta at a time where there were more lucrative opportunities for making money playing music for Black people than anywhere else in the country really.  He said even when he was 16 or 18, he could make more money playing the fiddle and the banjo on the weekends than he did during the week working at various labor or farming jobs.  As a young man, whatever else he was doing, he worked extremely hard practicing and seeking out new ways to play music,  By the time he got recorded in 1927 he was either 44 or 46 and had been playing the banjo since he was 12, and had been making money at it  for decades.  

He was quite different than some of the musicians we know as old time music revivalists who might have played in their family, or might have played at a saturday night dance now and then.  Playing music for him up to the 1930s when opportunities to play what he played and getting paid diminished, was a significant way of making a living.

Tony’s posts are so valuable and detailed that I’ve made this topic a sticky. Thanks, Tony!

As obscure a record as I’ve ever owned was “Glen Campbell and the Green River Boys,” featuring GC and a couple of veteran, but little-known studio players. One of them did indeed play slide banjo. I don’t think i have the LP any more, but if I find it i’ll edit in some specifics.

You can here it here youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=Rhcwz42i-zo
and here youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=Rhcwz42i-zo

Lot of back and forth in country between banjo and steel players. Josh Graves learned his style of dobro playing by using Scruggs picking he learned when before he joined Flat and Scruggs when I he worked on the same radio program with Earl before he got hired. Bashful Brother Oswald who was mostly known as a dobro player was also a very good frailing banjo player.

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Originally posted by Bill Rogers

As obscure a record as I’ve ever owned was “Glen Campbell and the Green River Boys,” featuring GC and a couple of veteran, but little-known studio players. One of them did indeed play slide banjo. I don’t think i have the LP any more, but if I find it i’ll edit in some specifics.

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When I was a kid in the 1960s, you had obscure records.  I am still in touch with an older couple (they were married and in their 20s) who took me and a the banjo player in our little old time band in Connecticut to their house to hear the real 78s of Charlie Poole, and was shocked how much better Charlie Poole was than the New Lost City Ramblers recordings, something that all 4 of them whom I have had the privilege to speak with explained to me in years later,.   But now, I sit in my den, take a sip of wine and put Green River Boys into YouTube and find 2 selections.  I can sit at this machine here in Florida and find things that 20 years ago I took a week off work, flew to NYC, spend a week pouring through two libraries and Lincoln Center's special music library and could not find.  It is addictive, you think of some band or musician or song you remember from 30 40 50 60 years ago, go online and find it.

Another approach.......

https://www.srf.ch/play/tv/archivperlen/video/hawaiigitarre-1965?urn=urn:srf:video:a2504c40-c225-4ffc-b5a5-55e03b9ddc98

drive.google.com/file/d/1qqfYq...=drivesdk

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