Years spent loyally attending to Tune of the Week on both BHO and Instagram and to Tune of the Month on Facebook's Clawhammer Rules have introduced me to hundreds of tunes. One of the represented genres is southern Black stringband music, which Charles Wolfe (1943 – 2006) wrote was “effectively ignored” during the beginnings of country music recordings in the 20’s because “they did not fit into the stereotyped categories” of hillbilly music or blues. This changed in the 1940’s when folklorists and collectors set out to discover this rich repertoire of music. My introduction to Black old-time and stringband music occurred via several TOTWs on Instagram in the last ten years. In a past TOTW installation on BHO I covered one of them -- Peace Behind the Bridge as played by Etta Baker.
This week I’ve chosen Altamont, as played by banjo player Murphy “Murph” Gribble, along with fiddler John Lewis Lusk and Albert York on guitar. The Library of Congress offers the CD “Altamont, Black Stringband Music” with fourteen tracks, produced by Bob Carlin. The tune was learned from Murph’s father, Will Gribble.
My two arrangements are from the solos at the end of the recording. The banjo player and fiddler were intentionally asked to play their respective versions, showcasing the intent of the 1940’s project to document the music itself. These solos were added to the end of the 1946 recording on the Library of Congress CD. This wasn’t included on the partial recording of Altamont on the Slippery Hill website and may account for why my arrangements are unique to other banjo versions I've listened to. I was also helped by my favorite music camp bluegrass banjo instructor, Bill Evans', video. He also covered the tune in Banjo Newsletter’s August, 2020 edition.
Paul Kirk, Jr. shared thorough research on the musicians, so check out his YouTube notes in the Altamont video with Stephen Rapp on banjo for Old-Time TOTW #261. The tune’s history goes back to the days of slavery in Tennessee. Interestingly, Paul reports that John Lusk’s enslaved great-grandfather, born in the 1820’s, was sent to New Orleans to learn fiddling. The trio of John Lewis Lusk (fiddle), Joseph York (guitar), and Murph Gribble (banjo) were apparently related, probably as brothers and cousin, and busked together at the same spot for nearly 30 years.
At 14:51 in this video link posted by the Tennessee Folklore Society, Linda Henry makes a plea for publishing Black southern string band music by Gribble, Lusk and York, for it was a “sustaining source for cultural survival and .... ‘an expression of American life and character.’” You'll hear Altamont played there, too. On Banjo Hangout there was a post last year with history on Murph Gribble.
More versions of Altamont to listen to:
Rhys Jones “a groovier way to play this simple C tune”
Dean Barber and the Lone Star String Band
Edited by - JanetB on 11/15/2024 20:32:46
The original is very tricky; I tried hard about a decade ago to figure it out. I got close, but the second part never sounded quite right. Over 20 years ago, I had a discussion on banjo-l with one of the people who was THERE when they recorded it, Stu Jamieson; he had his own version that IMHO was not very good, and I think I got him to realize that there was more going on there. It is the brushes that Gribble did that was the part I couldn't quite get. One thing: I think it is in double C tuning, except tuned down 3 half steps to A.
I think the player that comes closest to Gribble's magic is Bill Evans: hear it for yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOLCeGGIowk
He of course has a table available, somewhere; here is my tab:
https://www.banjohangout.org/tab/browse.asp?m=detail&v=27572
Thanks for a great contribution, Andy. Your 3-finger and my clawhammer tab have resemblances, though I went an octave higher than you and Bill Evans for the B part. I've asked Bill for permission to include his tab as published in the August, 2020 Banjo Newsletter and hope to hear back from him. In the meantime, here's a quote from his article there, which appears on page 3 along with the tab.
"As with Scruggs' playing, Gribble seamlessly integrates the right hand middle finger to syncopate the melody. His playing also has a drive that's very similar to Scruggs' mid-to late 1940's playing....As we seek a new and powerful understanding of the importance and influence of the African-American banjo players, Murphy Gribble stands as an important mid-20th century stylist, whose three-finger playing points to the possibility of a wider, shared Southern playing tradition."
Syncopation is what also stood out to me in Altamont, which Bill spells as "Altamount." The A part has 2 sections that are uniquely fun to play clawhammer style. Measures 1, 3 and 5 have it, as does measure 7, which flows out via a Galax lick. In the first measure I should have indicated the use of the clawhammerist's index or middle finger on the fourth note rather than the thumb -- it helps emphasize the syncopation.
Edited by - JanetB on 11/16/2024 13:38:42
With permission, here is Bill Evans' Altamont tab as it appeared in Banjo Newsletter August, 2020.
Bill offers excellent and learnable methods for teaching 3-finger picking, which benefit me to this day (having taken three straight years of music camp classes in Grass Valley preceding the Father's Day Festival.)
Bill tells me that these days he and his wife, Babi, have their own music camps in New Mexico. Bill plays an awesome clawhammer banjo, too, and has the likes of Alan Munde and Riley Baugus as teachers. So if you're in that neck of the woods in the Spring, you might try them out. In exploring his website, billevansbanjo.com, I see he was inducted into the American Banjo Museum's Hall of Fame in October under the category "Instruction and Education," and he received the Steve Martin Banjo Prize in 2022. Information about the music camp weekends is there, too.
