And, preceding Calcagno and Tacke by decades, Mike Seeger:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqiubQR_W-w

Here's Hard Drive (Aaaron Tacke, banjo) replicating that recording 60+ years later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa2IbKGyNXs

It's a proto-bluegrass style and works well with driving breakdown fiddling.

I missed the obvious one: Earl Scruggs with Paul Warren. Not bluegrassy; Warren was an old-time fiddler much more than a hot bluegrass player and the duets with Earl are definitely in that pre-bluegrass style.

Hey! I almost exclusively play old-time three finger. I'm pretty sure I've posted on threads before about this, so there may be more info on my page. I’m from a neck of West Virginia where the Bluegrass and old time traditions have merged, so the scenes have a lot of overlap. As such, I play in both our bluegrass and old-time jams, but didn’t want to learn Clawhammer (I’ve always been more attracted to the actual physical method of rolling vs frailing). I stuck to the picks and don’t plan to change.

My overall observations:

if you want to get good at playing with three picks, learn at least some bluegrass. This is not because Bluegrass is cool (it is), but Bluegrass is functional. It will show you how to utilize three finger banjo effectively.

Bright, bluegrass and tones on the banjo are not very effective. Go for a warmer sound, one that mirrors a clawhammer’s style. My setup (nechville arch top) has been tailored to this, and it's a big reason some three finger players can be not welcomed-they're too loud and brassy.

I use a lot of the middle of the neck (frets 5 to 10) to hit Melody notes while rolling. Learning some basic melodic style will give you fluency to execute the intricacies of fiddle melodies. 

When playing, try to be able to play the melody, and oscillate between executing the melody note for note and rolling. The closer you can do the melody while still keeping the roll - not bill Kieth style but more fleck/vestal/pikelney, The more options you will have. 

Playing with a metronome to improve your Fundamental rolling consistency is key. A lot of these old-time tunes are crooked and may require you to roll beyond a square form.

These are just some preliminary thoughts of mine. Go check out Frank Evans on Sami Braman’s album Riveter. Great example of three finger being used in a very neo traditional context.

I was called to do a recording session with a fiddler I knew. He was playing Flannery's Dream but was not playing it the same way each time. Instead using clawhammer I played three finger to give him room for his explorations. Interestingly enough that recording got picked to be on a Crooked Road anthology CD.

Don't forget the Earl Scruggs and Fiddling Arthur Smith session from 1957: https://youtu.be/zBPr2eRqlYI

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Originally posted by janolov

Don't forget the Earl Scruggs and Fiddling Arthur Smith session from 1957: https://youtu.be/zBPr2eRqlYI

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It really doesn't get much more old-time than this...

The Earl/Paul and Earl/Arthur examples are excellent! Thanks for sharing those. It is illuminating to discover the close origins of bluegrass and old time. They really are shades of gray more so than black and white. Here is another classic banjo and fiddle duo that I love: https://folkways.si.edu/doc-watson-and-gaither-carlton

Isaac - Thank you for your suggestions. I spent a year learning the basics leading towards bluegrass and now play mostly two finger style songs using three fingers. The thumb and middle do most of the work and the index fills in when it makes sense based on the string I played before hand - breaking all the "rules". For example, I almost always play the second string with my index finger. If the next string to be played is the third I will do so with my index. But if the third string follows the fourth string then I play it with my thumb. The tone is different between thumb and index so I utilize that difference as a tool to create dynamics. But more so than anything else, the principle reason for playing this way is comfort. My palm and fingers are long and narrow. Playing with thumb and middle simply feels most comfortable to me because they can stay elongated whereas my index has to curl a decent bit to hit most strings. Starting in bluegrass, as you suggested, has enabled all three fingers to work together which opens up so many doors to create the sound you want to create. I sometimes wear picks and sometimes I don't and I play an open back with a tone ring. Breaking more "rules"! Another way to get the warm tone you mention is to move your right hand up towards the neck. My banjo has a scooped neck so I sometimes plant right at the edge of the rim and pick in that scooped area. Not having your fingers planted on the head makes a huge difference in tone. I have to be careful though because it is easy to get a lot of buzzing when I play this way.

Bob - To your point, it is interesting when the banjo doesn't follow the melody note for note. Another common theme I found in posts on this site regarding this topic is for each instrument to give each other some space and to form layers as opposed to all trying to exist on the same plane. By the way, I noticed you are in Greer. I grew up in Greer; small world. I left in 2007 to attend Clemson and still come back from time to time to visit family. 

Having read many other posts on this website around the time of starting this thread, I found a common idea that differentiates old time is reinforcing the downbeat. Do that and dancing is irresistible. That's why I am so drawn to this music. 

This discussion, and reading many others on this site, have shown me that it is important to not shun one genre in favor of another. That many lessons in bluegrass playing are applicable to playing more than just bluegrass. This may seem obvious to others, but for me it is a revelation. I have only been at this for a little over a year now.

Most of the banjo playing on old time 78s from the '20 and '30s is up-picking backup, more often chordal rather than melodic. I feel like Leake County Revelers are a great example, but there's countless groups to check out.

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Originally posted by prince_casual

Isaac - Thank you for your suggestions. I spent a year learning the basics leading towards bluegrass and now play mostly two finger style songs using three fingers. The thumb and middle do most of the work and the index fills in when it makes sense based on the string I played before hand - breaking all the "rules". 

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You're the first person I've heard talk about this-I do the same. Often, I may switch between what is functionally a "two finger" melody to a three-note roll when appropriate. You can see this in action here on a tune I have written. Having this as a "mode" to switch in is what really enables me to do a "clawhammer impersonation" at times. This lets me fit in to the style. With regards to your conversation about tone, I agree that there are different timbres on each finger and based on where you play on the banjo. For people who do plant their fingers (which I recommend for bluegrass players), moving up toward the neck vs. back to the bridge will give you a wide array of tone colors to use.

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Originally posted by BobTheGambler

Most of the banjo playing on old time 78s from the '20 and '30s is up-picking backup, more often chordal rather than melodic. I feel like Leake County Revelers are a great example, but there's countless groups to check out.

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Any more suggestions for groups? This is something I'd love to check out-not familiar with this band or where to start looking.

Oh! Forgot something-when playing with picks, I often Spike my 5th string to A to play in D. This gives a much less "Bluegrassy" sound to the drive on the banjo but still allows for use of G tuning material. Rolling on the 5th, 1st, and 2nd string (fretted at 3) will give a really hypnotic and driving groove for D tunes that is difficult to get out of standard G tuning.

While Mike is today best known as one of the main postwar proponents of old time music and an expert in old time banjo.  Bluegrass banjo was a real major love in his life that he would let you know if you got to know him.   He told me once that the big regret in his life is that he knew he just did not have the chops to be a top flight working bluegrass banjoist in the 50s, and would have done that.  He told me at first playing old time he had a hard time getting into picking without picks and there were some songs I saw him play in this century that he two-finger picked and just didnt feel he could pick it right without a metal fingerpick on the finger he was not picking with.   He had a deep affection and respect for bluegrass banjo playing and has a close personal relationship with Bluegras icons like like Ralph Stanley.

He was a major figure especially in the late 50s and early 60s of encouraging people outside the South to value and listen and learn to play Bluegrasss.   

There i s such a big hole int he whole damned universe since he passed away.   Folks do not know them some Michael should get them. His last years of life when he was suffering from several different bouts with several cancers, were an immense struggle on his part to pass on what he had the opportunity to learn from both old time and bluegrass banjoists to new generations.  Now that he has been gone a little while, folks forget thim.  Thanks for raising it. 

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Originally posted by Bill Rogers

I missed the obvious one: Earl Scruggs with Paul Warren. Not bluegrassy; Warren was an old-time fiddler much more than a hot bluegrass player and the duets with Earl are definitely in that pre-bluegrass style.

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Paul was also a banjoist.  If you have the Flat and Scruggs shows that you can download from YouTube, and on some of the live album, there are several frailing banjo pieces Paul plays borrowing Earl banjo.   He was pretty good.

Three finger banjo playing including the variant of that where some folks played with 4 fingers, and some like Gus Cannon threw in the Pinkie for tremolos was the most widespread and popular form of banjo playing in the English speaking world in the era that old time banjo was extant.  A lot of stupidities that erase the two finger playing and the three finger playing ignores the fact that even in our recordings of old time musicians from the 1920s and 1930s,  two finger and three finger picking was extremely widespread.

My own research of African American banjoists suggests that while down picking may have originated with African instrument playing, pre bluegrass and Black old time banjo playing with three finger picking and more fingers at time was very prevelent and seems to be prevalent from musicians we know of today like Gus Cannon,  Murph Gribble, and others.  There is an interview with Gus Cannon a folk music enthusiast in Memphis did in 1967 where Cannon explained he tried using finger picks at one point in his career but he played so hard that he broke them all!

Picks of the type that some use today and became widely used through bluegrass were not around or were not available until the post war period as far as I know and were apparently expensive until postwar days.  The war seems to be the dividing line on the picks.   On the other hand from the early days of banjo playing in the mid 19th century, down picking banjo players routinely used banjo thimbles, some of which would make the finger picks bluegrass players use today seem delicate and weak.  I have heard testimony in interviews with frailing players Black and white from the South that many used banjo thimbles across the 20s and 30s and 40s, and only stopped when they were no longer available in the 60s or 70s.

If you have to use your nose or a sledge hammer to get the sound you like, let alone picks, that is the old time way!

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Originally posted by BobTheGambler

Most of the banjo playing on old time 78s from the '20 and '30s is up-picking backup, more often chordal rather than melodic. I feel like Leake County Revelers are a great example, but there's countless groups to check out.

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That is certainly true,  There is  a fetischism of down picking banjo that seems to be growing over the years in the old time music milieu that is anti historical.  Here in Florida, the state old time music championships exclude anyone finger picking the banjo in any way either  in solo composition or fiddle and banjo duos which i once worked to be in, or in bands!!!

That is quite different from what you hear if you listen to a variety of both white and black old time players on records from the 1920s and 1930s.

As an old time banjoist myself, I still look at the duets between Paul Warren and Earl that you find among the live albums and in the video of the F & S show as instructive in how to play banjo behind a fiddle in the old time way.

It is very unfortunate that today most people who are taught old time banjo are taught by being taught to play the melody of fiddle tunes, a task no old time banjoist is going to actually do in any playing situation with a fiddle who is worth her or his salt.  I started playing guitar in 1960s in folk, old time, bluegrass and blues situations, so  when I finally picked up the banjo about 25 years ago,  I could apply what I learned backing fiddlers on guitar to the banjo.  Watson's playing with his father in low Gaither has already been pointed to, as well as the playing that Earl did behind Paul Warren, especially in their banjo and fiddle duos without the rest of the band

I would also point to the styling of  Murph Gribble of the Gribble Lusk and York band from Tennessee that Stu Jamieson and Margaret Mayo recorded in the 1940s.   There is a lot of interchange in that approach of lead between banjo and fiddle.  Another great example is the playing of Marion Underwood behind the fidding of Jim Booker Jr.  in the first recordings of Taylor's Kentucky Boys Gray Eagle  and Forked Deer recorded by Gennett Records in 1927.  Underwood played a strong 3 finger style on those fiddle tunes and the lead goes back and forth between Underwood and Booker.   

Bluegrassers and the bluegrass banjo playing and teaching industry really developed in a collective an scientific way what a person could do on a five string to music similar to what old time fiddling is and old time fiddling.   However,  the melodic approach to bluegrass and other forms of banjo has really offered some pearls to fingiring out how to play old time,  A few months ago inquiring about this the great Bob Buckingham who has graced us here with his presence recommened a book called "The Complete Tune Playing Toolkit for 5-string banjo" which provides a comprehensive approach to 3 finger picking that can be well applied to old time as well as bluegrass.  It sits on my music stand, thanks Bob!

Pete Peterson plays 3-finger banjo for Walt's and Claire's fiddling in the Orpheum Supertones. Pete is a Charlie Poole style player and owns one of Charlie Poole's banjos. 

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Originally posted by isaacmccarthy

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Originally posted by BobTheGambler

Most of the banjo playing on old time 78s from the '20 and '30s is up-picking backup, more often chordal rather than melodic. I feel like Leake County Revelers are a great example, but there's countless groups to check out.

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Any more suggestions for groups? This is something I'd love to check out-not familiar with this band or where to start looking.

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Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, Blue Ridge Highballers, Uncle Dave Macon and the Fruit Jar Drinkers, Red Fox Chasers, The Sweet Brothers (Virginia Mountain Boomers), Red Headed Fiddlers, DaCosta Woltz Southern Broadcasters, Dr Humphrey Bate's Possum Hunters, Young Brothers with Homer Davenport.

I could go on and on, but those were some good examples that popped into my mind. There's lots of great up-picking banjo playing from bands that only recorded a few sides.

Great contributions from Tony and everyone else for that matter. To keep this going, here is some essential listening from a name that hasn't been mentioned yet - Wade Mainer: https://allensarchiveofearlyoldcountrymusic.blogspot.com/2010/02/wade-mainer-first-time-in-stereo.html. This album could as easily be placed in the bluegrass forums as it is here. 

All of these references are great. I do want to get back to the original intent of this post which is to answer: what it is that defines this style of playing? Here is what I have come up with from listening to artists old and new and have gleaned from other posts on the forum:

1. Playing the downbeat and maintaining a clear 3/4 or 4/4 rhythm
2. Building rhythm by focusing less on every single melody note and more on looping patterns that support the melody without licks
3. Creating patterns using bum-ditty, bumpa-ditty, pinches, and brushes.
4. Achieving patterns by whatever means preferred: two finger, three finger, up pick, clawhammer, etc.
5. Utilizing a variety of tunings and modes
6. No breaks...but you do still have times in which the instruments take turns between - lead and backup - or put another way between - a clearly defined melody and a less defined melody. Some have referred to this as "creating space".
7. Voices are instruments. They are equally a part of item number 6 and should be given space in the melody-rhythm balance.
8. Resonator or no resonator. Picks or no picks. It doesn't matter.
9. ???

Looking forward to any additions or refutations to my list as either will help me learn. My appreciation for this music grows the more I discover its qualities.

Would early Foghorn Stringband fit the description? Their banjo player would sometimes play the melody but often he was doing more chordal accompaniment.

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Originally posted by earlstanleycrowe

Would early Foghorn Stringband fit the description? Their banjo player would sometimes play the melody but often he was doing more chordal accompaniment.

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Yes! Not only would they "fit the description", but I feel that Taylor Grover's banjo playing in the early Foghorn String Band was extremely influential in the renewed popularity of finger-picked banjo in the current generation of young string bands. Taylor was strongly influenced by the playing of Ronnie Poe, the Virginia banjo player in John Ashby's powerhouse band the Free State Ramblers.

When residing in Ireland and playing in sessions I developed a claw hammer back up style that was quite dynamic sliding in to chords mainly on the fourth and third and second strings using the first and second strings and open third strings as rhythmic punctuation and drones. I mainly used drop thumb patterns with an occasional brush. Since Irish sessions shift keys in medleys I played out of double D tuning with use of the fifth string for D and A tunes. and intermittent selective use of the fifth string and using the first open and fretted for drone and chordal punctuation I could play back up and selected melodic phrases without retuning in D, A, E minor, B minor, G. The style was influenced by the bouzouki backup of the late great Alec Finn but transferred to the 5 string banjo. It seems to me what passes for so-called "proto bluegrass" backup banjo is merely bluegrass Scruggs picking without the blues-derived phrasing and perhaps less resorting to second position up the neck.I do not hear the style of Charlie Parker and Max Woolbright , Snuffy Jenkins or even Obray Ramsey in this 3 finger backup though I do see Jason Romero as Ramsey's heir. Protobluegrass" backup banjo seems to be one more blurring and pushing of oldtime in the direction of bluegrass that is already half way there with double bass plucked backup and purely chordal rythym guitar in many post Highwood bands with none of the bass runs of Riley Puckett and Roy Harvey. Good Clawhammer can be as punchy as three finger proto-neo-Scruggs style.

My sound samples for backup Clawhammer playing in Irish sessions are locked in cassettes. But here is my model Alec Finn on bouzouki backing fiddle: bouzouki tuning is DD AA dd.

youtu.be/zaiXZ-7uPdA?feature=shared